Mhar Monastery was founded in 1619. We arrived on a crisp, sunny Saturday morning. The church was built in the 1680s, funded by two Cossack leaders, hetmans, one of whom is our old friend Mazeppa.
My grandfather thought that there were pine martens living on the thickly wooded banks of the Boyne at Oldbridge but I have never seen one of these shy creatures.
The title is an homage to William Boot’s column in The Beast (vide Scoop, Evelyn Waugh, 1933). Whether it is mild weather or competition from feeders in the cemetery, our avian amigos are not making their way, ‘feather footed through the plashy fen’, to the feeders in the back garden.
How do you first see a city? Arriving at Venice’s Santa Lucia station and stepping out onto broad steps leading down to the Grand Canal is hard to beat. Yesterday I walked to London along the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal.
I am staying for a few days in a village close to Burford in west Oxfordshire to explore the locality. Yesterday afternoon we went for a circular walk in Sherborne Park.
On Tuesday I took a slightly shorter walk than usual, only five miles. As usual, it was along a tidal stretch of river – not the Thames, the Stour that divides Essex from Suffolk and joins the North Sea at Harwich.
The application (see Wind in the Willows) by developer, St George, to fell the willow tree in front of their flats at Fulham Reach was withdrawn. There was much opposition including a well-reasoned submission by a reader here, who knows more about trees than I do.
Yesterday morning was warm and sunny but as it was high water I didn’t expect to see much on my regular perambulation upstream to Richmond. Here is what I saw, in order of size.