Blog Archives

Friends Visiting

27/10/2025

https://hartsilversmiths.co.uk/

SEE: Hart Silversmiths Trust

We also visited the family at Cross House - where many might say that it is very much as it has always been since the early 16th-century! And visited my sister and her family in their 'cottage' - probably a mere hundred years old or some such.

See below.

Oops... This has been sitting in drafts for weeks. And our good friend Roger was here at the beginning of September!

As Roger is a veteran of the Cotswolds we spent less time doing touristy things and more time catching up and meeting other friends, eating and drinking.

One place, however, that we stumbled across (well, actually recommended by our neighbour), is this marvellous workshop in Chipping Campden. The area is widely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement spearheaded by William Morris. So, in 1902 one key member of the movement, C R Ashbee, brought the Guild of Handicraft to the town and one of the Guildsmen was local man George Hart (b 1882). As the craftsmen went their separate ways in 1908, the Guild was continued by George and three other partners, as he established his silversmith business in an old silk mill in Sheep Street.... and it is still there producing high quality "a wide range of domestic silverware, we make and design anything from tiny thimbles to cutlery, bowls, tea and coffee services and silver-mounted crystal decanters".

The workshop is very much as it has always been!

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Ruins & Disintegration

27/10/2025

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Back in the summer we managed a few trips out and about and actually visited a few places 'on the doorstep'. Why is it that we spend time, effort and money going to faraway places yet often ignore those that are right under our noses?

Less than a two hour drive away through south Gloucestershire, the Forest of Dean and the Wye Valley National Landscape (a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), is the disintegrated ruins of Tintern Abbey - an impressive national icon — standing next to the River Wye in Monmouthshire (Wales).

Tintern Abbey was founded in 1131 by Cistercian monks. The timber buildings of the first abbey were followed by a simple stone church and cloisters.

The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 at the abbey of Cîteau in Dijon, France. A breakaway faction of the Benedictines, the Cistercians sought to re-establish observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict - written in Latin c. 530. The Cistercians were considered the strictest of the monastic orders with an emphasis upon a life of simplicity, labour, and deep spiritual contemplation.

This influenced even the requirements for the construction of their abbeys, stipulating that "none of our houses is to be built in cities, in castles or villages; but in places remote from the conversation of men...”.

The motto of St Benedict was: ‘Laborare est orare’ – ‘To work is to pray’.

In 1269, thanks to the patronage of wealthy Marcher lords (appointed by the English crown to govern and defend the border regions between England and Wales, known as the Welsh Marches), the building of a new abbey church commenced and resulted in a “much grander structure with soaring gothic arches, windows with delicate tracery, and surrounded by substantial outbuildings including the cloisters where much of the life of the abbey community took place, chapter house, library, refectory, dormitories, and infirmary. It housed over a hundred choir monks, who were ordained priests, and lay brothers who did the ‘housework’”.

The great west front with its seven-lancet window and the soaring arches of the nave is still impressive despite falling into ruin in the first round of King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1536.

The Dissolution ended monastic life in England, Wales and Ireland. Tintern Abbey and all ots estates were surrendered on 3 September 1536. Valuables from the Abbey were sent to the royal Treasury, and lead from the roof was sold and the building was granted to the Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester (and lord of Chepstow).

Therefore, the decay of Tintern Abbey began, with the resulting present-day ruins demonstrating a mixture of building works covering a 400-year period between 1131 and 1536.

See these links:
Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth (English Romantic poet 1770 – 1850
Tintern Village - Abbey History

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Autumn Sunshine

24/10/2025

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Dodgy Gourds

13/10/2025

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Chilli peppers - 13 October 2025

Carrots & Parsnips - 19 Oct 2025

I was going to attempt to write a few catch-up missives but that would be trawling back to (August) when it was way too hot and nobody had the wherewithal to do anything other than move from shaded spot to the fridge for another cool drink!

The garden plants seemed to struggle to even absorb the water given – but in retrospect even though we watered every evening we obviously mis-calculated the much larger quantity of moisture needed. The vegetables in both the patch and the greenhouses were stoic to a point and then just succumbed to exhaustion in the unusually high temperatures (for the UK). Still, you live and learn.

Therefore, it was all a bit disappointing – by mid-September I ended up clearing out the cucumbers, courgette, sweetcorn, runner beans, and even some tomato plants which had some kind of mildew as well as the odd blossom end rot. The latter is all linked to inconsistency with watering and calcium – and this may have stemmed from the short period when we were in Florence. The crops that seemed to cope were the French beans and beetroot – but those had been succession planting.

As I type this (mid-October) the chilli peppers and sweet peppers in the greenhouse are incredibly fruitful and, to accompany our Sunday lunch today, I dug up some impressive parsnips and carrots… so it hasn’t been a complete disaster, I suppose!

Sad gourds - 22 August 2025

Sad sweetcorn - 14 August 2025

A lot has happened since the beginning of September, including unplanned-for work in both the garden and the house, as well as visits to places and visitors from overseas too, but I can only cope with so much screen time over the weekend! It is bad enough in the week, and I get paid for that.

So, more to follow...

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Exhaustion

7/10/2025

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It has been a busy-busy few months.
I think. It has all been a bit of a blur.

Actually, for a while I was very out-of-sorts.As i recently mentioned I had an appointment with my diabetic nurse, and it transpires that I had been having a lot of hypos – dangerously low blood sugar levels (BGLs). This explained the total exhaustion that I felt throughout the summer and – to a certain degree, even now. It was getting fairly ridiculous when I was forcing myself to remain active but really wated to go to bed at 7.30pm!

I am still going to bed early but I’m also giving myself permission to do so… !

Anyway, the Nurse has prescribed a monitor (called FreeStyle LibreLink 2). It is absolutely amazing. The monitor (a white disc) is attached to the body (currently on my upper arm) and it sends all the BGL data to my mobile phone! It is SO clever. Apparently, some of the readings might be ‘out’ if compared with the normal finger-prick tests because it is something to do with testing capillary blood and some other type (Royal blue blood maybe?*!). Either which way, I’m permanently astounded at how helpful this kit is. I do wish that it had been prescribed before now but, of course, there is a certain amount of criteria and boxes to be ticked by the NHS. However, my marvellous Nurse over-rode some of this and I am now on a repeat prescription to receive the monitor – each one lasts fifteen days. I do think that it can only be beneficial to how things are controlled and already my insulin (mmol units) injection has been reduced and the BGLs have levelled out.

Fingers crossed that this continues and my energy returns; it gets boring otherwise.

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