GENERAL – Page 8 – ROLLING HARBOUR GALLERY

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT… CERNE ABBAS, DORSET

Published on January 3, 2014 by Rolling Harbour4 Comments

Through and indeed under it, to be strictly accurate. This Dorset village, a few miles north of Dorchester, is well-known, but for (arguably) the wrong reason, the chalk-figure giant on the hill in all his unfeasibly impressive priapic glory. Some say he represents Hercules (besides the fearsome club, excavations have found traces of some form of covering over the other hand – a manly lionskin for protection? Or for modesty perhaps?).

There are many theories for the giant’s origin and purpose, but the general consensus is that he dates from the c17 or early c18 – he is first noted in records in the mid-c18. Maybe he’s much older. It is said that a belief in the giant as a symbol of fertility encouraged young women of the surrounding area to climb the hill and sit on his… oh, work it out for yourselves. Let’s move on swiftly.

The fairly recently installed car park overlooking the hill has information boards that are unusually helpful. There’s a good map of the village and its significant features, and another boards with details of the village and its history. Cerne Map

In AD 987 a Benedictine Abbey was founded below the giant’s hill. The dissolution of the monasteries erased it, and apart from a gateway (‘Abbot’s Porch) very little remains, though lumps and bumps in a field reveal its extent. Cerne Abbas, Dorset - Abbey Notice

Medieval monasteries were invariably built close to a reliable source of fresh water. The River Cerne runs through the village, with rivulets running right under the main street. It is a trout stream, which doubtless provided food for the monks. However, there was another water source that still exists. St Augustine’s Well, replete with Augustinian legend.

The water constantly bubbles out of the ground, and has a remarkable clarity. Although these leaves look as though they are on the surface, they are in fact covered by 3 inches of crystal-clear water.

The water from the well runs a short distance to form a millpond, before joining the river.

The manor house in its present incarnation dates from the 1750s, and is built in the abbey grounds

The church of St Mary’s has a medieval origin, but was expanded in later centuries The churchyard is also in the abbey grounds

Outside the church is a reminder of earlier times for crime and punishment

The Pitchmarket is one of the oldest buildings in the village, an excellent though spectacularly misshapen example of a Tudor building.

Cerne Abbas was the location of the 1963 film ‘Tom Jones’, starring Albert Finney and Susannah York. If you are interested in seeing stills from the film, showing the village ‘Fielding-ised’ for the film, click HERE. If you want to know more about the book, including a reasonable synopsis, click HERE.

A painted jest from a few years ago…

DORSET DROVES, ‘PRIORITÉ AUX VACHES’, & BOVINE BEHAVIOUR

Published on November 25, 2013November 26, 2013 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

Dorset is to a large extent farming country. We are lucky enough to be in the middle of it, in an area where some farming routines are little changed for centuries. Not in terms of mechanisation and modernised practices, obviously, but simply the question of moving livestock from A to B. Before the arrival of Messrs Tar and MacAdam, most of the ‘roads’ were mainly cattle and sheep droves. Many of the original un-made droves still exist today, a criss-cross rural network of broad green lanes between thick hedges. These historic byways, mostly designated footpaths or bridleways, have become the joy of visiting off-roaders who tear them up for their sport and generously leave them for the rest of us to enjoy the aftermath. They meet from far and wide, enthusiastically and noisily make the complex of droves unwalkable, then zoom off again proudly mud-scarred from their recreation…

I’d have no problem with that at all, if after exercising their ‘right’ to off-road, they would discover a reciprocal ‘responsibility’ to reinstate the land and leave it exactly as they found it. This sound principle is not, apparently, mentioned in “The Off-Roader & Mud Warrior Handbook”. Maybe it should include a page showing Hohfeld’s Analysis of correlative rights and duties. *

Returning to a more pastoral theme, there are several farms in the village that use nearby fields outside the village for their stock. This entails the regular herding of cattle from farm to field, and in due course back to the farm. Gates are shut. Men with sticks are stationed at junctions to ensure the kine don’t charge down a side road. A tractor precedes the procession, discouraging overtaking by its Massey presence. A van drives behind the herd to encourage the slow forward progress, the sides being banged vigorously when cows begin to hang back. And so they move along the same route as they did in Thomas Hardy’s time and before that, passing our house and leaving copious evidence of their healthy diet in their wake. As they did last week.

Stately progress down the hill to the village

One of several complete cow-panics, and consequent mayhem

All sorted out and moving generally in the right direction

What of the bovine behaviour mentioned in the heading? I expect I have hinted at one sort. There’s another, though, that is a recent development in the last 10 years, and is increasing in frequency and insistence. I took the brief video below on my phone last year. The cows were mooching along the road, from farm to field, in the usual way. I pulled the car tight into the grassy side of the road to watch them pass. Frankly, there was no other option. The line was long and quite slow – this was indeed a classic lowing herd winding slowly o’er the B-road. I opened my window. Only one animal actually tried to push her head inside the car. Almost as soon as I had stopped the film, a car behind me started hooting. And then the car behind that. They were joined by the approaching cars on the far side of the herd. This impatience is regular and increasingly fractious occurrence, so the farmer told me. So the question might be posed: whose right of way? The cows, with their age-old prescriptive right to wander, supervised, down the road from farm to field; or people in their shiny motors and in a hurry?

HOHFELD’S ANALYSIS – A VOLUNTARY DIGRESSION

Hohfeld, a jurist, attempted to disambiguate the term rights by breaking it into eight distinct concepts. He defined these terms relative to one another, grouping them into four pairs of Jural Opposites and four pairs of Jural Correlatives.

		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
JURAL OPPOSITES		Right No-right	Privilege Duty	Power Disability	Immunity Liability

		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
JURAL CORRELATIVES		Right Duty	Privilege No-right	Power Liability	Immunity Disability

This use of the words right and privilege correspond respectively to the concepts of claim rights and liberty rights. Hohfeld argued that right and duty are correlative concepts, i.e. the one must always be matched by the other. If A has a right against B, this is equivalent to B having a duty to honour A’s right. If B has no duty, that means that B has a privilege, i.e. B can do whatever he or she pleases because B has no duty to refrain from doing it, and A has no right to prohibit B from doing so. Each individual is located within a matrix of relationships with other individuals. By summing the rights held and duties owed across all these relationships, the analyst can identify both the degree of liberty (an individual would be considered to have perfect liberty if it is shown that no-one has a right to prevent the given act); and whether the concept of liberty is comprised by commonly followed practices, thereby establishing general moral principles and civil rights. (Wiki-sourced edit for brevity)

HEY JUDE! THEY CALL IT STORMY MONDAY…

Published on October 28, 2013October 28, 2013 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

Earlier today I posted a lot of dramatic ‘Storm Jude’ images on my main blog, which relates to the island of Abaco, Bahamas and its wildlife. You can see that post HERE. The Bahamas storm season last from July to October, and most years a hurricane or severe tropical storm passes through, leaving a trail of destruction. It’s a part of life, and the settlements and communities are prepared for the annual likelihood of battening down of hatches and disruption. This year has, amazingly, been clear of any major storms. Last year, Sandy passed directly over Abaco; the previous year, it was Irene.

Hurricane Jude? Jude-zilla? Whatever name the UK’s storm of the last 24 hours becomes known by, the country had plenty of warning of its arrival – unlike the last major storm in 1987. Here are some images that a friend send me today of the aftermath of the storm in the Helford River area of Cornwall.

All Photos: Clare Latimer

PORTLAND, DORSET (2): CHESIL BEACH & THE FLEET

Published on October 22, 2013 by Rolling Harbour4 Comments

The Chesil Beach, or Chesil Bank, is a dramatic 18-mile curve of steeply banked shingle stretching north-west from Portland (the southern-most point of Dorset) to West Bay via Abbotsbury. The formation contains a long tidal lagoon known as the Fleet.*

Portland Bill & Chesil Beach (Landsat)

Before a causeway road was constructed, the bank connected the mainland to the Isle of Portland, creating a form of TOMBOLO (strictly, it is a ‘barrier beach’). The uninterrupted shingle strip of Chesil beach is up to 50 feet high in places. The stones are large at the Portland end, gradually reducing in size until, by the western end at West Bay, they are pea-sized. It is said that in the past (and maybe still) local people were able to tell the location on the beach that a particular pebble had come from. This knowledge was supposedly helpful for the accurate landing of contraband at dead of night, smuggling being a popular occupation along the Dorset coast (and maybe still).

Chesil Beach, the Fleet and the Isle of Portland, from the north-west over Abbotsbury

Chesil Beach looking north-west from a viewpoint on Portland

A long shot of the same view, showing the Fleet lagoon

Boats on top of the beach at Portland

This view shows the breadth of the beach at the Portland end – solid shingle throughout

Further along, fishermen line up all along the water’s edge

The rake of the beach on the seaward side. It’s much steeper on the landward side.

We sat on a tide-shelf above the waterline – the top stones bone dry, the next layer down wet.

Everyone will be familiar with the gentle swoosh sound of small shingle as the waves come and go. On Chesil Beach, the wave interaction with the large pebbles produces a remarkable clattering and clacking sound that is mesmerising to listen to. Luckily I remembered the video button on my camera, so here’s a very short movie to demonstrate this.

Here is a collection of photos of the stones around us as we sat by the sea. The apparently uniform colouring of the beach from a distance turns out to be a blend of many soft, subtle colours and shades – not least because the stones are of different materials. The geology of the beach would make a good post for another occasion, but not by me!

Close-up of the bottom left corner above

Finally, a reminder of the area’s more turbulent past – a time of press-gangs, blackjacks and daggers swiftly drawn in candlelit taverns. A portland stone plaque in the Church of St George, Portland gives eloquent testimony to an era of lawlessness.

Later, and perhaps in consequence, Portland became the centre of the Knuckleduster-making industry that flourished on the island until the passing of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which defined and prohibited “the carrying of offensive weapons without lawful authority or reasonable excuse”. The industry, already in sharp decline in the 1930s, was by then nearly defunct, with only one craftsman still active on Portland. In 2012, a large and elegant sculpture to commemorate this unusual aspect of Portland’s history was installed in a prominent position, commanding a fine view over the the Chesil Beach to Weymouth and the mainland beyond.

The ‘Knuckleduster Memorial’ also marked Weymouth & Portland as the Olympic Sailing venue

* I’m reluctant to endorse the enthusiastic marketing of large swathes of the Dorset seaboard as ‘The Jurassic Coast’. There are fossils in many places. They are fun to look for. More fun to find. Best not to turn it into a Theme Park. I’ll leave it at that.

CABBAGE WHITE BUTTERFLIES DESERVE A CLOSER LOOK?

Published on August 1, 2013August 1, 2013 by Rolling Harbour5 Comments

These cabbage whites – a name redolent with faint scorn (contrast Purple Emperor, Red Admiral, Peacock etc) – were out and about on a warm Dorset July day. They couldn’t actually get at the cabbages / purple sprouting broccoli, where they no doubt would have liked to lay their eggs – too well covered over. So I decided to see if they merited a photo-shoot in their own lepidopteran right. I think close-to they have their own beauty.

I’m often surprised how ragged the wings of a butterfly can get, without its flight being affected. I guess it is the sign of impending doom though, a rather sad thought…

HELSINKI FOOD MARKETS

Published on April 15, 2013April 19, 2013 by Rolling Harbour4 Comments

Helsinki Food Markets 1

ROCK BEAUTY Holacanthus tricolor

Published on March 1, 2013March 2, 2013 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS REEF FISH SPECIES? CLICK HERE

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE: “A TASTE OF HONEY…”

Published on January 29, 2013March 26, 2013 by Rolling Harbour4 Comments

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE: “A TASTE OF HONEY…”

The London Wildlife Trust has several small urban nature reserves close to the centre of the city. The Camley Street Natural Park was created in the early ‘8os on the site of a derelict coal yard, sandwiched between rail tracks and a canal. The site had become naturally colonised by plants over the years, and the small strip of land was preserved as a wildlife haven near the very heart of London

URBAN BEES runs beekeeping taster courses at Camley Street. We went there last weekend to taste the taster course, which is run by Brian McCallum and Alison Benjamin. Both are very experienced beekeepers, and the joint authors of 3 excellent books (two of which I already owned, but I had dimly failed to link the authors with the course leaders). More details of the books are at the end of this post. The early morning had seen inauspicious dark clouds and very heavy rain in London. Slowly it began to clear, and by mid-morning the skies were blue and the sun shone brightly.By 11.00, 20 of us had been welcomed to the lecture room by Brian and Alison, and we all settled down in learning mode. It quickly became clear that Brian’s relaxed yet sparky presentation would be (a) informative and (b) entertaining. And so it proved. We covered the ground quickly: bee varieties and their place in the world and in the hive; the caste system; bee anatomy; the birth and life cycles of bees; the basic hive structure; first steps to keeping bees; the pros and cons of keeping urban bees; the equipment needed and the (considerable) costs involved; and varroa.Brian presented the information clearly, with occasional interventions from Alison. They made an instructive double act. Time for a break and a practical demo, so we all trooped out into the fresh cold air and sunshine to visit the hives at the far end of the Park. This involved threading our way alongside the canal and past wild and picturesque ponds.At the ponds, youngsters (with adults!) were encouraged to use small nets to scoop out water and weed and inspect the contents. The rattle of the trains on the tracks into St Pancras barely seemed to intrude on this surprisingly pastoral strip of land. Beyond the ponds were our targets – real hives with real bees. But would they be showing themselves in January? The team marched on to find out.And suddenly there they were. HIVES! BEES! And active, too (at least in the 3 hives actually in the sun) Brian was kind enough to demonstrate his own “waggle dance” (joking – he was saying “some grow this big…”)With the hive lid removed, we were able to view the hive through perspex. Brian showed us some winter food for the bees. I lost track a bit here – as the tallest person in the party, my head was slightly above the Park fence, and I became aware that it was on some bee ley-line direct from forage to hive… Minor avoiding action was called for (bent knees). Under the hive was a tray designed to catch varroa mites in particular. The number on the tray is a good indication of the health of the hive. Although Varroa has only been around in the UK for about 30 years, surprisingly there are now no hives completely clear of infestation. So varroa mite control is a matter of limitation, not eradication.On this tray, we were clearly able to see a number of mites amongst the other debris – tiny shiny creatures capable of wiping out an entire hive if left uncheckedHaving completed the outdoor practical stage, we wandered back to a sustaining lunch, before the afternoon session After lunch Brian dismantled a hive for us, explaining the structure and the purposes of each part. We entered the technical arena of frames, brood-boxes, supers and nukes. We learnt about identifying the queen; and swarming and how to control it (in theory). Any ‘beeks’ reading this (you perhaps, Miss Apis Mellifera?) may be chuckling at the naivety of all this. Please smile benignly – we all have to start somewhere… By the end of the hive demonstration, interwoven with much of the bee material we had learnt about in the morning, we felt we had had a very thorough and clear introduction to the world of bees and beekeeping.

Brian and Alison posed some big questions. Why do you think you want to keep bees in the City? Might you be better finding a beekeeper you can help while you get some experience first? Do you believe you will make a living out of it – honey money? (Short answer – there’s no way you ever will). Are you trying to save bees from extinction? And if so, have you considered other ways to achieve this, not just for honey bees but for all bees. Planting bee-friendly flowers and plants is a good way to achieve this, or becoming involved in bee-related groups and projects locally.

For our part, we left feeling we had had an excellent day’s course, with information imparted thoroughly but in an easily assimilable way. And we both agreed that we will not be buying a hive, bees, a spacesuit and a smoker. Instead we will add some more bee-friendly plants to our garden, doing our bit that way – and buying local honey (very good as it happens) rather than the bland honey blends that come to us from halfway round the world. (Oh, and the mystic ingredient of Manuka honey that makes it 3 or 4 times more expensive than any other? Marketing skill, apparently…)

Plate 70, from Volume 2: A History Of The Earth And Animated Nature by Oliver Goldsmith, 1852

I bought the lovely original plate above 2 or 3 years ago for around £10 (there’s one on eBay now for about £11, though not in very good condition). It is featured on page 11 of one of Brian and Alison’s books. Which brings me to Brian and Alison’s joint-authored bibliography. Of the 3 books shown below, I would recommend the first for anyone looking for a well thought out and well illustrated introduction to beekeeping in all its aspects. All can be found on Amazon, ABE and other such places. Or contact the authors with this link URBAN BEES

Keeping Bees and Making Honey

A World Without Bees

Bees in the City

Finally, two recommended websites of active bee-keepers who describe the day-to-day reality of keeping bees, meeting the ‘twin imposters’ along the way and treating them just the same. Also included are details of the beekeepers exams, to challenge the the more experienced beekeeper.

MISS APIS MELLIFERA

ADVENTURES IN BEE LAND

Pride? Ambition? Frustration? What’s going on here?

And is there any room for honey-based music and humour? There surely is…

[youtube http://youtu.be/BTuOAPE-LOo]

A WINTER BUZZARD ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT

Published on January 22, 2013 by Rolling Harbour2 Comments

A WINTER BUZZARD ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT

We saw this buzzard in a tree by the ramparts of Carisbrooke Castle from some distance away. Believing it would fly away at any moment, I started to take photos every few paces as we approached the tree. It stayed put, watching us carefully. I ended up with a batch of photos that improved as we got nearer the bird. Finally I got the one I wanted, with the sun just right. Thank goodness for digital cameras and the delete button for the earlier attempts…