blow the wind easterly

This is the latest picture from the drawing board. It's a night scene at Crofton, the pumping station that uses the original beam engines to lift water from Wilton Water to the summit of the Kennet and Avon Canal. It's wild country round there, with a remote feel to it that came as a surprise to me when I first went that way on the canal, having previously thought of Wiltshire as somewhere to the side of an A road or the M4 where London commuters lived. Ha. How very wrong I was!

I sort of recycled the owl from my previous picture. When barn owls are hunting, they usually do it close to the ground of course, where the voles are. But I've seen them sometimes go high high up, on their way from one place to another. 

The wind's been blowing from the east these last few days, and it's miserably chilly out there. But I've got the stove going and all is cosy on board Eve. The Army have been practicing with their big guns on Salisbury Plain, and this wind brings the sound right to us, making the boat rattle ever so gently. I'm moored in Devizes, at the top of the Caen Hill locks, and on misty damp mornings it's like being back in Wales, up on the mountain, except that these days I've got better clothes for keeping the weather out. And only five minutes away is the town, one of my favourite towns, with a particularly good bookshop. And I'm not just saying that because they've just put my Wiltshire White Horses map in a window display...