glowworms everywhere

Since I moved up to Heron Tree on Tuesday everyone (well, several people) has (or have, as the case may be) been talking about glowworms, of which there is a plethora here, if plethora means quite a few. And I've not drawn a badger for a while, so there you go.

Before I moved onto the canal I had seen two glowworms in my life. One was in a hedge in Herefordshire, when we were walking back to our tents from the pub during a week spent strawberry picking after our O Levels. It was about the only time my red/green colour blindness manifested itself, as I thought it was a fag end and my friends said "But it's green!" 

And the other time it was on a lane in Devon. 

Since coming to the canal, I've seen 'em all over the place. The towpath resembles a flarepath with them sometimes, in fact, and you often have to jump out of the way as a Special Forces aircraft, on manoeuvres over Salisbury Plain, gets distracted and comes in to land and discharge commandos all over the place. Messy business, especially if they fall into the canal and have to be pulled out.

This little creature was walking along my arm as I sat outside chatting with my neighbour. Someone suggested it was a glowworm, but I really don't think it is*. It's quite similar to those ugly little ladybird larvae, though. Sorry, ladybirds, I'm no oil painting myself.

Canals are a valuable green corridor for wildlife. There has been criticism of the Canal and River Trust's mowing and hedge-cutting policy, the critics arguing that the CRT contractors cut swathes through rich habitats at entirely the wrong time, when a more sensitive and flexible approach would mean the plants could seed and the creatures mate undisturbed. They do seem to have taken this on board, and there are sections of the canal now flagged as glowworm habitats where mowing is limited or avoided.

*it has been identified as the larva of the common green lacewing, by a knowledgeable person in a Wiltshire wildlife group

chasing hares all over the place

It's been a while since I got any giclee prints done, but I've finally got round to it. These were printed by Niche Frames in Bristol, my fave fine art printers. There's a couple of older ones, but this first one is a new reproduction of a pencil drawing I did, of a roof boss in South Tawton church.

This one is the first three hares picture I did. Look closely and you can see Uffington, Glastonbury Tor and Capel y Ffin, too.

And then this springy one with primroses.

They're all over in my Etsy shop.

...as indeed is my three hares map, which includes an apposite quote from a poem by Deborah Harvey, who introduced me to the whole hares and Dartmoor thing. And indeed, whose guerilla distribution of the previous version of this map led to the connection with the Archangel's Way folk in the churches down there.

on being a pilgrim

I went down to Belstone for the launch of the Archangel's Way. I arrived in time to see and hear the bellringers, who were spending the day ringing all the way along the Way, start up the peals in Belstone church, setting the little stone-coloured moths fluttering on the walls. Jim Causley sang a couple of special songs for the occasion and we all joined in with To Be A Pilgrim and Bread of Heaven. 

One of the church team recorded an interview with me and I said some blether or other that I felt daft about afterwards about pilgrimages. I do feel ambivalent about bandying the word around too freely. Like hygge and mindfulness. They should be just Things You Do without having to label them. And the adventures you have on the way make the arrival special and significant, like Cavafy's Ithaka. 

Jim Causley, and Paul Seaton-Burn Being a Pilgrim

My adventure started with fighting the inclination to bottle out of going at all. And then noticing that one of the car tyres was cracking because the rubber's perished, so I went on a side adventure to a tyre depot near Bruton, which was on a farm and had great piles of huge tractor tyres and, as it turned out, none that would fit Dilys. But seeing the piles of huge tyres like a rubber Stonehenge in the rain was memorable.

And then before I rejoined the A303 at Sparkford, home of the Haynes Manual, I stopped to refuel at a very busy petrol station, and I saw that the Macdonalds next to it was utterly rammed, a foretaste of what the road would be like all the way into Devon now. 

Passing Exeter, the voice of Satan, or, as I used to call it, the Sat Nav, helpfully whispered that it had found an alternative route that would save me 20 minutes. Fool that I was, I hearkened unto its words and went astray, up sunken lanes with no passing places in a convoy of other fools who'd listened to the same tempting advice.

We drove through picturesque villages where the natives scowled at us and I consoled myself with the thought that they were all retired civil servants from the Home Counties and serve 'em jolly well right. Which was probably entirely unjust. 

We drove past a couple of prangs. And a group of caravans that had given up the unequal struggle against this sudden jetstream of numpties and hauled up tight into a passing place, where they probably still are, brewing a consoling cup of tea and assuring each other that they mustn't grumble.

For the return journey, I used mindfulness and went across country to Crediton and Tiverton, and it was all very nice and hyggy. Except for Tiverton of course. So there. Who would true valour see, watch a good movie.

the morris team arriving

the sheep sang alto and very nice too

Sarah Cracknell and the Growing the Rural Church team 

Stella Maris

That morning we’d been anchored up, round in Mount’s Bay;

Fuel filters had been on the blink, and Knut and Ove looked none too bright

Hunched over coffee in the mess, after an all-nighter.

The forecast by now was looking grim, but we got under way;

Sheltering’s all very well, but you don’t get paid

For fannying around. Beyond Wolf Rock the swells

flung into scudding spindrift. By dusk the wind was off the scale

And us hove to against it. Boy never left the helm, and laid

The bows into the waves that boiled around us.

Below, the crash of crockery and crew came from the mess;

Up here, the groaning in the rigging was the only sound,

A crazy sort of calm in the storm's eye, but calm of sorts it was.

Crackling on Channel 16. Hans, his face lit by the radar

Murmured “Freighter. They're in trouble back there.”

I wrote this about my first trip at sea, on seismic survey vessel Karen Bravo. We were transiting from Germany to Fleetwood in Lancashire, and the evening of 19th December 1981 found us off Land's End in the ferocious storm that saw the destruction of freighter Union Star and the Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne, and their crews and passengers.

I was thinking about that night, yesterday when I heard that RNLI crews have been attacked after being criticised by the likes of Nigel Farage for saving the lives of migrants rescued from the Channel. 

The painting at the top is a night view off Fraserburgh, from when we used to run in to shelter there during filthy weather in North Sea winters.

the launch of the Archangel's Way at Belstone, 31st July

The Archangel's Way is a new pilgrim route that winds round the north side of Dartmoor from Brentor to Chagford, I've been doing lots of drawing for the folk down there, and this picture of St Mary's church at Belstone is the latest. And it's at Belstone that the route is being officially launched, on 31st July, with all sorts of activities on offer. Here's the link to some more info on it.

putting the Grand Western Canal on the map

Maps are potent things in modelling our view of the world. We see it chiefly through the lens of the Mercator's Projection we had on the classroom wall at school. Britain centre top, northern hemisphere uppermost. 

Some folk don't quite get that a map is a model and not the thing itself. Its purpose is to transfer information. The London shown in the Underground map is famously different to the actual terrain. But it does an excellent job of getting you onto the right train.

I knew that when I published my map of the canal network, I'd get the mutterers-into-pewter-tankards, of whom there is absolutely no shortage on the cut, cavilling and carping about things they thought I'd missed out.

This is all very much par for the course. And such cavillings and carpings were made and responded to, if not to the satisfaction of the cavillers and carpers, at least to my own.

More bothersome was an organised pile-on on my Facebook page from enraged Tivertonians, for whom Fridays are obviously not a busy day. They quite rightly pointed out that the Great Western Canal, a short stretch of which remains extant in the vicinity of that Devon town, was not only missing from the map, but hidden under the title.  

I in turn pointed out that I'd omitted lots of small and unconnected canals and waterways in the interests of clarity and relevance.

They did get quite hostile, not just about my map but my personal qualities.

So I have obliged them with a map of their very own.

I'm sure the Grand Western Canal is lovely.  And the Angry People in Local Newspapers Syndrome is not peculiar to Tiverton.

a Map of the Canals and Waterways of England and Wales

This is the new map I've just finished. I hope it gives a clear and useable view of the canal network without getting bogged down in detail. And it's decorated with local things, and with coastal vessels of the sort that use the coastal and inland waterways.

There's a Thames sailing barge, a dutch tjalk (you get a fair number of those along the canals these days, as they make nice homes), a Severn trow, and a Clyde puffer (like the Vital Spark, in the Para Handy stories). They're all flat-bottomed and in the case of the sailing boats, with leeboards that can be lifted.

But the most useful aspect of the map is that it shows the interconnectedness of the English (and Welsh, if only just) canal system. Some folk are surprised when they learn that I could get from here in Wiltshire up to the very north of England. There are a few places where you may choose the intrepid option of tidal waters, like the lower reaches of the Thames, the Severn between Bristol and Sharpness (I've done that a few times in either direction and it is Jolly Exciting, I can tell you), the Wash, and the Ribble link that was recently added to allow traffic up onto the Lancaster Canal.

The big picture is deliberately lo-res here, but here are some detail images to give you a better idea of what it's like. (I did encounter some folk on a hireboat who'd downloaded and printed off one of my canal maps, which was admittedly ingenious but a bit downheartening when you're trying to make a living on your art...)

You can find the map in A4 and A3 sizes over on my Etsy shop (link on the sidebar there). They're £5 and £10 respectively.