Coincidence in Buckinghamshire

From Tuesday 11th - Thursday 13th September I continued touring the villages of Buckinghamshire. On this visit, the locations included Aldbury, Wiggington, Hastoe, Cholesbury, Buckland End, St Leonards, Stoke Mandeville, Wendover, Puttenham, The Lee, South Heath, Hyde End and Great Missenden.

During my tour of England over the last four years I've always been surprised by the number of unusual coincidences that have occurred. The best instance of this happened on Thursday morning of this particular trip. Breakfast, around the table at The Brownlow B&B near Ivinghoe. Me, an older couple, two women, all tucking into breakfast talking about what we were doing in the area. After a couple of minutes of conversation, it emerged that I had visited the home of the older couple who lived in a small village outside Bristol two years previously. They recalled that we had a brief chat in their garden and that they already had a house portrait having won it in a raffle! Small world.

Buckinghamshire - Brackley

Coming to the end of my promotional tour in 2012.

I am revisiting Buckinghamshire. First arrived on the scene in 2010 but have since realised that there are far more villages that need to see my artwork. I will be focusing my efforts on this county until the clocks go back. What then? I will be hibernating in my studio for the winter only coming out briefly for a spot of sledging with Bobby when the snow comes.

This time I stayed for three days and visited the following places: Waddesdon, Edgcott, Wootton Underwood, where I had an interesting chat with the security chap outside Tony Blair's gaff, Ashendon, Ludgershall, Haddenham, Ickford, Worminghamm and finally, a place that I think deserves a special mention because it has such a fab name - Brill.

Brill is where this photograph was taken...

Sorry, I've tried looking for it, but I can't find it.

This is my second choice best photo. Not taken in Brill. This was taken in Ashendon. I do love a good bit of ecclesiastical architecture, exaggerated by some  direct sunlight...

More travels around Essex

 

My latest tour was around the very north of the county of Essex.

Taking in Felsted, Stebbing, Great Easton, Thaxted, Great Bardfield, Bardfield Saling (pronounced sailing), Shalford and Beazley End.

In Shalford, there is a small village shop which does the best sandwiches I have ever eaten - fact.

The photo above was taken in Great Easton, I think, and it kind of sums up this area quite nicely - very rural, hardly any phone signal etc. Plus it's just a great image and looks even better put through an instagram filter as this has been.

That's me done in Essex for this year....probably be back in spring time next year...

Cambridgeshire

This is a watercolour house portrait of a house in Cambridgeshire. I remember walking up to the house during my visit and thinking that the sun was in the perfect place to cast those shadows from the porch across the front of the house. It was lit up perfectly ... about 10.30 am was the time I took the photo and then worked on the painting from my studio.

This is what the home owner said upon seeing the finished painting:

We met Pete when he rang our doorbell some
time back and asked if we would like a watercolour
of our house. He was so personable that we agreed
and he took some photos. We suggested one or 2
bits of "artistic licence" the most important of which
was to include our recently deceased black cat, Wendy,
in the kitchen window.
He executed the brief perfectly.

Harvesting Photos

These photographs were taken on Saturday 11th August in the afternoon. Stebbing in Essex. It's the time of year when the farmers are working to get the harvest in, which is proving to be very difficult at the moment because it's never dry enough. My visit coincided with a warm spell of weather so the combine harvesters were working around the clock.

The way the machinery throws up all that dust on a backdrop of a wide open landscape with the tracks going through the crops makes for a stunning photo - I'd like to work a couple of these up to a watercolour painting at some point.

Starting out in Essex

Yesterday I gave my talk 'Adventures of the Roving Artist' to the Cambridge Rutherford Rotary Club. They meet on a weekly basis in Queens College - a stunning location. It went down very well with plenty of the gentlemen enquiring about possible commissions.

At the end of the day, I found a B&b on an arable farm in Duddenhoe End. When I came for my breakfast this morning, I asked for a bacon sandwich. The Dutch lady who was serving me looked at me strangely and said 'in 25 years of doing B&b no one has ever asked for such a thing as a bacon sandwich!' I wondered what they had been asking for? The way she said it made me think that I'd asked for a trough of baked beans, garnished with a couple of dead dogs!

Halifax

I took this photo this morning touring around a part of Halifax that I had not visited before. It's just above a pub called the Shibden Mill Inn. Fantastic how the sun catches some of the trees. I'll have to paint this scene one day. In fact, a dozen or so watercolours of landscapes in west Yorkshire would make for a very special exhibition...