Natural building blocks -- Fences

 Our long trip through the British Isles this month has reawakened my longstanding interest in natural fences and building the site specific and the  sustainable. The best fences our forebears built weren't made out of the best shaped rocks, but the best available materials--- let's keep following their lead , 

And the BI's have a long history of building them and making them work efficiently and sustainably. 
And they were smart enough to not bother building them when there was more surface rock than soil ( Like uncivilized Wales and Scotland)   

Excusing any implied racism , let's just say the flatter earthmen were more sensibly engaged than the Lords of rocks, mountains and hunting because they needed food to grow, store sell  and had no deer to chase (much) 

I was giving these old Islanders heaps because where I was brought up, we have a thing called sand and it's beautiful. We Aussies have coastlines full of it and heaps of history of our Creator grinding and tilting it up, so there would be some even after sea level rise, climate change and glacial events.
Sand can be used to build great fences, but you have to have some handy.

With Australia's backbone in Granitic type igneous we have an arenaceous culture, while the poor old Brits are stuck with largely an argillaceous one .
I could go on --to a study of how they are stuck in the mud sorts but then we Aussies have our disaster prone duplex soils.  whose fine sandy  component is both a blessing and a curse .    

When you see these old sailors trying to sit comfortably on gravel ,its no wonder all the Brits still love Dee Why and Home and Away.
Perhaps YOU know of some great quartz beaches there - I struggled to find even just a few , 


Anyway  I won't have time to finish this today except to say that it was a great surprise to discover both Granitic and Glacial at Gatehouse yesterday.
What perfect pieces these various sized rock pieces were (with their flattish fractures) for fencing . Plenty of gaps for their beautiful wrens.

Let's work with nature not as some of the newbies to conservation ( I call them Echoists) do and we who insist we just worship nature as it is. l, Let's not join those cynics who cancel those whose work with nature is imperfect. Lets understand it so we understand and build on its symbiotic nature . Nature is our sister not our mother ( GK Chesterton ) 

Notice Jeremy Clarkson, how you can use conventional posts (sloping at an angle ) on either side of a fence to limit the access of deer, adventurous sheep and kangaroos ( not that they have them here) from forgetting the comfortable territorial imperative that husbandry under the Lordship of the Manor implies.

To be continued 

Playing Lord of the Manor

You have no idea of the joy we had by, not only staying at the Manor (admittedly just an old converted barn) but also meeting the Laird himself. 

They say truth is always stranger than fiction ....and it's true; The owner was so open, warm, friendly and full of character, but that was just being himself.  He was quite happy to share his challenges with us, and would with you ,  if you were prepared to pay the exorbitant cost of his accommodation; not really!

We got what we paid for,  including a soft deep valley bed ( One that brings you together even though you were fighting late in the day over who was the worst driver or navigator in the world) complete with cloud nine doona covers (20 cm deep )  tennis courts, automatic entry doors and hire of the rackets. 

Such a kind man in so many ways, he inspired me powerfully in that fond hope I had coming here to Europe to PERHAPS to see ;

Lords put into a nicer light than they often are by our own house of new lords -the half baked Marxist media representing the downtrodden disadvantaged Aussie wingers.  (see later posts where it seems to be true of others through history) 

This Laird reminded me that my reticence about Lairds and the rich landowner was far too prejudiced.
Don't feel too jealous; our time ran out very quickly but we did see deer and pheasants on the property as we drove around.  

Lords don't all come out of a box and this old bachelor ( until recently; he now has a lovely wife and baby daughter) was part of Neuvo rich set that love to take residence and squat on the lovely old mansion estates. As he said "The Old money" can no longer afford to maintain their grand designs - let alone keep warm in them. 
I too now,  find myself amongst "The pretenders  

Not only did our host make us feel very welcome with wine and chocolates, but he offered to do our washing ( We had already been in the country a week)
We were both so surprised at this , that when he offered to sort colored's from non-colored's we thought
" save this God send of a man more work ", that we agreed " don't worry "and he didn't.

Chris then was really shocked when the huge pile came back looking decidedly dirty.( my white singlets were grey). 
We had forgotten that I had bought two new black shirts and trousers from Rivers that leached a whole lot of black into everything.
Chris was quite shocked that she now had black laced underwear, but I was quite pleased.


The early morning frost was wonderful to walk in with many birds busy twittering away, 

Can't tell you all about this clever inventor, but in me talking about the recent obscene death duty taxes to be put on farms here and in Australia, he mentioned that he had just paid over $100000 dollars is this years land tax.
To be fair, this humble but rich bloke owns a lot of land.
These really desperate political moves by ignorant leaders was a big talking point with many people over here,

Farmers always have to own a huge capital asset, What poorly educated dependants  who get fed by them  do not know is never in the history of time do family farms earn more than 4% on their capital ; If that often hard sought capital base is threatened,   so is the incentive to keep the farm; and so completely .Victoria and Australia  abandoned death duties soon after my farming father died and my mother had to pay the huge tax. The British PM is threatening at tax of 20% on the capital value of farms as is our Victorian Premier.
 




We are going to The Spreewald in Germany later next month to see whether the German Lord of the Manor was a terror to my serf ancestors ,  Modras spent at least 250 years with a Lord family who were in 1850s called Schoenfeldts.  

Brutalist county

The Welsh aren't mad, but their county is really severe and brutal, so they have every reason to be so.
 No sensible person ever wanted to go there. It's brutal enough in its rock hard base to knock sense into any softy silly enough to try to make a living there on the land.

There isn't really enough soil there to attract farmers and the largely Cambrian and old Ordovician rocks resist even steel-edged tools, roadmaking and house building, just for starters. Thats generalizing a bit ,but its not easy land to farm. 

And when the rocks do finally weather, they turn to mud and silt, making the prospect of a sandy loam soil or asandy beach here, where finally landed in DA, a really rare thing. More on that elsewhere. 



Nothing is made easy for visitors even now, with town names you can't possibly say, let alone remember. Our normal fights over where we are going would have turned into absolute get out of the car standoffs except there is no space to get off the road. Be thankful you are travelling with us, but not in the car with us.  

The brutes of old loved to build fortresses with these hard rocks but, as always, the labor dried up.

Clearly too, there is a whole new language barrier with TV stations and dramas that speak only that language. This is all on an island about the size of Victoria ,whose formerly warring tribes have supposedly been united for at least a thousand years.  Mind you, their news on Europe is much more diverse and comprehensive than the monoculture of the Aussie ABC version.
A lot to be said for home grown diversity.




Something has to be said for true diversity in thought and practice, Distictively different aspects of Welsh culture is a good part of meeting some of the people such as we did in a tightly conformed old coal mining villages in the bottom of a valley, 

This Wild county to the West was such a no go land through history that it wasn't studied for the Doomsday book ( which we found a copy at the Oxfam shop ) , The British people just would not go there; Anyone with any sense has thought of emigrating to Australia where they have real beach sand and a climate to have a holiday from its relentless dark. Mind you they could all be moving back up here, now that climate change has taken over??
We visited the site of "the worst disaster in history" (as a youth in town described it) -where 114 school children died as a result of a preventable landslide in deep valley country like that shown diagrammatically. More here.  

Here's the rub -- the locals we met there were wonderful.  This was in great contrast to living in manor house toffee territory; we were treated to gifts and a concert where the men sang and the women in the audience, and me, joined in the celebration of St David's day with community singing. Got to know 3 people quite well,  one who used to run the wonderful "Angel " Hotel and one young illustrator artist and a local policeman.  
And while it was hard work climbing up and down the normal stairs of a normal workers house ( shown ) we got to experience a vision of a miner's kids old school yard ( in front of us and facing south) where the kids would grow vegetables in that narrow gap between hill, house road and boulder stream,  

The people at church wore yellow flowers and the letter post boxes were covered with "toppers ", yes the natural colors were dull, but the locals were celebrating. The daffodils ,and a few lambs were appearing .  

And would you believe it, In a place where brutal is normal , we found out what might be a Welsh  connection .
The Modra name can end in "i" in Germany ( Modri) and just about every name in Wales has too many y's and d's in it . 
Sorry folks, but we were afraid to approach these Modrydd's ,The genuine farmers on this farm near Becon are clearly the dangerous types, as you see by the way they pruned their trees.

  

Echoes of Home

 in draft

The deadening dumbness of old things --"In the bleak Midwinter"

One danger of touring is always the deadening dumbness of old things.
There was no deadness in this very old old church at old Kings Sobourne when half the congregation gathered around me to sing the song I brought from Pam and the Chorale Colac for them to sing in its wholesome original context. I had the inspiration to ask the organist to play it and these lovely people all spontaneously gathered around!
The formerly warring Viking King Olf was baptized in this very parish in 1070's.
Oh to celebrate the very best of history in a place of such history, and with the living believers still making history. 

Where we sang was no different from so many churches in the South West. Old and crumbling on the outside but, with most some small group , and some even big groups  ( such at Romsey) keeping it well alive on the inside.

You couldn't even read the writing on the many old gravestones on this church site, next to the village square, but inside they read the old words with the same power they were read every Sunday since it was built in 1080s.

Some of the foundations of the very oldest parts of the church have crumbled ( explaining the non-square window in another photo) The altar altars here bears the most amazing tapestry

Love the Brits . In order to accommodate all the planning rules ( no new toilets outside ) the elders have installed a tiny little new rest room for all comers in one of the old vestries. 

There is so much more to our adventure down here in Hampshire ,
Hopefully I will add some more soon