Sunday 1st June - Battle Abbey

Posted on 8th June - a week later after writing it.


Today we walked widdershins around the Battle Battlefield, so all the signboards, if we had read them, told the story of the battle in reverse. We knew the story anyway, because we walked round it the proper way yesterday after watching the introductory video.

The holiday cottage is at the bottom of the battlefield, now a vista of wild flowers and clumps of trees, bathed in sunlight and full of bees and butterflied and the sound of birds. Upwards of seven thousand men died here on 14th October 1066. You'd never know.

I was singing the "Sans Day Carol"  in my head as we walked, because I had seen a holly flower
("Now the holly bears a blossom as white as a lily flower, and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to be our Saviour")

We revisited the beautiful vaulting in the ruins of the dormitory

and in the Novices' Room (it must have been cold there in winter)

It was another mooching day today

Saturday 31st May - The Dawn Chorus

For the last few weeks I have been trying to convince myself that it is a privilege to be able to listen to the dawn chorus every morning.

I was quite successful in taking this view for the first couple of days.

Something seems to wake us at about half-past three most mornings - we don't know what it is (apart from the morning when a noisy magpie had a temper tantrum right by our bedroom window for about three-quarters of an hour). Maybe someone in our road is on an early shift, and roars off to work in a decrepit old diesel van. Perhaps a fox comes through and barks under the window. Could it be the change in light levels? Our curtains are very thin and threadbare.

Whatever it is that wakes us, it doesn't happen here - we are staying in an English Heritage property overlooking The Battlefield below Battle Abbey.

Here's the view from our bedroom window this morning (that's The Field, through the trees)

 

Best of all, we didn't get to see the view until nearly seven o'clock. 

Breakfast time now.