STUDENT TEAM FROM ENGLAND GO TO CHINA FOR INTERNATIONAL SNOW SCULPTURE COMPETITION
Four students from Nottingham Trent University in the Midlands leave England for China this week, to represent the UK in the 18th Harbin International Snow Sculpture Competition. Harbin, a city in north-east China, hosts one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, matching the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan, Canada’s Quebec City Winter [...]
THE PARTY SEASON IS HERE, BUT EDWARD STONE’S DISCOVERY EASES THE ACHES OF THE MORNING AFTER
Oxford University don and clergyman Edward Stone lived in and around Chipping Norton in the 18th century. For a time he lived on the site of the old Hitchmans Brewery in West Street, where you can see this blue plaque. Stone was something of a Renaissance Man, being at various times a Justice of the [...]
ICE AND MIST! WINTER CLINGS TIGHTER YET
After our brief introduction to the first winter snow, the weather continues to be bone-hard and chill. But it’s that time of year, Christmas is coming, and really, it’s pretty normal stuff. So with warm gloves, scarf and jacket, plus a decent set of walking boots, I set out to explore the misty world of a [...]
SNOW! FIRST FALL OF THE YEAR COMES SILENTLY IN THE NIGHT
The first snowfall of the winter is a thing of magic, especially when it is entirely unexpected. Where were the weather warnings the other night? Nowhere! No matter: the light sprinkling that arrived in the small hours did little to hold up daily activities here in Chipping Norton, but certainly added a sparkle to the [...]
CHIPPING NORTON CALENDAR 2013
Here’s the Chipping Norton Calendar 2013, in which I’ve used various pictures from the book ‘Portrait of Chipping Norton’, each picture now reproduced at 9 x 11 inches, with the monthly calendar opening out below. It’s a spiral wire-bound flip-over wall-hanger design, which I hope you will like and enjoy. Online ordering is much the same [...]
PORTRAIT OF CHIPPING NORTON
Here’s the 50-page all-colour book I’ve been working on through 2012, and now available to order either as an eBook or in printed form – your choice. If you order the printed version, then the eBook comes free immediately for you to read on your desktop, laptop, or iPad while the ‘real’ copy is printed [...]
ROWLAND HILDER – MASTER OF THE LANDSCAPE IN WINTER
Now that the trees are bare, the countryside has taken on something of the stark look of a Rowland Hilder painting. Not that we have snow in the south of England yet, even if the more doom-laden newspapers are already screaming that we can expect, “The Coldest Winter for 100 Years.” We’ll just wait to [...]
MYSTERY MOUND AT THE HOAR STONE
The pagan Anglo-Saxons honoured their dead with burial mounds, hundreds of which are scattered across the length and breadth of England. The mound here is set high in an isolated field, not so far from the pretty (though presently somewhat waterlogged) tourist village of Bourton-on-the-Water.
FIRE AND FLAMES TO PLACATE THE THUNDER GOD
In the days when Anglo-Saxons ruled England, November was known as ‘Wint-monath’ or wind-month, as this was when the first serious winter storms usually started, ushering in a period reckoned to last until signs of spring the following March. For pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons, an important November custom was lighting huge open-air fires to honour their gods [...]
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A GYPSY CARAVAN FOR SALE IN THE ENGLISH COTSWOLDS
- A few sketches!
- POOHSTICKS: A GAME BORN AT THE HOUSE OF POOH CORNER
- INTERNATIONAL POOHSTICKS COMPETITION ON THE RIVER THAMES, NEAR DORCHESTER
- Source of the Thames
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