wanderings

Can you tell what it is yet?

Well, perhaps it will help if I step away a little…

Ah yes, it’s well dressing season again.

Do you know about well dressing? Have a read here and here, and a look at some pictures, and you’ll soon get the idea.

Many villages will dress several wells, usually including a children’s well. While well dressings often have a religious theme, many celebrate a local figure, and children’s wells are sometimes more, er, imaginative.

Originally all natural materials were used, although apparently some stray away from this now. We did notice a lot of sweetcorn this year. Obviously this means the pictures are fairly quick to disintegrate, and each well dressing only lasts for a week or two. There is a rolling programme of dressings throughout the summer in the peak district, and we did bump into a couple of people who said they visit all of them every year(!).

I’ve done a lot of stomping around the countryside this week – a nice change. All these places are within 35 miles of me, and I don’t get out to them half as much as I’d like to.

These were taken around Hartington last weekend. I used to live there, and was pleased to see two new cafes had opened since I left.

This weekend I’ve been down near Ashbourne – a little further away and a place I’m not so familiar with. I was at two parties – one in a beautiful buttercup-strewn field…

… and the other in a bluebell-strewn woodland…

I say this so often, but I really must get out into the countryside more often…

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