It's beginning to sound a little cliched, BUT what an amazing day! Court lodge Farm is beautiful. We arrived late Saturday night as Marian had offered us Moorhen cottage to stay in for the evening. Sylvaine joined us again for the sketch along with Liz and Marek (who hoped to do some mountain biking). After some delicious polish black pudding fried with onion, white bread, salad and sausage and a little bit of wine, we headed for bed, the clocks moved forward an hour for daylight saving, hopeful to get an early start with the sunrise. Remarkably after only 4 or so hours of sleep Liz, Sylvaine and myself fueled by a warm beverage, made it to the east facing hill top with the dawn chorus all around and the nip-chill of morning gnawing at the seams of our clothes. We sat in the dewy grass watching the landscape change from half light to morning glory and sketched, then trudged back for toffee cheesecake and (after a brief moment of absurdity at not finding any milk whilst staying next to a barn full of cows on a dairy farm) coffee and a wonderful nap! It's the simple things really :) The pace didn't change much through out the day and we spent our time sketching the farm house from the decking of Moorhen Cottage and soaking up the amazing spring time sun which made us all a very happy kinda lazy. In the afternoon I found a baby newt hiding under a concrete slab, which caused a remarkable amount of excitement for a creature 30 x 4 mm (and was viewed by no less than 7 people in a span of ten minutes, which was probably the most exciting and terrifying experience of its entire life!). Clare, after running a half marathon in Hastings, accompanied us for our first river swim of the season (cold and wonderful!) and sadly, after that it was time to leave.
Once more, Court Lodge has proved inspirational, and has left me with a warm and slightly golden feeling of well being. There was some lovely art work produced which I will post shortly but until then, please take a look at the slide show on the right of this page.
(Alas, I have still not managed to sketch any cows!)
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