Election Fever Has Spread To The Ovine Population

You can read more here ... and if you're near Dunbar this weekend you can meet the Political Sheep.

15 miles and some blisters later...

We made it to the top of the third county top - Milk Hill in Wiltshire. We started at the Barge Inn, Honey Street.

Turning the corner to cross the Kennet & Avon Canal we saw the White Horse we were going to walk right by. Wasn't until we got home and uploaded pictures we saw it was prancing along the telephone wire!

St Mary's Church, Alton Barnes. A 12th century church built on the site of a Saxon church.

View from the top of the first climb - but only halfway to the County Top.


We came to this bit of seriously steep hill and our new walking boots got their first real test... no slipping!


The view looking back down.


Looking across the ridge of hills that we were going to walk along. On the side of some of the hills we could see lines caused by soil shifting due to ploughing over many generations, they are called Strip Lynchets.


Looking East, note the amazingly clear blue sky and no contrails as there were no planes flying apart from the odd light aircraft. Not a cloud in sight and we forgot the sunscreen.

The White Horse (this one was made in 1812, some are much older) - cut into the chalk downland.


View from the hill near the White Horse, if you look carefully at the middle of the picture you can see the Barge Inn where we started out.


Looking at the head of the White Horse which was last repaired in 2002.


Looking West from Milk Hill


Alan on the summit (or as close as we could get) of Milk Hill.


The Four Horses of the Apocalypse approached shortly after!


Looking North-West from the top of Milk Hill.


Heading West we walked along Wansdyke, possibly a neolithic earthwork. There were several gateways in the dyke which meant climbing up and down the embankment to follow the footpath.


Looking North to Silbury Hill, an ancient earthwork. You can see it in the centre of this photo if you look closely.


Home to a few rabbits on the outside edge of the earthwork ditch.


Looking ahead you can see how far this path and wall stretched.


Looking back to Alan, who had stopped to take a picture of me and was now catching up!


Having left the hills behind we walked across gently rolling farmland towards Bishops Cannings.


Turned a corner and saw this cottage. Some things just have to be photographed.


The church at Bishops Cannings.


The Bridge Inn, crossing back to the South side of the Kennet & Avon Canal for our trek home (another 5-6 miles to go)


There were several WWII pillbox defenses along the canal. I'm not sure why they were built, were the expecting the German invasion force to sail up the canal?


You can just see the White Horse in the distance on this picture! Only about 4 miles to go now.


Another glimpse back at the hills we had walked.


We saw plenty of quirky narrowboats but this one won on with "hippie factor" because it had the biggest wind turbine.


Another glimpse at the white horse as we walked along the towpath.

Eventually we made it back to the car, sore and blistered but very pleased to have managed the 15 miles! You can see our route here

Fourth Finish of 2010 - Flamenco Dancer

Picked up this one that was started by my daughter and finished about 80% as she had once again lost interest in something she had started. Not sure what we are going to do with it now it's finished but it was peculiar to be stitching on 14ct Aida again.

Stitching Update - Blumen In Raster

This one is stitched in Anchor threads and as colour is such a critical part of the design I have not done a conversion to DMC - this has meant I've had to buy in some threads so there are some gaps where I don't have all the colours needed. I will be filling these in with a purchase of the missing colours each month after pay day.

Stitching Update - Celtic Spring

I am loving the purples in this one...

Stitching Update - Four Horses of the Apocalypse

This rotation managed to make some progress after my restart last month!

Stitching Update - Emperor Penguins

Great progress has been made on this one but then the blocks of colour make it a reasonably quick stitch. Won't be long before I start on the other penguin.

Stitching Update - Middy

Crappy blurry picture because my hands are shaky today but you can see that I've put some of the beads on this.

Stitching Update - Christmas Mystery

The first of some long overdue stitching updates:

Working on the gold backstitch around the poinsettias on this one. Can't say I'm really enjoying it but the finished result is quite interesting.

Walking in others' footsteps

This was inspired by a CNN iReport Weekend Assignment: Past Meets Present

Alan found some photos taken by his grandfather at a local Roman town. We set out to Calleva (at Silchester) to find the part of the wall that was in the pictures and take our picture in pictures.

This was the North Gate originally.

A little further along we found the wall that featured in the original photo - Alan lined up to take the picture - this proved quite tricky as we couldn't really get far enough away from the wall to get the same angle as there was now a large ditch and tall hedge between the walls and the road.

Photo 1: It is clear the area was maintained previously whereas now it is much more wild.

Photo 2: This one was easier to line up.

Cat stood on the top of the wall, looking towards what would have been the old Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum.

Triumphant and on our way back to the car. After yesterday's long walk for Charlie we decided to keep this one quite short.

Finally a close up of one of the gates out of the town to show the construction of the wall.