Welcome to a series of articles depicting forgotten items that serve to remind us of a past where belief in the supernatural, spirits and witches was the norm. Where pirates and Press Gangs, Giants and Fairies roamed the land.
Each article is reached by clicking/tapping the photographs below. A link on each page will return you to this index when finished.
Another article bringing together some of my sketches that individually can be seen on holiday pages. This is the third article dealing with sketches of places outside the UK, the first being published in December 2013, the second in July 2015 and now the third. By gum I'm racing through these!
In 2009 we were on a cruise on the Ocean Village Two starting and ending at Heraklion in Crete, and heading up the Adriatic Sea to Croatia, Slovenia and Venice. At Dubrovnik we opted to do an excursion to a seaside village called Cavtat - a delightful place. It was a Saturday and yet it was very quiet. We walked all along the seafront towards this headland at the far end. There were maybe a couple more boats than appear on the sketch but, remember: trees, rocks, chairs, people and boats - the hardest things I find to draw!
Back at the port of Dubrovnik I sketched the hillside opposite the dock. There was a lot of work going on in the dock at this time, they were being extended in length to make the space available for cruise ships which were starting to visit Croatia more than in the past. This was done from the side rail. Artistic license led to the non-inclusion of a few more modern houses and blocks of flats, but it is still recognisable.
The Old Fortress at Corfu in Greece. We were on an excursion but the guide was just so boring that we dodged away as soon as we got a chance and this was our meeting spot to pick up the coach. We got there a bit early and I sketched the fortress over the wall of the moat.
Later in the year we took our first trip with Thomson (now Marella) onboard the Celebration cruise ship. This trip was called Pearls of the Aegean and was a trip around the islands and mainland coast of Greece. One of our stopping off places was Aghios Nikolaos in Crete from where we did a half day excursion. After arriving back at the ship we walked into the town and came across this old column, broken off, but displayed proudly at the meeting place of two flights of steps leading upwards from the harbour into the town.
We have now been to Santorini, but it's a tricky place to enter for cruise ships due to the prevalent winds and before we actually got there we had four cruises where we were diverted elsewhere due to the weather making an attempt unsafe. This was the first of those and we were given a day in Samos instead. Always these small disappointments cause some passengers to moan as if they are being cheated but they would moan a lot more if the Captain tried it and turned turtle. Samos was a lovely place with a lot to offer and we made the most of it, eating at a harbourside café (well... drinking mainly...) and taking half an hour or so to sketch the castle.
A couple of days later we were in the Horizons Bar of Celebration in the afternoon after having done a morning trip to the site of ancient Olympia. The Horizons bar was - and is - on the deck right above the ship's bridge so it affords a great sea view when the ship is sailing and also an agreeably high viewpoint when you are in port. The port - Katakalon - was a tiny place. Hardly anyone lived there, but there were shops and bars simply to cater for the crews and passengers of those ships. As boarding time came half an hour before sailing time, we watched as the shops and bars closed and the owners all left the port to go home. To our left side the coast road rose up a steep hill with trees to both sides and a drop to the sea which was littered with rocks close to the coast.
In August 2010 we took another cruise on the Celebration, this time meeting up with two fabulous entertainers who have since become good friends, Tomas and Maris who sing together as duo 2 Intense. On this trip the cruise started and ended at the port of Marmaris in Turkey and the trip from the airport in 2010 was a sometimes bumpy 90 minute trip whilst we watched the road being built. The sketch was done from the rail of the Promenade Deck, before we left the port.
The following year we were on the Thomson Destiny as it called into Trapani on the island of Sicily. Again we had done a morning's excursion and we were at the rail with quite a few other people waiting for sail-away time to come along whilst I did this sketch of the buildings opposite. "What will you do if we sail before you've finished?" asked the chap next to me. "Well I've just drawn a few windows so far, but I know how many rows and how many windows to each row and they are all the same so I can draw them in later if I have to," I answered. He looked at me in a sort of shocked horror as though this was the lowest form of cheating he'd ever heard of...
Another wait for sail-away at the ship's rail. This is Ajaccio on the island of Corsica. The town is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte and is full of statues to him, mostly dressed in his favourite fantasy role as a Roman emperor. His birthplace is a corner house with a tanning shop on the ground floor. His parents had the floor above the shop which probably followed a slightly different trade at the time...
In 2012 we briefly moved away from the cruises to spend a week at Lake Garda in northern Italy. A beautiful place, making for a very relaxing holiday, one day we took the ferry down the lake to Malcesine and I drew this scene of the narrow streets from a table at a tiny café. Perhaps the cobbles weren't quite as bumpy as this, but there were a lot of them to draw!
A series of articles describing a weekend break in a somewhat freezing, though occasionally sunny London 4-6 December 1995. Our first real sight-seeing trip to the nation's capital city.
Each article can be seen by clicking/tapping on the eight photographs below. A link on each page (or the [back] button) will bring you back to this index page.
Another collection of sketches done in the UK, this time dating from 1993-94. A mix this time of sketches done on site in plain view of any would-be spectators and others done at home from photographs, either my own or found in magazines.
This was done on site at a living museum at Morwellham near the Cornwall border with Devon. Morwellham was an old copper mining village. The copper ran out and the villagers followed... It was a foul day as far as weather went, but I had a go at the old barque and dock anyway.
This one was done at home from a photograph I took at Wycoller near the Lancashire border with Yorkshire. I promise not all of these sketches will be borderline... (puns not improved then? - Editor) Wycoller has a ruined old hall that provided Charlotte Bronte with enough memories to describe it as Ferndean in Jane Eyre.
Drawn from a tiny photo in the pages of a photography magazine. I used to get Practical Photography every month from the early 1970s through to the mid 1990s though often other magazines such as Photography, Amateur Photographer and Camera User were added as well.
Another trip to Sedbergh with friends and a stop on a walk to do this. I remember Ray taking me to watch the bell ringers, of whom he was a member. A fascinating experience as a visiting ringer called out the numbers or changes to play different peals during the space of an hour or so.
Another done on site was this sketch of Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds of Gloucestershire.
This started life as a black and white photo taken from a bridge (but not the bridge) at Knaresborough in Yorkshire. The famous bridge is seen on the horizon. Colour pencils on A3 paper.
The vast majority of these were done on an A5 sketch pad using a propelling pencil with HB lead. This was another magazine photo.
A sketch done on holiday in Bridlington in 1994. Bridlington was a regular day trip or sometimes week's holiday destination when my brother and I were little. This was the first time since our own daughter was a toddler that we had been back.
A corn mill at Stamford Bridge drawn during that same week on a run out from Bridlington. It was the site of a massive battle between King Harold Godwinson (Harold II) and the Norwegian Harold Hardrada who ended the day dead with an arrow through his windpipe. It is said he never smiled again... Harold Godwinson's traitorous brother, the Earl Tostig fought on the side of the Vikings and also got what he deserved. Less than three weeks later King Harold II had marched his remaining troops back down to Hastings, picking up extra men on the way to fight a second invading army. This did not end so well for the English.
We used to go up to the Lakes a lot during the 1980s and 90s. Now I find it frustrating as it is just one huge traffic jam and so hard to park when you do get somewhere. I'm not even sure which lake this is, though it did start life as a photograph.
Coombe Lodge was England's Staff College - that is, a college for Further Education college staff. In the grounds, a software company producing software for student record systems had their offices in the old stables. They ran many of their training courses at the staff college and I would regularly be down there on one course or other, or at conferences, or sometimes simply going down to help muck out the team of programmers (sorry Christine!!!) I remember those days with such fondness and made some lasting friends amongst the staff of the old EMIS software company.
Sometimes the courses would be held at a centre around the corner and up the hill on the other side of Blagdon. At the bottom of the hill was the Chew Valley Lake. I remember going once to meet up with some of the staff of EMIS, sharing information and ideas as a new funding methodology came in for colleges. It was winter and it was the only occasion I can ever recall seeing thunder and lightning with snow. Coming down this hill the following day with a few inches of snow on the ground was … interesting!
Lastly for this time, this is Skippool Creek near Blackpool. In fact just on the outskirts of Poulton-le-Fylde where we now live. It was once a port for Poulton which still has reminders of those times by way of the village stocks and a whipping post in the town centre.
Links to articles about my sketches, drawings, paintings etc. Most of these are featured on articles as they are done - especially sketches done on holiday, but these articles bring them together as collections.
Each article is reached by clicking/tapping the pictures below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
