Thin pickings for June this time as for some reason my camera has recently been taking a back seat. We had some fantastic weather for a change so I was out enjoying it without my camera.
This is a hybrid cruise ship at anchor in Dartmouth harbour. It looks like something out of an old pirate movie but has the latest in luxury living conditions. It is the Sea Cloud Spirit.
It has 136 passengers and 85 crew, more than half a crew member each, which seems very greedy for a "sustainable" means of travel. It has a total sail area of approximately 4,100 m² / 44,100 sq ft. Sea cloud
And here are all those sails raised.
This is Start Bay and we had this half mile of beach to ourselves on a beautiful day.
A recent visit to the Test Valley, and this is the famous river Test, known for its trout. Believe it or not this is in Stockbridge High Street, where you can wander past all of the shops, while sections of the river pass right by you and trout like this just hover in the fast moving water, barely flipping a fin as the water rushes over their torpedo like bodies.
Stockbridge was once a coach stop on the main road from London to the West Country, but it is no longer a major route, just a sleepy backwater, literally, as it happens.
The right to hold a market was awarded to the town (as the parcel known as The Street in King's Somborne manor) before 1190 in Richard I's reign, reviewed and confirmed in 1200, and extended to an annual three-day fair by Henry III. As in the 12th century, the town consists almost wholly of one long wide street and it is to this characteristic that it owed its early name of Le Street.
This is the main river further downstream.
The River Test is a chalk stream in Hampshire in the south of England. It rises at Ashe near Basingstoke and flows southwards for 40 miles (64 km) to Southampton Water. Much of the Test is a 438-hectare (1,080-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is part of the Solent and Southampton Water Ramsar site and Special Protection Area. The river is used for fly fishing for trout from its source to its tidal limit. This chalk stream has one of the richest fauna and flora of any lowland river in England. More than 100 species of flowering plant have been recorded along its banks.
This is Houghton Lodge near Stockbridge and also on the river Test. It is England’s best surviving example of a Cottage Orné.
Cottage Orné...... a genre of ‘picturesque’ Gothic architecture that flourished for about 25 years from 1790. Houghton was thought to be designed in 1790 by John Plaw – one of the pioneers of the style – and was probably intended as a fishing lodge. Some fishing lodge! Today the house is Grade II* listed and regularly attracts visits from students of architecture and has become one of the must see houses to visit Hampshire has to offer. With extensive fine trees and lawns sweeping down to the banks of the River Test, it is arguably one of the most beautiful privately owned historic houses and gardens in Hampshire.
Cottage Orne's are an early version of the wealthy of today buying £500 pairs of designer jeans with holes in the knees and the "right" label. The word cottage is used loosely as a style descriptor rather than its literal meaning of very small. These were large architect designed projects built by the super wealthy landed gentry for a bit of fun on the occasional weekend in summer. They were the elites idea of a rustic country life.They probably had full sized stately homes elsewhere and probably a London town house as well. You could even say that the ship at the top of this post is an accurate later iteration of the idea.
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