26th November 2023
Dear All,
Monday
was a fairly gentle day starting with a swim then inspecting Merv’s new raised
beds followed by sowing winter lettuce and some gardening.
Tuesday
by contrast was rather busy. Hutchinson’s came first thing to replace the back
garage door then we made an early start on a walk recce from Graveley. We have
led a walk from Graveley via Yelling and Papworth St Agnes a couple of times
before and thought it would be good to explore a different route. A friend
suggested heading west to the Offord’s and River Ouse. The first hour included
four muddy fields then it started to rain and the wind got up and the views
were basic so we decided that this route was unlikely to be a winner in winter
at least. The Offord’s and the river were fine but the return leg was little
better albeit with just one muddy field. We decided that it was one of the
worst recces that we had done and reverted to the old walk for Thursday.
After
lunch I was in Cambridge for “The Balkans” this week featuring North Macedonia
and Montenegro. North Macedonia is now in NATO and has a cultural mix with many
Albanians speaking a different language and heavy Greek influence in the south.
Montenegro only has a population of 620,000, 29% of which are Serbs but
scenically looks very interesting. After returning from Cambridge, we had a
family Zoom but Ben was still in Cyprus after his marathon (3 hours 59 minutes)
and Esther had succumbed to Covid. The day was not finished as John Law was
over from Turkey and was staying overnight and we invited the Moldova
travellers for a meal for which they stayed past 10,30pm – so a reasonably long
day!
New door on the
left
Norman
Ingle was here for lunch on Wednesday before church group at the Kitson’s David
Smith was absent as he was visiting Rita Asplin who had suffered a stroke and
bleeding on the brain so the outlook is not good.
So
on to Thursday and the walk we were due to lead from Graveley. The good news is
that the weather was excellent – sunny nearly all the way and that brightened
up the walk considerably. There were 14 on each walk this week and for some
reason there were fallers on each walk – 2 on ours tripping over horizonal
brambles. Graveley has some interesting buildings and the autumn colours were
still showing up very well.
Autumn Colours Papworth
St Agnes
Papworth St Agnes
Bakehouse
Graveley Shelter
I
had a consignment of seed arrive on Friday donated by Tozer’s for Moldova – all
we have to do now is find the best way of getting the seed in legally!
“Biographies”
this week was a double header featuring two not well-known subjects. The first
was Hans Litten a German Jewish lawyer who in 1931 actually interrogated Hitler
for 3 hours about growing violence in the Nazi party, needless to say he did
not fare well once the Nazis were in power and eventually committed suicide in
Dachau concentration camp. The second presentation was of Thomas Johnson a 17th
century apothecary, botanist and soldier. He wrote some of the earliest herbals
but was caught up in the civil war and was killed supporting the royalist
cause.
Hans Litten
Thomas Johnson
On
Saturday I had a good bonfire at the allotment while Kate was planting newly
arrived bearded irises. I then started digging the extra land we have been
given by a neighbouring allotmenteer. In the afternoon I watched Milton 0 v 2
Over in fairly cool conditions! In the evening it was the Christmas lights
switch on at the Green together with numerous stalls and carol singing – so
evidently Christmas is on the way!
Lights on The
Green
Carol Singing
Regards
Mike
& Kate
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