A blog on gardening, life by the sea, photography and wildlife

Saturday 8 December 2012

Holywell and the beach chalets

Our retreat when the weather allows is our beach chalet which we rent on a annual basis from Eastbourne borough council, it is quite expensive to rent but as we do not have a annual holiday as such
we consider we get good value as we can use it 365 days a year. It`s not large probably 4 x 3 meters with a porch of about the same size but it has all we need, a gas cooker, sink and mains running water no electricity though. Toilets and showers are in separate block just along from the chalets, there are 69 of them and they were built around 1930 and there is a waiting list to hire them.
We have it well stocked with beachwear including wetsuits, a kayak, water shoes, fins, towels, swimwear , barbecue in other words everything we might need, oh and of course buckets and spades for the grand children. I have taken some picture to give you some idea.  My apologies but there are 14 pictures in the set.
The bottom five pictures I took with my iphone camera and I was pleasantly surprised at how well they turned out.
The children`s (and mine occasionally) kayak



Swimming and kayaking safe shallow water and the Holywell reef

Walking poles and wetsuit

some local art

old but where could you replace it

The view out west at low water

The porch sitting area

Charity shop Axminster carpet

sunset


The promenade just below the chalets

looking towards Beachy Head
Sandy beach at low water

Friday 7 December 2012

Winter Jasmine

It has been a while since my last post, it has been a pretty awful year on the plot with nothing doing really well owing to the saturated soil for most of the year. We harvested broad beans potatoes, and runner beans, beetroot did reasonably well, carrots and peas just didn`t happen along with lots of others plotters.
We planted a few Brussels sprouts  which I had a reasonable amount of, apart from the clouds of whitefly which appeared every time I picked some. I was also given some Jerusalem artichokes to try by a fellow plot holder but these along with sprouts give both Judi and I "wind in the willows" so I am not going to grow either next year, they seem to be love `em or hate `em vegetables
Not much colour in the garden or plot at the moment but the winter jasmine has just started flowering in our porch giving it some much needed colour, I have a Nikon D70s camera which had loads of dust on the sensor so after cleaning with lens cleaner and cotton buds I used this photo to see whether it had been successful, it has.