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| Well, you have to do it properly! |
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| We found a nice bit of wall to perch on.... |
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| ...right under the main keep |
From there we headed down the hill to the river bank, and a nice walk.
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| Mol and I saw these.... |
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| We think willow tits, though could be marsh tits - they look virtually identical |
The hermitage is across the river, so a boat ride. Sarah and I were there on the May Bank Holiday Monday. Mol and I were a few weeks later, and no queue at all. The boatman remembered me!
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| Not sure if I was meant to be in that shot! |
The hermitage was originally a single room chapel with wonderful carvings, and a small room behind where the hermit lived. Eventually the hermit had a small orchard and so on on the hill above, and built better living quarters, with a walled building outside the hermitage built into the rock. The kitchen was at the bottom of the steps up, there isn't a lot left of that now.
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| Looking from the hermitage steps down into the later building |
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| The vaulted chapel |
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| Fireplace in later building. The marks on the wall show flood levels |
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| Oh dear! |
We spent a bit of time looking round for the resident kingfisher. He'd been seen about an hour earlier when Sarah and I prowled, so of course we didn't find him. It hadn't been seen all day when Mol and I were there - so we did! (Actually he was pointed out to us by another couple, but as I was looking for him I think I'd have spotted him ok when I got to that bit of the path.) Sadly he sat in the shadows below the trees, and I didn't have my big lens with me of course, so they're lousy pics. But you can at least tell it was really a kingfisher.
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| Shadows and reflections |
Fabulous pics
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