Jaunt

After many months of prevarication, Jaunt 4 is starting now. Not sure if it will be a short mini jaunt or a longer one, depends on me, my health/knees holding up and the weather. Trying out new gear, so heading to Corfe Castle which I visited back in Jaunt 1, for a familiar place and shakedown for a new tent and then planning to do something I have never done... Do a proper hike with all my gear a...

Heading back to London (spoilers!) cos after 18 days non-stop, eczema on sunburn and fatigue hit me like a truck. Disappointing cos I have only 16 miles to finish the Jurassic Jaunt bar a 5 mile stretch past Kimmeridge. So close but unlike King Canute (the name of the last piece I did in Lyme Regis) it is time to realise the tide is turning.. And the weather will be changing for the worst in a few...

Back to the ruins of Gabriel Stanton, an abandoned village with a ruined chapel via the well of lost St Wite.. Or is that Wight? #jaunt3

Back to Beer while the buses are running (no Sunday/Public holiday buses!) and going full shepherd stopping a dog worrying sheep and painting a watercolour of the cliffs near Beer.

A much better and shorter walk to Seaton from the National Trust village of Branscombe. Had a look at the Old Forge (the only thatched forge left in Devon, wonder why that never caught on?) got a cakey from the bakery and drew St Winifred's Church, one of the oldest in Devon. Walked from their via a very steep connecting path to the Coastal Path. much more Uppy Downy Undercliff but far better than...

Second half of the 'arduous' Undercliff walk from Seaton to Lyme... Trading standards should be involved!

I visit Seaton.. Not Seatown, the seaside town they forgot to close down, but glad they did cos they have a nice big Tesco. I then decide to lug my plunder 7 miles over - and I quote 'Difficult and ardurous terrain'. Will I make it? Will I have to eat the packet rissoto raw before Lyme? All and more answered in part two.

On Monmouth Beach looking for fossils and debating my artistic blocks and weather the whether stops the Jaunt.

Again a misty horrible day... I draw and paint the viaduct (twice) and paint the distant sea cliffs at Lyme Regis and wonder whether the weather will change.

From a drizzly rainy Puncknowle to a sunnier yet spookily misty Lyme Regis, I go hunting fossils and prosecco via ducks, sorry viaduct! Am I really copying the script of Sightseers unconsciously?

It's raining, it's pouring Old Nick is Snoring... Or seemingly having saucy phootshoots in remote chapels...exploring Abbotsbury in the rain, and searching out the ruins and remains of the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter that didn't survive the dissolution but survive in various bits in walls, houses and indeed St Catherine's Chapel which is dry and I did two sketches with these strange people hangi...

Really an addendum of the previous podcast - taking about why I hate walking on Shingle and going beyond the Jurassic Coast into East Dorset and why I am walking through the Children of the Corn field?

I find somewhere I was planning to go by accident and spend time painting a ruined house called the Knoll. (photo does NOT do it justice BTW, but today is chucking it down so it will have to do).

I didn't get time to record a podcast yesterday, and had some battery word before that... - well I did record one and it didn't record! Here is the account of the walk to West Bay via Thorncombe Beaxon, quite Uppy Downy and very windy... I did quite a few pieces like these storm twisted trees at the top.

A trip to Bridport to have a mooch around and do some food shopping, and a trip to Abbotsbury Castle (née Hill Fort) and I suddenly remember why in my bus timetable research last year I realised I had to get to Abbotsbury early in the day... Lack of late connecting buses at Bridport! So no Abbotsbury artworks bar a consolation piece waiting for the 5:50 bus so went back and did some pieces on the...

A rather too long podcast going from pissing around the campsite doing Necessary Shit™ and getting frustrated how I am A Bad Lazy Walker to being out on Golden Cap being blasted with wind and rain and how I'd like to be bored at the campsite noe please. And ending on a call to arms to artists - where ARE you? I am working alone out here, getting wet and cold. And no, working from photos does NOT c...

With a cap in my hand (not left in my tent)

What happened on Friday (the jelly leg episode) really made me worry if I has to abort the trip if my legs could not cope with the much smaller hills vs Golden Cap. So I felt I had to go back when it was cooler and after 3 days recovery conquer this and regain my confidence...looking like an Old Testament Shephard with a t-shirt wrapped around my head... And did 3 artworks along the way (it is Bat...

... Or why does Cerne Abbas remind me of a mix of the village from Children of the Stones, Summerisle, Corfe Castle and Chiddingfold! (I said Godalming on the podcast but on second thoughts that is a bit too urbane with it's fancy big Waitrose). I finally visit the Cerne Giant after planning it for two trips... I did have to take a sneaky taxi ride cos I just missed the bus in Dorchester, if you h...

A short rant/heated discussion (really this should be called RantCast not TentCast) about walking, people in their insulated car bubbles and disconnected world and how lack of knowledge of your location is hurting the planet.

I got bored hanging around the campsite and head off to Preston and draw a thatched cottage then jump onto the bus to Durdle Door where I stayed last year... This time heading the other way facing the hills that defeated me from the other direction. Still too hot (indeed ambulance and coastguard are there waiting for the inevitable chaos) and feet are still too unhappy to tackle it so I painted tw...

I don't just draw and paint seascapes on these trips, I explore the llldrier local sights too. Here I am discussing this piece of the 14th Century St Andrews, a rant about Holiday Parks and art education and how that adversely affected my drawing.

Walking from Eweleaze towards Lulworth we find shipwrecks, bunkers, white nothes, a good cliff way we watercolour and that my legs turn to jelly now on the extreme Uppy Downy bit after White Nothe especially on one of the warmest days of the year! So we abort, miss the bus cos of said legs, meet some kind strangers and come back to find an ant Invasion in progress at the tent! Can we have less eve...

Seems strange for an artist podcaster to muse about not recording things but I talk about experiencing the moment and how technology or the desire to share/photograph can spoil the moment (and my history with that). And how it relates to my artwork while drinking my morning coffee (the first DIY one of the trip, unlike last time this one tastes great). Blue bee attracting towel shown in photo (bee...

Chaos with a collapsed tent at 3am and high winds, a tent move and the first drawing but feeling wiped out with heat and lack of sleep when the wind dropped.