tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7452074271176161782024-03-13T12:07:00.838-07:00David Gillett Writes.......on writing,architecture,history, travel and life (and free-range chickens)David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-11295568513960279732019-06-10T17:44:00.000-07:002019-06-10T17:48:18.267-07:00Ludlow Love Affair<h2>
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<u><span style="color: #000120;"><i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Shropshire Star</b></span></i></span></u><span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
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Ludlow love affair keeps drawing Dave back from Canada</span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/south-shropshire/ludlow/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; text-decoration: underline;">Ludlow</a> | <a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/features/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; text-decoration: underline;">Features</a> | Published: <time datetime="2019-04-30T05:00:00.889Z" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Apr 30, 2019</time></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Ludlow's fame as a food capital has spread far and wide. Canadian architectural designer and freelance food and travel writer David Gillett has been sharing his love affair with Ludlow with readers in Canada's national paper the Globe and Mail, telling them of the town's many delights, illustrated with his own sketches. Here David explains what has drawn him to make a journey of thousands of miles to Ludlow again and again – and why he's planning to be back soon</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span></span><span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"></span></span></span>
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<span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="color: #000120;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">It might be the artful bend in the river Teme, or the
ancient castle brooding above it. Maybe it’s the medieval streets, the
atmospheric alleyways, the fine Georgian facades on Broad Street. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Of course, it would be rather banal to say that it’s the
food. That’s the typical line used by the unimaginative, the standard trope
about Ludlow: The Food Town. And who wants to be accused of being
unimaginative, swayed by food culture, influenced by the obvious? Well, I’ll go
first: me.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Hook, line and sinker: Ludlow’s food scene has me. Because,
beautiful setting, fascinating history and lovely buildings notwithstanding, what
really sets Ludlow apart is its foodie credentials:<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>its grounded connection to the countryside,
to local producers, specialty shops and great chefs.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">And it’s largely why I’ve been back half a dozen times, all
the way from Canada. That’s an 8-hour flight, Toronto to London, followed by
the long trek into the Shropshire hills.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">“Back to Ludlow? Again? …Why?”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That’s how the questioning will go, as it has
multiple times before. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: orange;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“ ‘Tell me what you
read and I’ll tell you who you are’ is true enough but I’d know you better if
you told me what you re-read,” said the French writer, Francois Muriac.</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Muriac was onto something, and his theory applies just as
tellingly to travel.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">I’m not a bucket-list location ticker. Some places are worth
returns visits- they just feel right, like going home. They’re a movie we want
to see again, a poem that improves with many readings. For me, one of those
places is Ludlow, and food has always played some part in the magnetic pull of
this Shropshire town.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">The Ludlow Food Festival is the longest running food
celebration in Britain and has helped put the town on the world culinary map,
attracting over 20,000 visitors every fall for three days of tastings and demonstration
by top chefs. Thanks to this and other festivals celebrating everything from
beer to sausages to cheese, hundreds of local producers are given a showcase
for the best independent food and drink. This in turn has spawned a rich
variety of food shops, restaurants and farm shops in Ludlow and the valleys
close by. The connective tissue is an emphasis on quality, a connection to the
land:<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>terroir. Some of the food people I
talked to believe that a community’s food choices help maintain the landscape,
that the famous “Green and pleasant land” looks as it does because of food and
farming; we help support that, and the quality of life in this town, by the
food choices we make.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">And those choices are bewildering in Ludlow. The market sets
up in the square several times a week, and on “Local to Ludlow” days, muddy
Landrovers disgorge a bewildering array of goods, from just-laid eggs to
delicate courgettes to scrumpy cider brews. On surrounding streets, a jolly
gaggle of food shops congregate, all within a few minutes’ stroll from the
castle and each other.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Broad Bean,
on Broad Street, sells the best smoked salmon I’ve ever tried and deservedly won
the Farm Shop Deli of the year for 2019. Henry Mackley, who runs the nearby
Harp Lane Deli overlooking the market square, couldn’t abide us starting our
Ludlow stay with something pre-packaged from the supermarket. He kept the shop
open an extra 15 minutes and proceeded to set us up with a basket of great
ingredients, conferred at length with Katy about pasta proportions, and
generously decanted a custom amount of his best olive oil in return for a
donation to a local charity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-size: large;"><img height="640" src="https://www.shropshirestar.com/resizer/Z_3qlQ3f6G6oG2v1iC9s_6prGk4=/990x0/filters:quality(100)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-shropshirestar-mna.s3.amazonaws.com/public/W3GKWBC7NRCJPKW33XNPBOBCOQ.jpg" width="424" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">We soon discovered that Henrys’ expertise, and his eagerness
to share it, is simply how life rolls in Ludlow.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Four family-owned butchers do a roaring
trade. We visited Andrew Francis on our second night in town looking for some
local partridge.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Sorry, no,” said the
friendly red-cheeked butcher, his trilby hat pushed back. “No, you don’t want
that. Partridge isn’t open until next week. What you’ll be wanting is a nice a
haunch of Venison”. He wasn’t going to sell game birds if they hadn’t been
freshly sourced from the bushes of a nearby estate. We (and the birds) were
fine with that. We traded him stories about eating bear roast and moose
tenderloin. “O Canada!” he said, grinning.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>And the venison was lovely.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">The Mousetrap, a cheese shop barely the size of our rental
car, is bursting with over 150 varieties, may made less than a short country
drive away. With expert help we settled on a wedge of Shropshire Blue and three
others. (Okay, maybe six.)</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">The cheese people in turn directed us to a green grocer for
some of the freshest, plumpest produce I’d ever seen - much of it liberally
caked with black topsoil from nearby farm fields, lush green with the frequent
rains of the Marches.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Freshness and simplicity are at the heart of everything in
this town, an original player in the Slow Food movement in England. Taste,
freshness, provenance are the watchwords here.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">And the restaurants follow suit: fewer ingredients but
better ones, quality rather than novelty. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">To start the day, a street-side table at Chichettis is hard
to beat. Avocado on toast and an authentic wake-me-up Macchiato kick-started
our day nicely. The contemporary Castle Tea Room, ingeniously inserted in the
castle wall, serves tea and a fresh scones complete with a complimentary
medieval courtyard view, and sometimes even a bonus falconry demo.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: orange;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Next to the castle,
Elliot’s, a French bistro run by Olivier Bossut in the elegant Dinham Dall
Hotel, capped one of our days in style. The cassoulet Toulosain was, to use a
technical gastronomic term:<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>scrumptious.
Elegant dining in a classic Georgian House: My inner Mr.Darcy approved. </span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Depth and new talent bodes well for the future. Karl Martin,
the young chef at "Old Downton Lodge", created the most extraordinary
meal we’ve ever eaten. Anywhere. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The
restaurant, recommended to me by Lucy of “Let’s Go Ludlow” fame, is set in a medieval
stone barn hung with tapestries, a fittingly atmospheric setting for a 3 hour
dinner served with laid-back professionalism.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Like Shropshire itself, the food was at once both familiar and nuanced,
simple but deliciously complex.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">If finishing the day with a celebratory libation is on the
agenda, “Ludders” continues to punch above its weight. You could visit the “The
Blood bay”, a Victorain pub that will transport you back in time, or the tiny
“Dog Hangs Well” parlour pub in Corve street. (No sign, but you’ll know it’s
open if the antique street light is burning outside.)<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You could try one of the many thriving
traditional pubs, like The Wheatsheaf which is built into the walls beside the
town’s only remaining mediaeval gate or wend your way down the narrow alleyway
that leads to the Rose and Crown Inn, one of England’s oldest, plying its trade
for over 600 years. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleons’ brother, would have known it
well. He lived in “open confinement” a few streets over in Dinham House in 1811
while his brother was prancing around Europe. Used now for what must surely be
the world’s loveliest wood-stove showroom, Dinham House is a Georgian
masterpiece of stately symmetry. Lucien may have been “a guest of the King” but
he had a retinue of servants and, no doubt, a steady supply of very fine Ludlow
foodstuffs.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">He knew it and anyone who visits today will soon learn:
Ludlow is a fine town to be confined in for a few days, or better yet a week, a
great pace to return to. Eating well definitely won’t be a problem.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">To paraphrase Muriac: “ ‘Tell me where you travel and I’ll
tell you who you are’. That is true enough but I’d know you better if you told
me where you return to time and time again,”.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">For some, the travel experience is ten thousand miles wide
and one inch deep, but I’d argue for a narrower focus and a deeper, more local
experience. And no matter how predictable it might seem, I know I’ll be back in
Ludlow again,<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>exploring new cafes and
foodshops, getting to know a beloved place a little better with each visit.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: orange;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/features/2019/04/30/ludlow-love-affair-keeps-drawing-dave-back-from-canada/">https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/features/2019/04/30/ludlow-love-affair-keeps-drawing-dave-back-from-canada/</a><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></span></span></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: orange;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: orange;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";">David Gillett</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri";">April 2019</span></span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></span></span>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-67172592767569262512019-03-26T06:57:00.000-07:002019-03-26T07:02:05.428-07:00In Ludlow, Foodie Heaven Awaits<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">March 2018 The Globe & Mail</span></i></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;"><i>(Ludlow,
Shropshire)</i></span><br />
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The Harp
Lane Deli has the look of the perfect English country-town foodshop. Its
location on the charming market square, the Union Jack bunting , the old bay<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>windows bursting with the promise of
delicious local delicacies : all of these things say “food problems solved.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Everything about it is perfect.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Well,
everything but the “closed” sign.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">To be fair,
we had left it late. The sun was setting in the western wilds out over Wales,
past the soft Shropshire hills. But we had driven all day, we were famished,
and we needed something to take to our rented cottage by the weir on the River
Teme. So we tried the door.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i3Onu4g7fvQ/XJou-Z_002I/AAAAAAAAAPo/N5KklzdhrcsC0k51ypN9oBumG_PQ0I6bACLcBGAs/s1600/HarpLane%2BDeli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1239" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i3Onu4g7fvQ/XJou-Z_002I/AAAAAAAAAPo/N5KklzdhrcsC0k51ypN9oBumG_PQ0I6bACLcBGAs/s400/HarpLane%2BDeli.jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Luckily, it
still opened. Henry, the consummate deli<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>owner, had seen the likes of us before: hungry food pilgrims newly
arrived in Ludlow, much in need of help. Did he roll his eyes? Perhaps. But the
foodie in him couldn’t abide us starting our Ludlow stay with something
pre-packaged from Tesco. He set us up with a basket of great ingredients,
conferred at length with Katy about pasta proportions, and generously decanted
a custom amount of his best olive oil in return for a donation to a local
charity.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">We soon
discovered that Henrys’ expertise, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>and
his eagerness to share it, are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de rigueur</i>
in Ludlow, the original English Food Town.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Its setting
doesn’t hurt. Ludlow dwells amongst the<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>verdant green waves of A.E.Housman’s<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Shropshire hills on the edge of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marches</i>,
that ancient borderland between Wales and England . It’s a land that has seen
centuries of conflict, and Ludlow castle, an atmospheric ruin dating from 1086
and once the home of Henry VI, sits on its crag above a bend in the Teme,
looking out over the shadowed depths of Mortimer’s Forest. Ludlow, like York,
was once a seat of government in Tudor and Stewart England and its position at
this cross-roads of battling families , royal intrigue and heated cultural
exchange has been fuel for the town’s vigorous character for centuries.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Just far enough
from London to be special, yet close enough to be a weekend destination for
Londoners and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cognoscenti<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></i>from nearby Birmingham, Ludlow has dodged
the bullet that has plagued many other English towns in recent years: <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>a slow death at the hands of suburban super
stores and empty High Street shops. It thrives, as it always has, as a market
centre for a whole region with a healthy farming culture, great food and warm
hospitality, being<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“not so much
provincial,” as film maker Jonathan Meade says, “- it actually feels autonomous,
devolved, independent…like a de facto state.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The Poet
Laureate, John Betjeman, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>went<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>further, saying<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Ludlow is probably the finest town in
England.” A large part of this is the impressive display of well-preserved
Tudor and<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Georgian buildings, almost 500
listed buildings in a town of 10,000 people, older ones in the
higgledy-piggeldy maze of Medieval lanes,<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>and a parade of textbook Georgian ones ranged along Broad Street, judged
by many to be the prettiest street in England. Looking like a location<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>for a period drama (which it of course has
been) , the street is best seen from upstairs at the excellent Ludlow
Buttercross Museum, a little jewel of a local museum done right. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Admission charge? One pound.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">So, lovely
buildings : check. Great location, interesting history: check, check . But what
really sets Ludlow apart and makes it worth the drive is its foodie
credentials:<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>its grounded connection to
the countryside, to local producers, specialty shops and great chefs.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The Ludlow
Food Festival is the longest running food celebration in Britain and has helped
put the town on the world culinary map. It attracts over 20,000 visitors every
fall for three days of tastings and demonstration by top chefs and events
including the famous Sausage Trail, last year a magnet for over 2000 lovers of
the British banger. Add to that the competition for Pork Pie of the Marches,
the Cake Competition and the Ale Trails and those three days seem very short
indeed. A spring festival joined the calendar ten years ago, running<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>this year<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>on May 12 & 13 with an emphasis on real ales.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Thanks to
the festivals, hundreds of local producers are given a showcase for the best
independent food and drink. This is turn has spawned a rich variety of food shops,
restaurants and farm shops in Ludlow and the valleys close by. The connective
tissue is an emphasis on <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>quality, a
connection to the land: <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">terroir.</i> Some of the food people I
talked to believe that a community’s food choices help maintain the landscape,
that the famous “Green and pleasant land” looks as it does because of food and
farming; we help support that, and the quality of life in this town, by the
food choices we make.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">And those
choices are legion in Ludlow. The market sets up in the square several times a
week, and on “Local to Ludlow” days, muddy Landrovers disgorge a bewildering
array of goods, from just-laid eggs to delicate courgettes to scrumpy cider
brews. On surrounding streets, in addition to Henry’s <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Harp Lane Deli, a jolly gaggle of food shops congregate,
all within a few minutes’ stroll from the castle and each other. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Myriad Organics, for example, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>shows just how diverse a truly local and<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>organic product list can be. The Broad Bean,
on Broad Street, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>sells the best smoked
salmon I’ve ever tried and dozens of delicacies I’ll need to return for. </span></div>
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<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Four
family-owned butchers do a roaring trade. We visited Andrew Francis on our
second night in town intent on some local partridge or grouse.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Sorry, no,” said the friendly red-cheeked
butcher, his trilby hat pushed back on his head. “No, you don’t want that.
Partridge isn’t open until next week. What you’ll be wanting is a nice a haunch
of our Venison. How many are you feeding?” He wasn’t going to sell game birds if
they hadn’t been freshly sourced from the bushes of a nearby estate. We (and
the birds) were fine with that. We traded him stories about eating bear roast
and moose tenderloin. “O Canada!” he said, grinning.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And the venison was lovely.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The Mousetrap,
a dedicated cheese shop barely the size of our rental car, filled out our “Local
to Ludlow” jute bag. With over 150 varieties creating a smell that only a
cheese aficionado could love, selection involved lots of <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>furrowed-brow sampling. With expert help we settled
on a wedge of Shropshire Blue and three others. (Okay, maybe six.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The cheese
people in turn directed us to a green grocers for some of the freshest,
plumpest produce I’d ever seen: Swedes, carrots, dozens of potatoe varieties,
leeks, bewildering arrays of mushrooms - all liberally caked with black topsoil
from nearby farm fields that can be glimpsed at the end of many of the streets
in town, lush green with the frequent <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>rains of the Marches.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Freshness
and simplicity are at the heart of everything in this town, an original player
in the Slow Food movement in England. And the restaurants are largely no different:
fewer ingredients, quality rather than complexity – no molecular gastronomy
here. This is ‘hike-the-hills-then-sit-by-the-log-fire’ food. Not a test tube
in sight. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">To start the
day, a street-side table in front of Chichettis is hard to beat. An authentic
wake-me-up Macchiato and avocado on toast was a great kick-off. The lamb
fleeces on the outdoor chairs were a nice touch, prompting a longer stay and
refills. For tea and a fresh scone, the contemporary Castle Tea Room, ingeniously
inserted in the castle wall, comes with a complimentary medieval courtyard
view, sometimes with a bonus falconry demo.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Mortimers on Corve Street, run by chef Wayne
Smith, (who has cooked for Michael Jackson, Will Smith and a host of Premier
League footballers) carries the flag for the many fine restaurants in town. In
the former premises of Claude Bosi’s two Michelin-starred Hibiscus (now moved
to London), there is some weight of culinary stardom to live up to. And he does
so with straightforward food that is all about provenance, flavor and freshness.
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Try the <span style="background: white; color: black; margin: 0px;">strip of Hereford beef sirloin served with roasted shallots
and baby leeks. Book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very</i> early,
(but don’t ask for an autograph.) <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Next
to the castle, Elliot’s, a French bistro run by Olivier Bossut in the elegant
Dinham Dall Hotel, provided us with a great evening out as well. The cassoulet
Toulosain was excellent.</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "segoe print"; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Elegant dining in
a classic Georgian House: My inner Mr.Darcy approved. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Depth and
new talent bodes well for the future. David Chantler, vice chair of the Food
Festival says: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">The three local,
and as it happens young chefs who, for me best represent the trend might be
Josh Crouch at "CSons at the Green Cafe”, Andy Link at the “Riverside” and
Karl Martin at "Old Downton Lodge". The restaurant story continues to
develop.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Finishing off with a
celebratory libation might be fitting, and in this regard, “Ludders” continues
to punch above its weight. You could visit the tiny parlour pub “The Dog Hangs
Well” in Corve street and try that day’s local ale. (No sign, but you’ll know
its open if the antique street light is burning outside.)<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You could try one of the many thriving traditional
pubs, like The Wheatsheaf which is built into the walls beside the town’s only
remaining mediaeval gate or wend your way down the narrow alleyway that leads
to the Rose and Crown Inn, one of England’s oldest, plying its trade for over
600 years. Or maybe take the advice of Monty Lowe, the historian and
author<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>we met in the Buttercross Museum.
“Try the back rooms at The Feathers for a glass of wine. Classic.” Classic
indeed.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Built in 1619 and converted into
an inn in 1670, The Feathers Hotel is one of the most famous (and ostentatious)
half-timbered Jacobean masterpieces in the country. The interior rooms maintain
their original proportions, ancient beams and plasterwork darkened with age. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Lucien
Bonaparte, Napoleons’ brother, would have known it well. He lived in “open
confinement” a few streets over in Dinham House in 1811 while his brother was
prancing around Europe conquering people. Used now for what must surely be the world’s
loveliest wood-stove showroom, Dinham House is a Georgian masterpiece of
stately symmetry. Lucien may have been “a guest of the King” but he had a
retinue of servants and, no doubt, a steady supply of very fine Ludlow
foodstuffs.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">He knew it,
the Tudors and Stewarts before him knew it, and anyone who visits today will
soon learn: Ludlow is a fine town to be confined in for a few days, or better
yet a week. Eating well definitely won’t be a problem.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Just make
sure you get to the Deli before closing time.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px 120px; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">-<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt "Times New Roman"; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">David
Gillett <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/activities-and-interests/in-ludlow-england-foodie-heavenawaits/article38352636/">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/activities-and-interests/in-ludlow-england-foodie-heavenawaits/article38352636/</a></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
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<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-68188194712539745832017-11-13T09:38:00.001-08:002017-11-13T09:38:29.873-08:00There and Back (Again)<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(Globe and Mail TRAVEL, Saturday November 11th 2017)<u> </u><a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/the-unyielding-call-of-englands-rough-beautiful-lakedistrict/article36891859/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">There and Back Again GLOBE & MAIL</a></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>Nursing both my throbbing feet and a pint of Thatcher’s
cider, I eased back into my chair by the smouldering coal fire at the Wasdale
Head Inn. Today was a failed attempt at the treacherous summit of Pillar. But a
few weeks hence I’d be back home and likely facing the question again:</b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>“Back to England? Again? …Why?”</b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“ ‘Tell me what you
read and I’ll tell you who you are’ is true enough but I’d know you better if
you told me what you re-read,” said the French writer, Francois Muriac.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Francois was onto something, and his theory applies just as
tellingly to travel.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Are you a bucket-list location ticker? Or are you, like me,
pulled back by some unseen gravitational force time and again to a particular
place? </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some places just feel right, like going home. They’re a
movie we want to see again, a dog-eared book that never gets old.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For me, it’s Britain, with its ancient culture, mellowed
architecture and daily routines that are immediately familiar while still
surprisingly novel. Tightening the focus further: the English countryside,
Blake’s “green and pleasant land”. If pushed, the epicentre of my longing is
the North, with its desolate moors, raw and ever-changing weather, wild coasts
and brooding mountains.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Specifically, the Cumbrian mountains in the Lake District,
an area which just this year has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage status,
joining the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon in winning
one of the highest accolades on the planet.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In addition to the official attribute-speak that comes with
such a designation, standard phrases like “natural beauty” and “stunning
vistas”, I’d add a host of other things. What’s not to like about a place
peppered with weathered villages folded into heathered crevices redolent of
coal smoke and sheep dung?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The names are
evocative of some other time: Yanwath, Temple Sowerby, Nether Wasdale,
Crackenthorpe.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">These mountains are a compact, scaled-back Alpine jewel box,
chock full of hulking masses whose rugged truths are soon apparent when the
actual climbing starts.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Seen through the
smoked windows of a tour bus headed for touristy Keswick, they are a
picturesque back-drop. Yet these are true mountains with all the inherent
mystery and danger such terrain can bring and noble names to match: Blencathra,
Skiddaw, Great Gable.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Wordsworth, Coleridge, Beatrix Potter – many writers called
these hills home and the Romantic poets haunted these heights for inspiration.
John Ruskin wrote of his love/hate relationship with the country he knew so
well, “Blind, tormented, unwearied, marvelous England,” he said. And then,
under the spell of Lake District beauty, he built his home, Brantwood, on the
shores of Coniston Water. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Around 18 million people are likewise enchanted and visit
the Lake District each year, spending close to 1.5 billion dollars and
employing 18,000 people in the process. They come for a variety of reasons: a
lungful of fresh air, a trip to the flowered tea rooms of Grasmere, a
pilgrimage to Wordsworths’ grave perhaps.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For me it’s about many things: my grandmother’s ancestral
home in Langwathby, the upland sheep-farming culture, the architecture of the
villages that take rustic-chic to the next level.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And the Walking, capital ‘W’. In Cumbria, it’s a term that
covers a whole dictionary of movement: including rambling, scrambling and
climbing. Our first trip to Cumbria almost 30 years ago introduced us gently to
this pursuit, a half-day hike as part of an old uncle’s car tour.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Subsequent return visits have helped us
discover the nuance, refine our approach and extend our journeys, walking, as
Hillarie Belloc said so eloquently “Across the great wave tops and rolls of the
hills.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">This in itself is reason enough to re-visit a favourite
place.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Recently I found myself yet again in a favourite part of The
Lakes, the Wasdale Valley, often called the home of British Climbing. In Wasdale
are England’s deepest lake (Wastwater) and highest mountain (Scafel), and
arguably favourite view (from Great Gable). It’s an isolated place high in the
dark, Western fells, a deep valley of scree slides and jagged cliffs, ancient
sheepfolds and thick cloud. Difficult to get to, difficult to leave.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It’s a place of sheep farming and mountain climbing: little
else matters. A night in its silent, dark embrace re-sets your expectations and
your preconceptions of what really matters. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Could it be that some of us are pre-wired to eat porridge,
climb fells, endure hurricane winds and end up by the fire at snug pubs at
sunset? Life distills neatly into this simple pattern.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PO3pksBesyI/WgnVPY8sOMI/AAAAAAAAAME/Q-4dhQUTgZouH7Ch_t2A0Eci-d6lAgP-QCLcBGAs/s1600/DSCN1411.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PO3pksBesyI/WgnVPY8sOMI/AAAAAAAAAME/Q-4dhQUTgZouH7Ch_t2A0Eci-d6lAgP-QCLcBGAs/s320/DSCN1411.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Along the narrow path between our B&B at Burnthwaite
farm and the Wasdale Head Inn, sits tiny St.Olaf’s church, built, so they say,
from Viking ship timbers. In its tiny churchyard enclosed by ancient stone
walls and wind-twisted yews, the tilting grave markers tell a story of mountain
climbing tragedy. This was a tiny detail I’d missed on previous visits.
Re-visiting gave me the chance to delve deeper. Records of deaths on nearby
fells, often of more than one climber at a time, are common, speaking both to
the inherent dangers of the area and the love that people have had for these
hills over the years. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alfred Wainwright, king of the fell-walkers and guide book
writer extraordinaire, once said: “The fleeting hour of life of those who love
the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the
lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the
exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and
find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Edmund Hilary’s team used the ‘exhilarating summits’ to
train for their Everest conquest, and the lobby of the Wasdale Head Inn is a
makeshift museum of hob-nailed boots, climbing axes and frayed ropes. Faded
photos show jaunty Victorians posing on impossible pinnacles like Napes Needle,
tweeds and all. And later, eating in the inn’s pub with climbers from Holland
and Australia, Billy, the wired-haired terrier who regularly goes ‘down the
pub’ on his own, visits our table in search of a handout, unimpressed by
whatever feat of endurance we’d performed that day. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">We’d seen Billy before of course, on previous trips. But on
this return visit, we were starting to feel as through we knew him, just as we
were coming to know the hills. One visit would have never done it for us. Two
even, would not have been nearly enough to start the process of unlocking the
mysteries of Wasdale, of the Cumbrian Mountains’, of northern England, of Billy
the wire-haired terrier.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For some, the travel experience is ten thousand miles wide
and one inch deep, a shopping list accomplished, another day…another flag. I’d
argue for a narrower focus and a deeper, more local experience.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Returning to a familiar spot is less about comfort-zones and
familiarity than you might expect. In fact, taking your exploration to that
next level, past that introductory tour-guide stage and really jumping into the
deep end of intimate, vulnerable contact – that can be the risky sort of travel
that is asks more of you – and ultimately gives more in return.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To paraphrase Muriac: “ ‘Tell me where you travel and I’ll
tell you who you are’. That is true enough but I’d know you better if you told
me where you return to time and time again,”.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And no matter how my aching feet might protest, I know I’ll
be back in a remote pocket of England’s north again, squinting up at the so far
evasive summit of Pillar, reading the clouds, getting to know a beloved place
better and better with each visit.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b><i><u>IF YOU GO</u></i></b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<b><i><u><br /></u></i></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>When To Go:</b> The Lake District is beautiful in its peak
season which runs from late April to early September, and everyone knows it. So
consider visiting outside this period if you can. Prices drop and the crowds
thin in October, just as the best colours come out on the hills, and the trails
are drier underfoot than in spring. The average temperature in October is 9C,
making a pub fire at day’s end just that much more inviting. There are some
quiet lakeside paths in this area, but for the most part, Wasdale is for people
with good hiking boots, all-weather gear and good map-reading skills.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>Sleep:</b> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Burnthwaite B&B is a farmhouse bed & breakfast on a
working National Trust farm at the foot of the best mountains run by Georgina
& Andrew (and Billy the wire-haired terrier). Accommodations, in the 17th
C. farmhouse, are simple and comfortable – geared to walkers and mountain
climbers. The breakfasts are hearty and legendary.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">B&B from £33 per person per night, £38 per person per
night en-suite.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">bookings@burnthwaitefarm.co.uk</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>Getting there:</b> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">A car is essential. There is a good selection of rentals at
Manchester Airport ( we used www.Europcar.com) and then there is a 3 hr drive
to Wasdale. The M6 motorway makes the first 1.5 hrs an easy drive, then the
roads quickly get progressively narrower and twisting as you wind your way up
the western coast of Cumbria and into the mountains. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>Eat:</b> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Burnthwaite farm is just a ten minute walk from the local
pub food and drink served fireside at Ritson's Bar at the Wasdale Head Inn, the
self-proclaimed “Birthplace of British climbing”. The bar, open all day
year-round, is named after the first landlord, Will Ritson - huntsman,
wrestler, farmer, fellsman, guide, raconteur, and the first "World's
Biggest Liar". The Inn also rents rooms in its atmospheric old building at
the foot of Kirk Fell. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">reception@wasdale.com</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">www.wasdale.com</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><i>For the original article, go to:</i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/the-unyielding-call-of-englands-rough-beautiful-lakedistrict/article36891859/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">There and Back Again GLOBE & MAIL</a></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
</div>
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-70717353412707699602017-09-15T18:23:00.000-07:002017-09-15T18:23:54.817-07:00Two Sides of Me - The Jane Austen Motocross Club<br />
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18th, 2017<br />
The Globe and Mail<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7v_hwGmPLeY/Wbx7_a5LVJI/AAAAAAAAALw/5nZOjufJxz0MkVIL8_jlh0bTbhZ0NmzqACLcBGAs/s1600/austenMX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1237" data-original-width="1600" height="306" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7v_hwGmPLeY/Wbx7_a5LVJI/AAAAAAAAALw/5nZOjufJxz0MkVIL8_jlh0bTbhZ0NmzqACLcBGAs/s400/austenMX.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Read it online at:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/im-the-lone-member-of-the-jane-austen-motocross-club-and-proud-of-it/article36261919/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/im-the-lone-member-of-the-jane-austen-motocross-club-and-proud-of-it/article36261919/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&</a><br />
<br />
Or read it here:<br />
<br />
<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
THE JANE AUSTEN MOTOCROSS CLUB</h2>
<b><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></b><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Full disclosure: the Club is not large. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At this point, it has but one member that I
know of.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Me.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But since this year is the 200<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>
anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, now seemed like the time to come out of the
Georgian wardrobe, so to speak. Time to ‘fess up.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I made a Faustian deal with the diabolical powers of
Georgian literature and motorcycle racing in my romantic youth: If I’d not deny
my affection for Miss Austen’s stories, in return I’d live a long life filled
with a lot of good dirt bike riding.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So far I’ve had the long life and the (sometimes painful)
good motocross riding, but I’m having a devil of a time dovetailing it with the
world of 18<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> century English romance.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Its as if I’m afflicted with a strange sort of schizophrenia,
a double life. I’m all Mr.Darcy one day, planting out roses with my daughter,
chuckling at Mr.Collins, watching a re-run of Emma with biscuits and tea.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And then the buttons pop off my silk waistcoat and another
me bursts out, a motocross dark side to the genteel side of light-filled
parlours and country dancing. Motocross, to the uneducated, has nothing at all
to do with Austen’s world of provincial Georgian towns and comedies of manners.
Hers is a world of trivial incidents finely written, quiet conversations in
libraries, <span style="margin: 0px;">heart-to-hearts in dappled orchards.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The motocross world, in apparent
contrast, is a high-revving universe of endurance, fueled by adrenalin,
testosterone and speed. Its a sport on the edge of the extreme sports column,
peopled largely by males preoccupied with flying higher, farther, and faster <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>on the knife edge of control, one bad move
away from an ambulance trip.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Inside my steaming helmet, there is no
internal dialogue on gooseberries, local vicars or matters of the heart. On the
racetrack, things tend to be dog-eat-dog, and as I gain on a Yamaha rider
heading for that double-jump, I find myself paraphrasing Jane as I reel in my opponent:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“In vain I have struggled. It will not
do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how
ardently I want to pass you in a hail of rocks and mud.”</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jane’s world is a gentle one of polite
ladies and rich young suitors. But its also a study in sexual politics, class
and the human heart. Not unlike motocross. (Okay, maybe not the sexual politics
part.) Riding torturous terrain in an adrenalin-fueled rush is to look into your
soul and ask: “What on earth am I doing, at my age, with a family to support?”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Motocross can hurt. It can lead to
intimate acquaintance with unsympathetic chiropractors. It can place one in a social
category far-removed from the finer class of vicars and local gentry-folk. Emma
Woodhouse’s anxious father would never have approved. And yet, after a good day
of near misses, long jumps and bruising laps, I again hear an echo of Pride and
Prejudice as I stand back and admire my mud-caked Honda 450. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“You have bewitched me, body and soul and I
love you. And wish from this day forth never to be parted from you or ever play
golf again.”</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My wife rolls her eyes at this sort of
thing. But she understands. She has come to realize that it should be a truth
universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a Honda CRF450 must be in
want of a good BBC period drama.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bruce Fierstein’s 1982 book “Real Men
Don’t Eat Quiche” was published to great acclaim, selling over 1.6 million
copies. It poked fun at the sensitive new-age man, living an insipid life
marked by an interest in things perceived to be anti-masculine. But Fierstein
missed the mark. Real men eat anything they want (quiche included.) They also
read what they want: books about motocross racing, books about Elizabeth Bennett’s
love life.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m sure there are other men out there,
settling down to a night of Sense and Sensibility and eating quiche while they
Instagram photos of the muddy crash they had last Saturday. Masculine and
feminine <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>don’t have to be slotted so
quickly into time worn pigeon-holes. At the local track last week, a young
woman laid waste to the field of wannabe male racers who could only admire her
skill and speed. She crushed it. I only hope that she pulled off the track and
picked up her copy of Northanger Abbey between motos.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Such men and women can send in their
applications for club membership. The world needs more extreme sports types who
wear waistcoats (or petticoats) and read gentle books about sensitive people.
The broader implications are heartening indeed, especially in this world where
bluster and conflict runs rampant. Imagine a world, for a moment, where riot
police contemplate Fordyce’s sermons on their breaks, where rodeo riders take
harpsichord lessons, where jet fighter pilots practice needlepoint between sorties.
Where’s the downside, dear reader?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As Jane herself once said (and I
paraphrase): “<i><span style="background: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;">The person, be it
gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good lap on the motocross track,
or a good Jane Austen novel, must be intolerably stupid.”</span></i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px 240px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">###</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Gillett</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">September 2017</span></span><span style="margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-89229799238816069262017-03-28T11:21:00.000-07:002017-03-28T11:21:11.481-07:00Ireland’s remote Donegal is the coolest place to visit this summer<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">DONEGAL</span></b><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>(publ. <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/irelands-remote-donegal-is-the-coolest-place-to-visit-thissummer/article34433230/">Globe and Mail Travel section, Tuesday march 28,2017</a> )</i></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dKp2GVRqpbg/WNqogkAsC3I/AAAAAAAAALc/_M8tG5dTYbUdHq_oI52vphWOrjzUiiooQCLcB/s1600/DSCN2040.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dKp2GVRqpbg/WNqogkAsC3I/AAAAAAAAALc/_M8tG5dTYbUdHq_oI52vphWOrjzUiiooQCLcB/s400/DSCN2040.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<h4 style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">D</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">riving the twisting ribbon of asphalt that is Donegal’s
section of the Wild Atlantic Way coastal route, we had a “Cool Moment”, the
first of many in this coolest corner of the coolest place on earth. The Irish
language RTE radio was playing and another heart-stopping vista swung into view
before us, all crashing waves, misted sea stacks</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and foaming surf. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amongst the Irish chatter, the phrase “Yodel
Funk” popped out and, on cue, a funky Gaelic yodeler, backed by a manic tin
whistle, gave us a soundtrack to a day of superlatives.</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We were on a father-daughter road trip, starting in Belfast
where Molly-Claire was living, looping north along the rugged shore of Northern
Ireland and then into the wild west of Donegal, the place that National
Geographic Traveller anointed number one on its “Coolest Places to Visit 2017”
list.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But even before reaching Donegal, we’d compiled our own list
of superlatives.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Hotel Receptionist of
the Year”, “Medium Sized Town of the Year” and the lovely “Loo of the Year” (really?)
to name a few. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Before leaving Belfast, we’d
taken in Titanic Belfast, voted “World’s Leading Tourist Attraction of the
Year”. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Good as it was, you have to wonder: who exactly does this
voting anyway? But there was no dispute in our mind about the National
Geographic’s choice of Donegal as the coolest of the cool, once we got there.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The sun arrived as we did, glinting off the tempestuous Atlantic
which is never far away. The roads narrowed, the traffic dried up and the sheep
multiplied. The road signs were in Irish, this being the main Gaeltachct, (Irish
speaking area) with almost 25%</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">of the
Irish speakers in the country. A point called the Bloody Foreland or </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cnoc Fola</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> (the Hill of Blood) figures prominently
on the map. This is country with a past.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0merOGWPrFw/WNqnJot0rLI/AAAAAAAAALY/XkGWnwUodFw3xojRl8vXntSfpsvAZPL5ACLcB/s1600/MAG%2Bbeach1%2B%25284%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0merOGWPrFw/WNqnJot0rLI/AAAAAAAAALY/XkGWnwUodFw3xojRl8vXntSfpsvAZPL5ACLcB/s320/MAG%2Bbeach1%2B%25284%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Donegal has that faded glory feel to it, and the cottage we
rented near Ardara was a good metaphor for the county itself. Abandoned and a
near ruin, it was found </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">by architectural
historian Dr.Greg Stevenson’s organization, Under The Thatch, which rescues
traditional buildings at risk then rents them out to keep them alive and
thriving. In his book “Traditional Cottages of County Donegal”, he cites the
alarming fact that in 1950 there were 4000 traditional thatched cottages in
Northern Ireland alone, but only 150 in 2005.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This cottage could have suffered a similar fate. But it
survived and, thankfully, it was also too remote to be tarted up and ruined by amateur
renovators. So when it was discovered by Greg, it was the real deal, only in
want of a roof, some plumbing , a kitchen and tender loving care. It is
minimalist chic in a 17</span><sup><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> century sort-of-way, and populated by a
careful selection of folk art antiques. Unsurprisingly, it was named “Best
Holiday Cottage in Ireland” by the Sunday Times. We were seeing a trend.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Greg had mentioned in his page of directions that it would
be rude not to drop by for tea with</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">neighbour Mary Molloy, the cottage house-keeper. So, as we squeezed past
the sheep and made our way to the cottage at the dead end of a road the width
of a hiking path, we stopped in. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“ A lovely girl, you are, Molly-Claire!” she gushed,
bear-hugging my middle child and </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">speaking in exclamation marks. “A credit to
you, David! Oh what a sweet girl!” Mary and Molly-Claire hit it off like a
house on fire, while her husband, the grandly named Columba, sat unmoved at the
kitchen table with a wry expression, </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">unenthused
about our intrusion into his world of big skies and lonely winds.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mary advised us on how to make a turf fire: “Give it air!
Give it time! Be patient and it will warm you nicely!”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thankfully, Molly-Claire didn’t have my Canadian woodsman
pride and actually listened to Mary’s advice. Soon, a night of heavy darkness,
the smell of turf smoke and the sound of gentle rain lulled us into a deep
sleep inside the thick stone walls, our table strewn with maps and books.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aADsKdTpE5Q/WNqmdWRq2wI/AAAAAAAAALQ/sUb6tr6RVMIco80sHWDJyIarH9rm87kBgCLcB/s1600/MAG%2Bbeach%2B1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aADsKdTpE5Q/WNqmdWRq2wI/AAAAAAAAALQ/sUb6tr6RVMIco80sHWDJyIarH9rm87kBgCLcB/s400/MAG%2Bbeach%2B1.JPG" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The morning took us back down the track, through the
majestic Glengesh Pass and into a sea-side world of postcard beauty, the north
Atlantic sunlight throwing a golden glow across a landscape little changed for
eons.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maghera beach was our first surprise. Cresting huge dunes of
sea-grass, we found ourselves totally alone on a pristine white sand beach that
stretched unbroken for a mile along gnarly rock cliffs riddled with caves. “Take
care with the tides! Dear me, they can run in so fast! The caves, oh, frightening!”,
Mary had warned. With one eye on the advancing surf, we ducked low and explored
a deep cave, perhaps the very one that had hidden one hundred of Cromwell’s men
many years ago. (They lit a fire and were soon discovered by their pursuers and
duly slaughtered, save one who hid in a high crevice.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not many miles away as the crow flies, but a good hour as
the winding road goes, we pulled into the tiny carpark at Slieve League, the
highest sea cliffs in Europe. Rising right out of the crashing surf to a height
greater than the CN tower, the cliffs with their colouring of amber, red and
white deserve all the superlatives that can be hurled at them. The rolling
waves arriving from Newfoundland exploded into mist at the bottom and the
clifftops were shrouded in clouds, heightening the majestic mystery of the
whole thing.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5G_IVAFkAa4/WNqm6JXpBQI/AAAAAAAAALU/C_OyJDXqlgE6MxNfqML5j0BiEshXg2fDgCLcB/s1600/CLIFFS%2B2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5G_IVAFkAa4/WNqm6JXpBQI/AAAAAAAAALU/C_OyJDXqlgE6MxNfqML5j0BiEshXg2fDgCLcB/s640/CLIFFS%2B2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is said that one-third of all Ireland can be seen from
the cliff’s summit on a clear day. It is in those other southerly two-thirds
that the biggest tourist contingents congregate, drinking green beer and
loading up on shamrock tea towels. County Kerry is more famous and much busier,
with conga lines of tour buses in summer. County Clare’s Cliffs of Moher are
tiny compared to Slieve League, but much more famous. Dublin, of course,</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">is the go-to cultural bull’s eye. Even Northern
Ireland, with its world-renowned Giant’s Causeway</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(and more recently the World’s Best Tourist
Attraction, Titanic Belfast), siphons the crowds off before they can reach
lonely, remote Donegal.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And therein lies a big part of the county’s charm: </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">true European wilderness with a feeling of the
undiscovered. For now.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A closer look shows that changes are coming to Donegal.
Killybegs harbor is the centre of a booming and expanding fishing trade, the
Aran sweater factory in Ardara</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">is
gearing up for a record-breaking season, and the tea shops are starting to make
excellent flat whites now. Scenes for Star Wars: Episode VIII, were filmed on
the Inishowen Pennisula.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Brexit has brought
a dark cloud of questions about a possible return to the hassle of border
crossings between the Republic and Northern Island. The wider world is
inserting itself into this wild paradise.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And yet Mary Molloy isn’t fazed by these changes, they seem
a </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">world away from her pristine valley.
My daughter, after surviving a teary Donegal goodbye, observed:</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“ Mary</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">doesn’t realize how cool she really </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">is.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Should
be named “Coolest Cottage Housekeeper of The Year”?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">She has to be. She lives in a tiny cottage in the coolest
corner of the coolest place to visit in 2017. She can build a proper turf fire,
and she has Yodel Funk on her Irish radio.</span></div>
- March 2017<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Read the original article on the newspaper's website at : <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/irelands-remote-donegal-is-the-coolest-place-to-visit-thissummer/article34433230/">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/irelands-remote-donegal-is-the-coolest-place-to-visit-thissummer/article34433230/</a>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-54785732332893982032016-06-29T13:22:00.000-07:002016-06-29T13:22:17.524-07:00Why I Prefer To Travel With A Sketchbook
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My son Harry and I had weaseled our way into the cloistered beauty of
Oxford’s Magdalen College on May Morning, a few hours after gathering with
20,000 other revelers to greet the sunrise with a hymn sung from the medieval
tower, a tradition dating back 500 years. The college had sponsored a jolly day
of artistic expression and laid out a banquet of tools for our use: oil
pastels, Staedtler pencils, Winsor and Newton watercolour sets.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We sat on the striped lawn and sketched the arcaded front of the New
Building (c.1733), adding to the plump sketch books we carried everywhere on
this father and son tour of England. Increasingly, our pens and black books
were our go-to recording devices, cameras staying more often in the backpacks.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A window on the second floor had once been C.S. Lewis’s room. I made a
point of detailing the graceful Georgian sash. “You should flog your sketches
to the college,” suggested one observer. But we didn’t: it wasn’t about that.
It was about imprinting the day on our minds and hearts, capturing the moment
with a physical act. Even now, five years later, I can flip open to those pages
and smell the clematis that wound around the solid columns, hear laughter and
the crack of a croquet ball on the lawn behind us, see the radius of the Palladian
arches, feel the warmth of the May morning sun as it fluttered through the
dappled leaves of Oxford. One look at the sketch and it all comes back to life.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sketching allows all this. Drawing is to photography what walking is to
driving: it’s more work, it’s slower, it demands patience and it’s something
we’ve increasingly forgotten how to do. And yet, it pays dividends: The work is
a rewarding pleasure, the pace allows a scene to sink in and be appreciated,
concentration breeds a patient contemplative mind-set … and it’s something that
can be relearned.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And it’s not all about great art, or skill. Drawing is something
everyone can do. I don’t use an eraser or straight edge when I sketch:
misplaced lines, side doodles, quirky shapes are all part of it.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A Princeton study in 2014 demonstrated the advantages of taking notes
long-hand, versus typing them into a laptop: more self-editing and more
emphasis on certain words rather than just a verbatim recording. With
sketching, these same things seem to hold true, and there is more. To sketch a
scene is to truly observe it. As Sherlock said to Dr.Watson: “You see but you
do not observe. The distinction is clear.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That, and the physicality of putting pen to paper. There is a visceral
muscle-and-nerve connection to the scene in front of you when your mind
observes a shape and tells your hand how to bring it to a blank page. There’s a
pleasure in it that gives the intellectual imprint depth and substance. The
wide net of digital point-and-shoot is fine for a quick pass, but it’s largely
a glancing surface treatment and the real work is left to the camera. To sketch
a scene challenges our notions of what really matters as we move through a new
city or react to the beauty of a great, windswept plain.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hq6L7oiCp0c/V3QtdqGXT_I/AAAAAAAAAKk/cLV-AwnlyuQYVRbFKotAwI7c_336yiwnACLcB/s1600/19.3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s heartening to see that sketching is gaining the respect it
deserves. At the Rijksmuseum, an important arts and history museum in the heart
of Amsterdam, visitors are encouraged to put down their selfie-sticks and
cameras and use a sketchbook when they visit the museum’s displays, making
small drawings of sculptures and paintings rather than snapping a photo and
moving along quickly. “In our busy lives we don’t always realize how beautiful
something can be,” Wim Pijbes, the general director of the Rijksmuseum, told
the art blog Colossal. “We forget how to look really closely. Drawing helps
because you see more when you draw.” The story ran with photos from this
experiment showing wide-eyed children gazing at display cases with determined
intensity, pencils poised above sketchpads, fully engaged.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To our three kids, travelling with a sketchbook is not a new concept:
in cafés, museums, parks, sitting on a bus or on the brink of a gorge. Not only
do they seem to gain a bigger appreciation of beauty, they see detail and
nuance, entering into the experience of the place. They’ve been able to be
truly in the moment, rather than living in some strange parallel world of
constant screen time.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hq6L7oiCp0c/V3QtdqGXT_I/AAAAAAAAAKk/cLV-AwnlyuQYVRbFKotAwI7c_336yiwnACLcB/s1600/19.3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hq6L7oiCp0c/V3QtdqGXT_I/AAAAAAAAAKk/cLV-AwnlyuQYVRbFKotAwI7c_336yiwnACLcB/s400/19.3.jpg" width="265" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If this sounds like a Luddite fantasy, then yes, that’s part of it: a
yearning for a pared-down mode of travel, a rejection of the superficial and
instant. Sketching is, by nature, an old-fashioned way of seeing. Kids seem to
understand instinctively.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Recently, in Rome, I set myself a challenge: no cappuccino without at
least a full page in the sketchbook. I haunted the streets of Trastevere and
made a painfully slow progression through the ancient Forum, taking increasing
pleasure in the small moments afforded by sketching little pieces of antiquity,
Ducati motorcycles and crowded markets. On Via Merluna I sat at a red café
table, the foamy cappuccino disappearing from my glass at the same pace that a
sketch of the street scene appeared on my page. The scene was actually pretty
banal; just another street. But as I sketched, it became so much more.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A little crowd, including my excited waiter, gathered around, judging
my vision against what they saw and curious about my approach. They wouldn’t
have stopped for a selfie-stick. I had enough Italian to know that they
approved.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/why-i-prefer-to-travel-with-a-sketchbook-instead-of-a-camera/article30091216/">(Published in the Globe & Mail Newspaper Travel Section, Saturday May 21, 2016)</a></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-size: large;"></span>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-48875845848404076212016-05-11T14:18:00.001-07:002016-05-11T14:18:35.293-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-InWqwZaHz80/VzOhEBV-7yI/AAAAAAAAAKU/vv41UMrYfN4cNOE4_gP9SQU0Tmx9Ky4LgCLcB/s1600/DSCN2267copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-InWqwZaHz80/VzOhEBV-7yI/AAAAAAAAAKU/vv41UMrYfN4cNOE4_gP9SQU0Tmx9Ky4LgCLcB/s640/DSCN2267copy.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />
<i><b>Fiction edition</b></i> Spring 2016 <br />
<a href="http://davidgillettwrites.blogspot.ca/2016/05/roman-sketchbook.html">http://davidgillettwrites.blogspot.ca/2016/05/roman-sketchbook.html</a>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-7613395391289632212016-05-11T14:10:00.000-07:002016-05-11T14:10:28.806-07:00Roman Sketchbook<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IQxbxaPF0g4/VzOec0VH1dI/AAAAAAAAAKI/RcVbG40gec8R8UGgc3KDMrlxnj3xo5RxACLcB/s640/19.3.jpg" width="424" /><a href="http://davidgillettwrites.blogspot.ca/2016/05/roman-sketchbook.html">http://davidgillettwrites.blogspot.ca/2016/05/roman-sketchbook.html</a></blockquote>
<br />
<h3 style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
" Each page was
site-specific, a loosely rendered line drawing of a place and a moment. He
thought often of her as he drew. “The historian in her will love these
drawings” he thought and the thought kept him going as he walked the darkening
streets alone. “She has to love them.” "</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-44693311058690300372016-05-11T13:54:00.001-07:002016-05-11T13:54:14.877-07:00Roman Sketchbook
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">- <a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/OAAQ/OAAQ0116/index.php">PERSPECTIVES Magazine</a> Spring 2016<span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">L</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">eaves slopped
into the gutters and crunched underfoot on the uneven streets of Trastavere.
Night was coming on and the lights of Rome with it. Still no sign of her.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn2FbVT_Feg/VzOZEk3N06I/AAAAAAAAAJs/R0hBTjPVPEMhmr00id35UORZGWwe4vcnACLcB/s1600/DSCN2391.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><div>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn2FbVT_Feg/VzOZEk3N06I/AAAAAAAAAJs/R0hBTjPVPEMhmr00id35UORZGWwe4vcnACLcB/s1600/DSCN2391.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn2FbVT_Feg/VzOZEk3N06I/AAAAAAAAAJs/R0hBTjPVPEMhmr00id35UORZGWwe4vcnACLcB/s1600/DSCN2391.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nn2FbVT_Feg/VzOZEk3N06I/AAAAAAAAAJs/R0hBTjPVPEMhmr00id35UORZGWwe4vcnACLcB/s320/DSCN2391.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">His sketchbook
was filling in nicely. It would be a treasure for him, for his family. An
heirloom for future grandchildren: a Roman Sketchbook. In his mind, he worked
out the graphics for the cover of the published version. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Each page was
site-specific, a loosely rendered line drawing of a place and a moment. He
thought often of her as he drew. “The historian in her will love these
drawings” he thought and the thought kept him going as he walked the darkening
streets alone. “She has to love them.” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Still no sign of
her. “Pick any ancient ruin and I’ll be there,” he’d said. She’d been silent. “Just look for the guy with the sketchbook,
getting all Etruscan,” he’d joked. But maybe she hadn’t looked and maybe she never
would. He didn’t know that she drew a blank on Etruscans. On Romans for that
matter. It wasn’t her era.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">He tried to remember
where they had parted. It had been while sipping prosecco in Pizza di Santa
Maria, hadn’t it? Or maybe it was long before that. He couldn’t remember. “Let’s
split up for a bit and explore,” he’d said, his eye on an architrave.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">She’d looked
tired and hadn’t enjoyed the prosecco, the day or the view, but he hadn’t
noticed that. Her hands were empty and she had a certain look on her face. She’d
walked off without glancing back, down via Della Lungaretta, towards the Tiber.
But his mind’s eye was on a broken pediment, something from 160 BC the
guidebook said.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ixdIJUDUd6A/VzOZqD2h-zI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/ELubpJlhK2U4WaLwiHXZg9jAC38D_gZrACLcB/s1600/DSCN2250.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ixdIJUDUd6A/VzOZqD2h-zI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/ELubpJlhK2U4WaLwiHXZg9jAC38D_gZrACLcB/s320/DSCN2250.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">His phone was
not ringing. The problem with smart phones is that they tie you to other people,
to deadlines, to hassles, to the office. You can’t be in the moment, you can’t
be really present. But he’d take those problems if it meant being tied to her
at this particular moment. She’d stashed her phone because one between them
(just for emergencies and airline check-in) would be enough. His sat like lead
in his pocket, lifeless and refusing to vibrate.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">He took a tiny
street-side table; maybe he could think and try to remember what they’d agreed
upon. “Vino rosso,” he told the waiter who looked impatient and queried him
further: “Red wine? </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> “Yes, si,” he said. “That’s what I was trying
to say. Grazie.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U0JQBsWLKIg/VzOZ-uP7v9I/AAAAAAAAAJ4/rkWRygyPDXQqmZ07J4aE0z0TsEnzWASdQCLcB/s1600/DSCN2267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U0JQBsWLKIg/VzOZ-uP7v9I/AAAAAAAAAJ4/rkWRygyPDXQqmZ07J4aE0z0TsEnzWASdQCLcB/s400/DSCN2267.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">He wasn’t doing
well with his Italian. Or, he thought further, with anything much. His sketches
were actually crap. They were stilted and controlled, scratches on a page. They
were all the same: frozen upper bits of ruined classical architecture. There
was no life in them.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Still no sign of
her.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U0JQBsWLKIg/VzOZ-uP7v9I/AAAAAAAAAJ4/rkWRygyPDXQqmZ07J4aE0z0TsEnzWASdQCLcB/s1600/DSCN2267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It had been
hours now. He couldn’t remember how many. Months really, he mused. Years. He
sipped his wine, thought of the endless pediments he had drawn and how he now
hated them all. They were heavy lumps of stone, burdening him by a gravity
older than Rome. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">He watched the
Trastavere night fold in on itself, and with it his world.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Published in <i>PERSPECTIVES</i> magazine</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Spring 2016 see: http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/OAAQ/OAAQ0116/index.php</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></div>
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-32805381493050211652016-02-05T17:00:00.001-08:002016-02-05T17:00:57.176-08:00<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: x-large;">A<strong> <span style="color: yellow;">DIVINE </span></strong>CIRCUMVENTION</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Stay in a spectacular monastery in Venice for what you can afford</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B-6Bl8avDwI/VrVDJgXycbI/AAAAAAAAAJY/HFjQIsOVQbQ/s1600/venic%2Bpaper.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B-6Bl8avDwI/VrVDJgXycbI/AAAAAAAAAJY/HFjQIsOVQbQ/s400/venic%2Bpaper.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author's sketch from his balcony overlooking Piazza San Marco, Venice</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
DAVID GILLETT, VENICE — Contributed to The Globe and Mail<br />Published in print Saturday January 30, 2016 On line Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 12:16PM EST<br />
<br /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The curious instruction that bookings could only be made by fax should have been our first clue.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
Our stay at the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice would be one to remember, akin to sleeping in the quiet eye of a tourism hurricane. And when I asked Dom Paulo, who met us at the thick oaken door in his brown monk’s habit, how much they might expect us to pay for a night’s stay, he bowed ever so slightly and replied: “As you wish.”<br />
San Giorgio is one of the world’s longest continually operating Benedictine abbey, offering hospitality in this location since 982. It sits on a tiny island of its own directly across the Giudecca Canal from the famous square Napoleon is said to have dubbed Europe’s drawing room, the iconic Piazza San Marco. It has unparalleled views of this mother-of-all tourist draws, one it shares with the exclusive Belmond Hotel Cipriani on an island next door, scene of George and Amal Clooney’s wedding party. But rooms with a view at the Cip start at an eye-watering €1,650 (more than $2,500) a night. Our room? About €1,600 less, plus we had a hands-down better view from our first-floor balcony. And no zoom-lens paparazzi.<br />
That master of Renaissance architecture, Andrea Palladio, designed what would become arguably his finest church in 1565. It is a cool, neo-classical dream in this very un-Italian city where ancient Oriental and Gothic architectures collide in a tumbling cascade of competing styles. Like a marble escarpment of pediments and pilasters, the church is the prow of a much larger ship that is the Monastery of San Giorgio, occupying most of the island with its cloistered mystery. Our private room, one of only five in the monastery’s hostel, was suitably spartan, with two single beds, a crucifix, a desk and a book for our reading pleasure: The Rule of St. Benedict. The floors were terrazzo, the ensuite bathroom was well equipped with shower and bidet and a large antique armoire served as a closet. This was not Cipriani luxe by any means, but spacious enough, cool and quiet; a room for contemplation and rest. It is also an undiscovered gem: During our five-night stay, we met only two other guests, and the hallways echoed with an eerie silence late at night, broken only by the sound of lapping waves and the occasional passing boat. It felt like a world apart – dreamlike. One morning, we flung back our wooden shutters and strolled out onto the balcony to find our building the subject for a group of painters from Florence – that is an experience not to be missed.<br />
But this oasis of calm sits uneasily in a city that is a victim of its own success, a place literally sinking under the weight of an estimated 22 million yearly visitors. Massive cruise ships deposit as many 30,000 tourists daily at the height of the season, causing Silvio Testa, spokesman for Venice’s anti-cruise ship campaign to say a few years ago, “The beauty of Venice is undoubted, but the city pays for it like a prostitute that is too beautiful.”<br />
Tourists outnumber Venetians by a ratio of 20-1 in high season, and the locals (an ever-dwindling population), grumble. But this is Venice, the Serene Republic, a city thick with art treasures; a city without cars, floating like a vision upon the Venetian Lagoon, supported by wooden piles made from millions of dead trees, pounded deep into the silt. So to discover this quiet place, one designed for contemplation and yet so close to the centre of action, is extraordinary. I spent an afternoon just sketching, drinking in the atmosphere and the surreal watery light of Venice. In the hushed nave of the church itself, a contemporary sculpture exhibition (part of the Venice Art Biennale) brought the ultramodern into the womb of the sacred and serene. Outside, attached to the church, is a bell tower that seems yet to have been discovered by tour guides, strikingly devoid of lineups for the quick elevator ride to its top. It offers breathtaking views out over Venice, the Lido and the Dolomite mountains that loom in the mainland distance. Unreal.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2evRrphfMM/VrVDYco9LhI/AAAAAAAAAJc/OZALmswqZRo/s1600/DSCN1529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A2evRrphfMM/VrVDYco9LhI/AAAAAAAAAJc/OZALmswqZRo/s400/DSCN1529.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The writer's wife approaches the Monastery beside Palladio's Church</strong></td></tr>
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Food in the monastery is strictly DIY. (The monks keep to themselves and eat elsewhere.) A tiny refectory kitchen, stocked with basics such as dried pasta and olive oil, is available 24/7 if you are attempting Europe on €10 a day. The guest book tells of visitors from all corners of the globe who have cooked up their own Italian feasts, which can be eaten in an adjoining barrel-vaulted dining room, hung with portraits of eminent Benedictines. But the Venice of restaurants and cafés is temptingly close, so when it beckoned, we waited at the Giorgio vaporetto (waterbus) stop at the monastery steps for a quick ride to the action. We could take the No. 2 water taxi in one direction to the James Bond-movie set world of San Marco with its inflated prices, Prada shops and trinket hawkers, or in the other direction to the Zattere promenade and the much more interesting and less crowded Dorsoduro precinct with its crooked calli (alleyways) and hidden campis (squares).<br />
In the maze of Dorsoduro, cozy restaurants, often with canal-side tables, abound. Fresh seafood is never hard to find. Al Casin dei Nobili, a lovely trattoria just off Campo San Barnaba, serves a mouth-watering tagliatelle with Adriatic shrimp in a nonna-friendly setting. Or just across the campi, beside the Ponte dei Pugni (Bridge of Fists) and next to one of the last fresh produce barges in Venice, which serves as a floating open-air fresh food market, is Pasta & Sugo. This restaurant is a welcome departure from touristy and overpriced “Olde Worlde” eateries with its bright, contemporary interior and menu of Italian street food. Mix and match the pasta of your choice with one of the mouth-watering ragus prepared at the open kitchen counter. A plate of pasta and glass of wine for a mere €8 ($12)? The city that invented inflated prices still has its bargains.<br />
In the 1972 novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer, describes the many cities he has seen to a mesmerized Kublai Khan. But in fact, every city he described was actually Venice. It is still like that, a city that is the compact culmination of a thousand years of explosive creativity, a city with a thousand faces. And, in one quiet corner, still available to contemplative visitors, a city of dreamlike peace.<br />
Our no-strings-attached monastery stay was refreshing and inexpensive. One does not have to be devout, or even male, to stay in one of the high-ceilinged rooms, or sit quietly in the shadowed church and drink in the ancient music of echoing chants. But a hunger for peace and quiet in the eye of the Venetian storm is a must. That, and a fax machine.<br />
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">If you go</span> </em></strong><br />
<strong><em></em></strong><br />
Venice is always busy, but the summer months of July and August are the worst and best avoided if possible. We went in October and had nice weather, fewer crowds and plenty of restaurant choice. If you avoid the crowds at the Rialto Bridge and Piazza san Marco, you can even find some deserted squares and quiet alleyways.<br />
<strong>Getting there</strong><br />
Fly into Frankfurt and then to the compact Marco Polo Airport. From there it’s a quick bus ride out to the main island of Venice via the causeway, but take the Alilaguna water bus if you’ve never been. Arriving by water is the only way to approach the city for the first time. E-mail <a href="mailto:info@alilaguna.it">info@alilaguna.it</a>.<br />
<strong>Getting around</strong><br />
Since Venice is made up of more than 100 islands, ACTV, the public-transportation authority, operates vaporetti and other water buses around the clock, with routes that extend out to many of the islands of the Venetian Lagoon. A single trip is expensive at €7.50 ($11.50), but a three-day travel card for €40 is a great deal, and you’ll use it a lot.<br />
<strong>The monastery</strong><br />
Inquire about a room by sending a fax to 39-041-520-6579. Or try calling calling 39-041-241-4717. The monastery has no e-mail or website. The monks offer rooms as part of their mission, so make a cash offerta of what you can afford upon leaving.<br />
When you arrive on the main island of Venice, take vaporetto No. 2 along the Grand Canal to the San Giorgio stop (one past St. Mark’s Square). When you arrive, ring a buzzer marked Monaci Benedittine (Benedictine monks) on the heavy door to the right of Palladio’s church. There’s no checking in; you will simply be led by a monk up some worn stone steps to your quiet room. Rooms have no telephones, TVs or WiFi.<br />
<br />
(Online see: <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/venice-from-the-peaceful-balcony-of-an-island-monastery/article28431174/">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/venice-from-the-peaceful-balcony-of-an-island-monastery/article28431174/</a> ) or Google <em>David Gillett Venice</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Domini Clark - Travel Editor</em>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-16265486675509237942015-10-28T09:06:00.001-07:002015-10-28T09:06:44.672-07:00AN ANCIENT SAXON CHURCH<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
little Wiltshire town of Bradford On Avon is considered by some to be the most
picturesque in England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe. But the day we visited was cool and wet</span>, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a
darkening sky rendering the narrow streets lanes of despair, relieved only by
the ubiquitous tea rooms awaiting the bus tours that , on this particular
October day, stayed away in droves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Undaunted, my Medievalist wife, Katy,
had somehow convinced her husband and three young children to forgo the
crescents of Bath for an afternoon and search instead for the tiny Saxon church
of St.Laurence built by St.Aldhelm at the turn of the 8<sup>th</sup> century.
Lost for centuries, the small church served as a school, a house and then a
warehouse before its resurrection in 1856 by a local curate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Sheltering from the rain, we
found it permeated by gloom, cave-like. It exuded age, the most thoroughly
ancient building we’d encountered so far on a month’s sojourn in England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My four year old daughter, Molly
Claire, her eyes adjusting to the dim light, responded to the architecture of
the tiny chancel by singing, her plaid skirt swinging as see twirled, lost in
the mystery of the place. She was alone in a circle of sound that reverberated
off the aged stone walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Maybe it was a good thing St.Laurence
was lost for a thousand years, consumed by the organic build up of the town around it. It survived
with its soul intact never having suffered alteration, its spare interior
imbued with atmosphere, “whispering”, as Mathew Arnold said of nearby Oxford “the last enchantments of the Middle Age” .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Carved angels above us on a
striking Saxon arch, we watched silently from the side stalls as Molly Claire’s
voice rose and lost itself in the echoing shadows amongst the ancient oak black
with years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No one had told her to sing, but
the building suggested it and she heeded. She sang the only song that somehow
seem appropriate, an old Victorian hymn her grandmother had used to lull her to
sleep: “This Is My Father’s World”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <i>“All nature sings<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And
round me rings<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The
music of the spheres”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> </i>I
kind of doubt she grasped the meaning of the words, if indeed that even
mattered. But I’m certain she did sense that some magic was happening, that the architecture had elicited something
from her that was real, and spiritual and beautiful. The notes she sang rose and joined the myriad
others, notes from 8<sup>th</sup> century voices and a million songs and latin
chants since then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She
joined in and became part of something that day, like a part of the building’s
very architectural fabric. Her response to the spirit of the place and
the built form of the room were nothing short of exactly right. And really, she
had such a cute little voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-David Gillett<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(First published in PERSPECTIVES magazine, Fall 2015)</span></i></div>
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David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-64131231124344402472015-05-27T13:29:00.000-07:002015-05-27T13:29:06.380-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-8909602229016993912015-05-27T11:52:00.000-07:002015-05-27T11:52:57.620-07:00<h2>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Letters to
An Aspiring Architect</span></span></h2>
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I was
where you were once, on the cusp of something really exciting, really big,
really intimidating. I had my own
preconceptions and misconceptions, hopes, dreams and fears, and maybe I still
do. There are a hundred things I’d tell my younger self, but I’ll begin with
just three:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i> Put that joy to work.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Get your hands dirty.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Look, look, look.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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You are
heading this way not because you see architecture as a path to riches. You’re
smarter than that. But you think you can make a living doing something you
love; creating space, shaping community, building beautiful places.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To
begin with, design excites you and the prospect of dreaming it, planning it and
seeing it built brings you a deep kind of joy. Hold onto that – keep that alive
as you study the art form, as you learn the business, as you collaborate with
others who may (or may not) have that spark in them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nUrfIjtbNio/VWYQ5b1V6lI/AAAAAAAAAII/tbTsKekmCro/s1600/COVER%2BperspectivesSpring2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nUrfIjtbNio/VWYQ5b1V6lI/AAAAAAAAAII/tbTsKekmCro/s640/COVER%2BperspectivesSpring2015.jpg" width="491" /></a> Nurture
your joy by living a life, not just doing a job. Get involved in the community.
Get to know and care about those clients and learn about their life. Study the
ways of the city you live in. Truly become a citizen. And then the good design
you produce will bring joy to you, just as it does to those who commissioned
it. Design for fun. Draw for pleasure. Don’t let deadlines and building codes
deaden your curiosity and smother your enthusiasm.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Secondly,
always have a bit of dirt under your finger nails. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite
the comforting illusion that buildings are isolated forms on a screen in front
of you, the reality is very much about weather, concrete strength, square
corners and good drainage. There is nothing that can replace or replicate time
spent on a construction site. And once on that site, there is nothing more
instructive than climbing a ladder, nailing down shingles, cutting rafter
angles, towelling concrete ...doing the coffee run for a bunch of fellow
builders.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It will
pay off in the way you detail your buildings, in your understanding of the
sequence of construction. Perhaps even
more importantly you’ll have empathy for the people who construct your designs
and an understanding of what is most important to them (and it likely won’t be
your design theory but rather the accuracy of your dimensions). And when you eventually arrive on site as the
designer, smack in the middle of the noise and mayhem of construction, you’ll
be at home and have some real
credibility. Maybe even respect. And
you’ll have a chance to wear that ancient mantle of Master Builder and deserve
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p> Lastly,
look around you. Look at the pavement you walk on, the alleyways and broad
avenues of the city you live in. Look at the ancient world where it all started
and those places where great architecture has transformed lives, brought joy
and created a culture.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Don’t
just <i>see</i>, but truly <i>observe</i>, as Sherlock Holmes would say.
Pick apart the proportions of that temple. Think about why that great room feels
so right to you. Is it the light? The
height of the ceiling? The sound of your feet as you walk through it?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Travel
as much as you can. Around the block, across the city, across the country and around the world if you can. There is so much
to see, so much to absorb. And take a sketch book with you. Make that
hand-eye-brain connection and stretch lines out across the page. Document the
things that seem to work, feel those superb proportions through your
fingertips. I had a professor who always carried a tiny 10’ tape measure in his
pocket and wasn’t shy about pulling it out to measure the ideal doorway, the
perfect chair or the magnificent proportions of a lovely archway. He had a
whole notebook full of little dimensioned sketches, and he used them everyday
while designing.<br />
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Don’t
worry that your first job might have you reading Building Codes and detailing
stairways in hospitals. The Parthenon can teach you, an ancient cottage can
speak to something deeper than those things, the width of a perfect street will
stay with you ...and you’ll use all this knowledge someday. You will.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To be a
good architect you need to be a great observer, a competent builder, a person
who thrills to good design. But the
tyranny of the urgent will try to subvert all this and soon you’ll only see
balance sheets, deadlines and the wolf at the door. That’s reality.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the
reality is also that you have chosen the path of design, of creation. Use that
creative spark to keep the main things the main things. Stick with your gut
instincts, push for that excellent design, stay true to the things that
attracted you to this life in the first place. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;">David Gillett Published in <i><b>PERSPECTIVES MAGAZINE </b></i>Spring 2015</span></div>
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David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-65951189550518635262014-04-25T13:19:00.000-07:002014-04-25T13:19:08.075-07:00
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #b45f06; font-size: large;">FIRMNESS, COMMODITY & DELIGHT</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #b45f06;">
A story of Venice and the New Georgian Era</span></h3>
<h4>
First published in Perspectives Magazine Spring 2014 edition and in the new Perspectives Anthology book</h4>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The sirens had sounded early in the morning
signalling the impending <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aqua alta</i>,
and he’d put his wellies on just in case. He’d been on Accedemia Bridge when
the Vaporetto loudspeakers gave the general evacuation order in four languages.
A group of giddy art students from Prague left the dry arch of the bridge onboard
a garbage scow, plastic bags taped over their shoes. They’d implored him to
join them. He declined, waved, and smiled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The water was now almost
a metre high on the palazzo walls, and rising as twilight fell. Fish from the
Adriatic were already exploring new avenues through the cafes of Piazza San
Marco, coursing through emptied jewelry cases, hovering above upturned chairs
in the squares of Venice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The sky was growing
angry again and it would soon start raining. It was only going to get worse:
the confluence of extreme high tide and record rainfall. Was this how it ended?
Not with a bang but a splutter? George flipped the page in his journal and
started another sketch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UC0bm2ILEn0/U1q_hjJDpPI/AAAAAAAAAHg/7AJqiLbsTk0/s1600/Scan10735.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UC0bm2ILEn0/U1q_hjJDpPI/AAAAAAAAAHg/7AJqiLbsTk0/s1600/Scan10735.JPG" height="400" width="331" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Like many men his age, George, had been born the
same year as the British prince and then named after him. He’d hated his name
as a child; it mocked him from check-out line tabloids and celebrity hoopla.
But it grew on him and he grew into it: a solid, old-fashioned name. There were
three Georges in his final year at architecture school. The other two were more
serious than he was, and maybe more talented, but they became a brotherhood of
sorts and eventually formed a partnership: George<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">3</span></sup> Architecture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">George<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">3 </span></sup><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>made a name for itself landing a plum
commission as the designers of Ikea’s new line of flat-pack houses. They were
the go-to firm for plug-and-play country houses and George would sometimes even
co-pilot the helicopters that delivered the injection-moulded creations to
sites in the hills north of the city. It all had an envigorating Brave New
World feel to it and the partners of George<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">3 </span></sup>were riding the wave of
success. They drank Manitoba Merlot and joked about the coming of the New
Georgian Era.<sup><o:p></o:p></sup></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">More suddenly than anyone had predicted, the
downturn morphed into the biggest recession in decades. The plastics
disappeared with the oil and work dried up overnight. Despite their efforts to
save it, George<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">3</span></sup> dissolved and, as the three Georges raised a
farewell glass, the tractors carted off their mobile office. The property was
quickly put under the plow for a new urban field of engineered canola.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">George called in some
favours and finally found a position with a skyscraper demolition firm in
Toronto. He read and interpreted the old plans and charted strategies for
pulling down crumbling 50-storey liabilities, relics of the heyday of the
high-rise. Faded paper drawings cluttered his desk. He loved the line work, the
cross-hatching, the deft hand of the twentieth century architects. It was all
hieroglyphics to the technicians, adept as they were at animated hologram
presentations and 3D printing suites, but to George the drawings were a link to
a golden age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">He papered the galley
of his wedge-plan condo with old vellums of foundation details and side
elevations. He became a minor authority on traditional drafting techniques of
the late twentieth century, amassing a collection that read like the DNA of
Canadian Architecture. His drawn records were often all that remained of
buildings that were largely forgotten. An exhibition at the AGO followed. And
then, as he entered his fiftieth year, he was asked to curate the Canadian
Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Borrowing from Vitruvius, he’d named the show “Firmness,
Commodity and Delight: The Legacy of Architectural Drawing in Canada.” Archives
had opened for him, rare drawings arrived by courier, foam-core models in
crates. Old architects who had practised back in the 2020s and even earlier
sent him hard-copy gems from their files. Using these curious old tools –
models and drawings – George and his team put the raw seeds of his country’s
built legacy on display for the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The newly crowned
King, just turned fifty himself, was slated to open the British Pavilion and
tour Canada’s show. George would meet George.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The king was
architecture savvy as his grandfather Charles had been. He’d studied under Zaha
Hadid’s daughter at Cambridge, campaigned for brownfield development, given
lectures at the RIBA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">After the coronation, Neo-Georgian
Architecture became the style-du-jour. Columns and pediments adorned re-charge
stations along the Western Ontario Beltway. There was the usual righteous
backlash by architects, but at least architecture was in the press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">King George was slated
to visit the Canadian pavilion and review the legacy exhibition. As curator,
George hoped he’d have a chance for a bit of royal small talk, maybe compare
notes on their common first name. Could you ask a king for an autograph?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But that was before
the most relentless <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scirocco</i> in
history started to pound the Venetian lagoon from the southeast. The Moses
flood defense system, which had worked for the first half of the century, was
overwhelmed. No one had predicted this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Biennale district
was flooded and evacuated before the exhibition could be dismantled. There
would be no opening ceremonies, no king, no autographs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">George stood on Accademia Bridge, looking east along
the Grand Canal. An exodus of boats and barges streamed below him, a parade no
one had ever wanted, heading for higher ground on mainland. The water rose so
fast he could follow its progress up the facades of the ancient palazzi,
drowning pilasters and pediments. George ignored orders from a passing fireboat
to leave the bridge. He waved them on and they yelled something frantic in
Italian, leaving him alone in the centre of the arch which now sprang from a
turbulent urban sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The invading waters
now lapped the tops of the ground floor windows, still rising. The twinkling
lights of the Jewel of Adriatic went dark as the power grid finally gave out,
sparking and fizzling into oblivion. George gripped his pencil tightly in a
shaky hand. In the dim twilight he kept drawing, as if he could somehow hold
back the water by recording things as they had always been: architecture as
frozen music: firm, commodious, delightful – and immovable. But the Venice he’d
known, the architecture the world had treasured, died quickly into darkness,
wrapped in a mist of hissing rain and wind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In the Arsenalle district, the old boatbuilding
precinct where the architecture biennale was held, a new sort of procession was
setting out to sea. Curled vellum drawings inscribed with the patterns of a
thousand buildings spun slowly in the swirling eddies, taking a whole world to
the bottom of the lagoon. Flotillas of white models drifted past, upturned
modern villas, capsized works in progress, unbuilt cities of the future now
destined for sodden graves. Venice had finally sunk below the waves – The
Serene Republic, home to the last Architecture Biennale, submerged for the
final time.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It was a show no one would ever see, not even the
King, whose schedule was once again thrown into disarray by a wild world of
extreme weather. And thus began the new Georgian Era.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/OAAQ/OAAQ0114/index.php?startid=14#/28">See the published article in Perspectives digital edition: </a><u><span style="color: #0066cc;"><a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/OAAQ/OAAQ0114/index.php?startid=14#/28">http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/OAAQ/OAAQ0114/index.php?startid=14#/28</a></span></u>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-61488872374803908792014-01-27T05:53:00.000-08:002014-01-27T05:53:09.177-08:00London,Oxford,Sam & Me
<br />
<h3>
Travelling with an architects' eye (and a baby)</h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aHd8ffeZkQw/UuZjJEZOJII/AAAAAAAAAG8/s1Erz8Aozhw/s1600/Scan10349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aHd8ffeZkQw/UuZjJEZOJII/AAAAAAAAAG8/s1Erz8Aozhw/s1600/Scan10349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><h2>
<img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aHd8ffeZkQw/UuZjJEZOJII/AAAAAAAAAG8/s1Erz8Aozhw/s1600/Scan10349.jpg" height="400" width="305" /></h2>
</a><br />
We knew not what to expect, my
wife and I, when we set off for six long weeks of trekking around England. We'd
been there before, but then it was just the two of us, a bit of loose change
and an architecture guide book. This time, it would be an autumn trip with
three children in tow, all under 9, (which meant six extra backpacks, a baby
seat, a stroller, and enough gummy bears to drive toothpaste shares through the
roof.) And as with the English weather, we had no way of predicting if things
would be fair or foul, stormy or calm.
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Yet we were fairly certain of
one thing at least: Samuel would make life difficult for us. Sam is 2.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Nothing wrong with 2, of course;
some of our nicest friends had once been 2. But Sam, being 2 and proud of it,
was out to undo what he could of our adventure. He had just learned to run
(sideways), was long overdue for some sort of life-threatening sickness
(probably Ebola), and was developing an alarming fondness for anything edible
(and sugar-coated) or toylike (and plastic-coated).</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Well-meaning but heartless
friends had smiled weakly and suggested meekly that perhaps we should consider
leaving Sam at home. Rumour had it that we were taking nannies in sufficient
numbers to post a round-the-clock watch on him and his habits of mass destruction.
Yet in the end, we went it alone, ready to take whatever he could throw at us.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
What he did throw at us (apart
from masticated gummy bears and half-empty bottles of HP sauce) was the chance
to take stock and ask some slow-motion questions of ourselves. Did we really
need to travel at that old hectic pace, cameras blazing? Did two cities in one
day mean as much as one city in two weeks? Were frantic flybys as rewarding as
measured contemplation?</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Sam was a bear without his
afternoon nap, and it soon became painfully apparent that we'd either have to
sit inside every afternoon, losing the best part of a day’s exploration, or
he'd have to sleep while we explored. The choice was between Simmering
Frustration (and British soap operas) or Travels With The Amazing Sleeping
Baby. We opted for the latter.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
We went on tour, baby Sam and I,
during the afternoons. While Katy took Harry and Molly on adventures in search
of dragons and elves, I pushed him in a peaceful sleep-walk through the
landscapes of my own Grand Tour.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
I'd been to Bath before and
marched through its crescents and squares like any duty-bound student of
architecture, but this time it was different. My pace was slow and the rhythm
of my walking was measured, thoughtful. Sam slept in tranquil oblivion beneath
his horsey-blanket, Curious George next to his blushed cheek. At such a pace,
the nuance of the honey-coloured stone wasn't lost on me, and hardly a doorway
in John Wood's Royal Crescent escaped detailed analysis.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
I studied the serene Georgian
proportion in complete silence under the October sky, walked the leaf-strewn
side streets, chatted in hushed tones with doormen, followed the movements of
the clouds as they hurried towards winter.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
It soon became a habit, these
afternoon strolls; quiet, thoughtful, introspective. Strolls that would once
have been frustrated aggravation became walks of discovery. I began to see just
how much I'd been missing. The tour books had lied: a city a day? Walking tours
that cover the centre of Oxford in just two hours? Sam and I spent as much time
just crunching through the russet leaves of a deserted<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Botanical Garden, the shadows of Magdalen
College growing long beside us. Nothing could give one the sense of quiet
contemplation that can be achieved at the controls of a stroller filled with a
sleeping two year old.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
With time to observe, my pencil
and sketchbook came back into play. On the banks of the Cherwell, punters
passed silently as under the blankets, Sam sailed on plush waves to the land of
nod, sung to sleep by the ancient stones around him that "whispered"
as Matthew Arnold put it, "the last enchantments of the Middle Ages."</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Weeks of such afternoons passed,
the stroller wheels showing their age, axles squeaking. We passed through
villages and small towns, ruined abbeys and walled gardens and arrived finally
in the hectic bulls-eye of action: London.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
We studied the vanguard of
modern London’s construction boom, circled the Great Court of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>British Museum for an hour, studying details,
soaking in the freedom of a slowed pace. We walked the paths of Regent's Park
on a lazy Sunday afternoon, avoiding impromptu football games by a safe margin,
lightly crossing the cobbles, greatly enjoying tranquility in the centre of the
metropolis.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
It would never have been like
this without Sam and his annoying <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>need
for an afternoon nap. I would never have slowed to this pace without the pace
of a slumbering child to slow me. I wouldn't have noticed the frozen angels in
the cathedral close in Salisbury without him, or had time to solve the maze at
Hampton Court (twice). Instead, I would have rushed headlong, striking names
from the list I had mentally prepared back in architecture school. Shooting
photos, marching through history, missing the minute details, the quiet lanes,
the glories of an architecture that took time to absorb.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
“Even sleepers are workers and
collaborators in what goes on in the universe”, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>said Heraclitus in 500 BC. Heraclitus knew his
babies, I'd say.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36pt;">
Katy and I had given our family
a six-week trek through the heart of an autumnal England. Sam, his little
blonde head oblivious to it all, had given the subtle shading of the ancient
stones back to me.</div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 15;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>***<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Originally published in the<strong><em> Globe & Mail</em></strong> and in <strong><em>PERSPECTIVES</em></strong> mag.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">David
Gillett<o:p></o:p></span></div>
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-39722804320601124352013-11-11T05:59:00.002-08:002013-11-11T05:59:41.793-08:00Walking The Wild Lands<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 19.45pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Published in the <strong>GLOBE AND MAIL TRAVEL SECTION</strong> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">NOVEMBER 2.2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Ominous
storm clouds framing her jolly face</span>, Mary Whistance offered us some pre-walk
advice in her cheery Welsh lilt: “Tomorrow is the best day of the whole trail.
Hergest Ridge is a right lovely walk. Steep though. And if a storm comes on,
you’re in for it. A walker died up there last month, so he did. Poor lad, a boy
and a half he was! Three days before they found him.” Her smile fizzled when
she stole a furtive glance at the brooding sky.<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">It was the third day of our 136-kilometre walk north along the Offa's Dyke Path, which loosely follows the Welsh/English border. While we ate our Welsh fry-up breakfast ("Job done tidy! You slaughtered those sausages , you did!") Mary's warning added fuel to the theory forming in my mind: Nothing on this long-distance path is as it first appears. This is a land of mist and magic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">The Offa’s Dyke Path is named
after King Offa of Mercia who, in the 8th century, built the dyke as a sort of
poor man’s Hadrian Wall to keep the marauding Welsh mountain men at bay.
Zig-zagging from Chepstow in the south on the Bristol Channel, north to
Prestatyn on the Irish Sea, it is sometimes a great bank up to almost eight metres
high with a deep ditch to the westerly Welsh side. It is a fascinating raison
d’être for a National Trail: a route that follows a engineered landscape rather
than a geographic feature such as mountains or a coast line.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">That does not mean the path<i>,
Llwydr Clawdd Offa</i> in Welsh is an easy stroll through a bucolic British
postcard. To be sure, it has its moments of breathtaking views across lush
green valleys dotted with remote villages, hills rolling off into the distance.
But once up close and personal, the green hills are two-hour uphill slogs
littered with climbs over countless styles,//what do you mean by this?/// the
path itself strewn with ankle-twisting rocks or mud the consistency of
sticky-toffee pudding. It is wild country, this border land known as the Welsh
marches, home to centuries of raids, skirmishes and midnight sheep-stealing.
Fortunately, the wild is tempered by the homey pubs and friendly B&Bs
spaced at walkable intervals.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">My wife and I had chosen to do
the southern portion of the path – considered by many to be the best half –
from Chepstow to Knighton, a doable six-day walk. (Those wishing to do the
whole 285 kilometres should allow at least 12 days with rest time added.)</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Since it was mid-September, we’d
prepared well for rain but soon learned that British weather reports are
notoriously pessimistic and usually wrong. Every night we’d hear rumblings at
the pub and earnest predictions on the BBC: tomorrow will be wet, windy and
turning cold.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">But our heavy rain pants and
ponchos stayed in our packs and we went digging for sunblock instead.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">As Mary had warned, it was just
as well. Several sections of the path are well above 500 metres, and what can
be an annoying breezy rain in town can be deadly on the heights of the lonely
Black Mountain Moors.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">We learned quickly that the path
is a smorgasbord of variety. One moment, it traverses a cool, wooded ridge high
above the Wye Valley. The next it drops down and passes the magnificent ruins
of Tintern Abbey, founded by hardy Cistercian monks in 1131. A few miles later,
it crosses a cast-iron bridge, built at the smokey heights of the Industrial
Revolution, when the Welsh Hills were ravaged for coal and slate. Then it’s
through a lonely windswept moor with distant views west to Brecon Beacons and
east to the Malvern Hills, mountain sheep our only company.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Some days we’d never meet another
soul for hours, leading to suspicions that the Offa’s Dyke is Britain’s
best-kept long-distance hiking secret. But just as the changeable weather was
never predictable, suddenly a bustling town would unfold in front of us.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Two hours after a knee-popping
descent from the desolate heights of Hay Bluff in the Black Mountains, where on
a clear day one is treated to a good view of magnificent Lord Hereford’s Knob,
the path bisects the town of Hay-on-Wye. We made straight for the Granary Cafe
for two bowls of organic Gooseberry crumble and coffee.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">“Something really smells in
here,” said Katy, tactfully surveying the room.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">“Yea. Us.”</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">But sheep dung and mud is a
ho-hum reality in Hay, famous for its 30 bookshops – including the Murder and
Mayhem Bookshop, the Poetry Bookshop and the Sensible Bookshop – the popular
Hay Festival and Richard Booth, the self-styled king of Hay, who lives in the
castle surrounded by groaning shelves of ancient books and notices brashly proclaiming
political independence from Britain. We’d scheduled a rest day here and it was
worth it. For a couple of Canadian bibliophiles, Hay-on-Wye, the world’s first self-proclaimed
“book town,” was bittersweet: So many books, but no way to carry them.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">It was good we didn’t try, since
the next day, our second last, was a gruelling 27 kilometres up and down over
some of the most heart-stoppingly picturesque A.E. Housman countryside
imaginable, liberally strafed with more than fifty stiles, a few questioning
bulls, a fierce (but muzzled!) Rottweiler and hundreds of sheep.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">The last night, tired but
unbowed, we reached the comfy, isolated hill town of Knighton, the official end
of the south half, start point for the wilder northern section and home to the
Offa Dyke Centre with T-shirts, books and strange King Offa mannequins.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Staying with the Sharatts, who
had a cozy sitting room well-stocked with maps and trail guides, was a fitting
end to our trek. Not only did Pat tackle our long overdue laundry, but Geoff
was a fount of helpful advice and knowledgeable comment.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">“Too bad you’re ending it here,”
he said in an enthusiastic lilt. “Because tomorrow’s stretch is the best part
of the walk: most variety, best scenery … and toughest. Steep too. If the weather
comes, you’re in for it.”</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Now, where had we heard that
before?</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">IF YOU GO</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">The Offa’s Dyke Path is rated “hard,” and is best suited to experienced
hikers with proper gear. It can be walked in either direction, but is usually
done south to north, so the sun and wind will be mostly at your back. The trail
is generally well marked, with white acorn symbols indicating the route. But in
many places, especially in rain and fog, it is easy to lose your way. Carry a
good set of maps and a compass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Getting there:</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Buses run daily to Chepstow, the southern start point, from London’s
Gatwick and Heathrow airports. nationalexpress.com Train service to Chepstow is
also good, typically running through Newport.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><a href="http://nationalrail.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">nationalrail.co.uk</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">When to go:</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">The trail can be walked any time, but prime season is April to October.
(In the off season, accommodations will be harder to find.) In spring, the days
are longer and sometimes a bit wetter. The fall is a beautiful time to walk,
but days are much shorter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Where to stay:</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> <b>The Bear Inn</b> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">is an atmospheric 16th-century coaching
inn. Located in the middle of Hay-On-Wye, close to all the bookshops,
restaurants and pubs. Inventive local cuisine and snug, well-decorated rooms
make it a memorable stopover. Double rooms from £70 ($118) a night;</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><a href="http://thebearhay.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">thebearhay.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Geoff and Pat Sharratt have been
hosting walkers since 1999 in their spacious Victorian house, now known as</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"> <b>Westwood**</b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">, a B&B in Knighton. They have lots of maps and
guides and are well-versed on the trail and the weather. From £25 ($42) a
person a night; 1-54-752-0317<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">For more information,
visit the Offa’s Dyke Assocation at<a href="http://offasdyke.demon.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">offasdyke.demon.co.uk</span></a> for planning tips, accommodation
ideas and to order guides and maps.</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;">**PS: Geoff Sharratt wrote to tell me their<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>B&B is now closed. So sad. But he added
that the story has been passed around Knighton, which is not so sad.</span></div>
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David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-49120488510708121672013-11-04T06:01:00.003-08:002013-11-04T06:01:41.387-08:00Britain's Best Kept Hiking Secret<strong>Front page of the Saturday November 2 <span style="color: #38761d;">Globe and Mail Travel section...<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/walk-through-the-wild-lands-of-wales/article15214589/">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/walk-through-the-wild-lands-of-wales/article15214589/</a></span></strong><br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LXAHWB_x2gg/UneoG3hMu0I/AAAAAAAAAGI/J96twatDvII/s1600/P4270621.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LXAHWB_x2gg/UneoG3hMu0I/AAAAAAAAAGI/J96twatDvII/s640/P4270621.JPG" width="640" /></a><strong></strong><br />
<strong>Read it online here</strong> <strong> and wait for me to post the whole thing,</strong><br />
<strong>(pictures and all) soon.</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-619402993486055362013-03-11T14:05:00.001-07:002013-03-12T11:16:43.566-07:00Katy, by Anthony Jenkins<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C2yVxqtS-20/UT5GYGoAwJI/AAAAAAAAAFw/mO0RIwX4re8/s1600/Tripping+-+Derbyshire-JAusten03tr1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C2yVxqtS-20/UT5GYGoAwJI/AAAAAAAAAFw/mO0RIwX4re8/s1600/Tripping+-+Derbyshire-JAusten03tr1.jpg" /></a><strong>A lovely little illustration in the <em>Globe & Mail</em> Travel section by Anthony Jenkins</strong>, the Globe editorial cartoonist...showing Katy Gillett atop Stanege Edge, Derbyshire, England. Yes, she is striking the pose made famous by Keira Knightley in <em>Pride and Predjudice,</em> at that point in the movie which is arguably the most moving 12 seconds of non-dialogue film in cinematic costume drama history.<br />
<br />
Yes, she has a very long neck. And yes, those are hiking poles in her hands.<br />
<br />
"Why?" you ask, and not without reason (I must confess). <br />
<br />
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Never fear, dear reader. You can (of course) read the whole article at <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/honey-be-my-keira-knightley/article1368692/">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/honey-be-my-keira-knightley/article1368692/</a><br />
<br />
....and for comparison, at left is a photo of <em>that lady</em> on <em>that rock</em>....David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-27174591627349159232013-01-08T16:15:00.003-08:002013-01-08T16:17:35.956-08:00There and Back Again.....<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">R</span>ead <strong><em>"There And Back Again"</em></strong> in the December issue of the <em>Canadian Builder's Quarterly</em>. Oddly enough, this article came out the same month that the new <em>Hobbit</em> movie opened in Canada. For Tolkien aficiandos, the title couldn't have been better (or worse,depending on your point of view. However, as of this writing, I have yet to be comissioned to design an underground house with grass roof, round windows and doors and an excessively large pantry...<br />
<br />
Read the article here:<br />
<a href="http://canadianbuildersquarterly.ca/2012/david-gillett-design/">http://canadianbuildersquarterly.ca/2012/david-gillett-design/</a>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-62559348164562416262012-12-14T13:35:00.000-08:002012-12-14T13:36:00.068-08:00<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: #f1c232;">Coming soon</span></strong>: <span style="font-size: small;">an article about <strong><span style="color: #e69138;">David Gillett Design</span></strong> and my <em>alma mater</em> <strong><span style="color: #e69138;">University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture</span></strong>, in the most recent issue of.....</span></span></span></div>
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</blockquote>
David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-14758022876987508492012-10-31T13:29:00.000-07:002012-10-31T13:29:06.279-07:00Why are (some) Buildings Ugly?<strong>It may seem odd, but I'm happy to have one of my house designs featured on the cover of an architectural magazine whose theme for the month is <em>"Why are (some) buildings ugly?"</em></strong> Of course, I <em>designed it</em> to be ugly...but that's probably obvious. I had an email from a long-time client who said he actually likes it. But does he want to build it?<br />
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You can read the whole issue of <strong><em>Perspectives</em></strong> magazine(for whom I've done several illustrations) at <a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/OAAQ0312/">http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/OAAQ0312/</a>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-20999497910474534042012-07-11T13:57:00.002-07:002012-07-11T13:57:48.820-07:00Am I a Graphite Luddite?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="color: #e69138; font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-large;">Primal Attraction to a Low Tech Tool</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p>(first published in the <em><strong>Globe and Mail</strong></em> LIFE section ....July 11, 2012)</o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I
don’t think I’m supposed to be drawing with a pencil. But as the digital
universe eats up the worlds of art and design, I’m drawn to this low-tech tool
with some kind of primal attraction.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Today,
in this cafe window seat, it’s a Staedtler HB, an all-rounder, an elegant
wooden cylinder that falls comfortably into my grasp. A single black line on a
crisp white page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Call
it my analog drawing instrument. Call me a graphite Luddite. Or maybe its just
another badge of hipster culture (“free<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>retro pencil with every MacBook!”). But its a habit I can’t kick, with
roots in architecture school. It was the mid-80’s and I was part of that lost
civilization of architecture students pushing pencils, running T-squares, bent
over drafting tables. One stroke equalled one part of an architrave, one curve
of a receding street. Artfully pre-digital, we sensed the wave coming but we
couldn’t quite see it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-flfxmvL0_cA/T_3mXWTEwRI/AAAAAAAAAE4/QMZY43lUXnU/s1600/Scan10475+-+Copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-flfxmvL0_cA/T_3mXWTEwRI/AAAAAAAAAE4/QMZY43lUXnU/s400/Scan10475+-+Copy.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The ubiquitous AutoCAD drawing
was still just over the horizon, a fantasy of some Jetson future. But it came
soon enough and we were all swept up in its shining promise. Today, it’s the
world we inhabit, a digital culture of design and drawing, manipulation and
file sharing, virtual cut-and-paste. Productivity has blossomed exponentially
and drafting tables have become must-have antiques. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
digital camera records in high-def clarity, and I can shoot with abandon. But
distilling the shape of a park bench calls for deliberation and careful
observation; a hand-eye-paper connection. The furrowed bark on an ancient Maple
is flattened as it spews out of my ink-jet printer. No number of megapixels
imprints that nubby texture on my mind the way drawing it can: one line at a
time, feeling the bark as the graphite rubs off on paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So
I fall back on an un-plugged media, going acoustic in a canyon of electronica.
Maybe it’s an age thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
I pause. A guy at the next table (an architecture student?) with very large
glasses and black stubble, is working on his knitting. Fleet Foxes harmonize on
the cafe speakers, singing in a barn, crooning away about the noticeably
non-digital Meadowlark, their music distinctly hand-made, if that’s possible. “By
hand” isn’t just some hipster catch-phrase, it’s something we crave, a visceral
tie to something we risk losing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
an hour or so, I’ll be rotating a steel and glass box in 3D, entering
coordinates, doing sunlight studies in the virtual world of computer-aided
design. But even that glass box started life as black lines on a sketch pad one
crisp autumn day last year. I sat on a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>granite boulder, October clouds scudding overhead. A pencil, a pad, a
place, an idea: it was a pared-down moment and it worked. There was something
in the directness of it al – lines on paper recording my first thoughts about
the shape and position of an embryonic building.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
there was emotional connection too; the excitement of creation coursing from
brain to muscle to pencil, the complicating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>layer of mouse, keyboard and software absent for that moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
English sculptor Barbara Hepworth said: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I
rarely draw what I see – I draw what I feel in my body.”</i> A pencil allows
for that; it doesn’t try to re-align, edit or elaborate. It doesn’t flash
warnings or second guess instinct. Frank Gehry has harnessed the power of
complicated 3D software to render his titanium architectural confections, but his
free-flowing, emotion-charged<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pencil
sketches are where it all started. And they are the things that sell in the
gallery shop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
guy at the next table has set his knitting aside for a moment and is updating
his Facebook status on his iPad. He’s a perfect picture of the modern man as he
does so, giving me some hope for the future of pencils and drawing: an urge to
make things by hand while immersed in digital culture. The two can co-exist and
flourish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
kids are much the same, travelling with sketchpads and ipods, fascinated by
Medieval ruins as much as SimCity. The world is their multi-faceted oyster.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
realize that while I’ve been musing, I’ve been doodling on my pad, each stroke
an aid to concentration. I focus on the cup in front of me, trying again to
capture its roundness and how the shadow falls across the cafe table. I could
let 3D software do it for me: and the shading would be precise, the diameter
exact. But I’d miss the immediacy, the aroma, the warmth of the ceramic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sort
of like how I’m sure I could text the knitting guy and he could send me photos
of his finished project. But I think I’ll take the old analog approach and just
ask him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">“What are you making?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope he’ll tell me it’s a pencil case. That
would be perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">But in a minute. Right now I’m
running another line out across a new page, starting another drawing, working
the muscles of another part of my brain.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><strong><em>-David Gillett</em></strong></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 12pt 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p><em>(with thanks to Globe Editor Jane Gadd and Art Director Cinders McLeod)</em></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-27481633744912872642012-07-06T13:03:00.002-07:002012-07-06T13:03:23.127-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong><span style="color: #0b5394;">Sneak Preview</span></strong>...look for a new essay in The Globe & Mail, Wednesday, July 11th on the back cover of the LIFE section....an essay that includes Fleet Foxes, Knitting and Luddites can't be all bad. A <em>smidgen</em> of the<em> illo</em> (design editor speak for illustration) shown here.David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-1611468674327134772012-06-07T10:47:00.002-07:002012-06-07T10:47:20.642-07:00<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/16px Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<h2 align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Gathering Place for the Generations<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I had a
toy farm when I was a child; a miniature homestead in enamelled sheet metal –
barn and barnyard, chickens, cows <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and a
little red brick farmhouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
barn’s tiny gable wall was the simple title that for generations has evoked
vivid recollections:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Grampa’s Farm”.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To a
farmboy like myself, it all made perfect sense:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>this little play-world was the most natural of toy microcosms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t dreamy nostalgia; it was as real as
the scene outside the windows of my childhood.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
that was a generation ago, and the days of the family farm’s presence in the
landscape – and in the memory – have faded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the process, we’ve been cut adrift from a tangible link to our
past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve lost our ancestral homes and
collect antiques to fill the void, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to
give us some trace of heritage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We read shelter
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>magazines that sell us carefully aged “heritage”
by the roomful:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a reproduction past on
every page.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And yet
the constant struggle to define a quiet place in the maelstrom of urban life throws
us headlong into perplexity:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>where to
put the antiqued implements that will give our lives meaning?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Grampa’s
farm no longer cuts it because, for starters, Grampa was unlikely to have been
a farmer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And though many Canadians need
only cast back two or three generations to identify their equivalent of the
ancestral home, chances are the old place is now in strange hands, the solid
farmhouse a ghostly ruin, the land subdivided beyond recognition. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We are
largely a nation of transplants, many with only the tenderest of green roots in
this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are also a
predominantly urban people now, modern nomads following schooling, jobs and
recreation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We breathe portable technologies;
we live portable lives.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So what
are we left with?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The family farm has
lost its potency, but replacing it is a new manifestation of the ancestral
home, a weekend summer place, a haven from modern life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
family cottage has become, over the past few decades, the gathering place for
the generations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unencumbered with the
complex realities of the rural farm economy, the cottage has not been squeezed
from the grip of a struggling family whose livelihood depended upon its
production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its image is not synonymous
with work, quotas or barnyard smells – it is a summer place, a setting for
dreams, the centre of a memory-world of dog-days, sunshine and docks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cottage looms much larger in the
imagination than a city home ever could. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
family I know, who live spread across the nation, own an island that is the
scene of a massive annual homecoming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Generations have built a carefree summer architectural continuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One family elder, in a moment of solemn
reflection, told me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Catastrophe?
Nuclear war? We’ll all head for The Island, no matter where we are; we have an
‘understanding’”.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
is really nothing odd in such a notion:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>every family would like to have a place to make the ultimate retreat.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have
visited cottages on the Muskoka lakes that seem out of sync with the apparent
needs of their owners – great, sprawling lakeside structures, many a century
old or more, whose floor area is more in keeping with that of an Adirondack
lodge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This is a family hotel for most
of the season”, I’m told dockside as an antique boat rocks gently in the
evening breeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This is our summer base
of operations.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The family, coming home
from Pittsburgh or Toronto, Los Angeles or Vancouver, throw their formality to
the smog-free wind, put their feet up and sigh:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They’ve made it back home once again.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For the
architect, the phenomenon of “cottage as family seat” presents its own daunting
problems and tests one’s diplomatic skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One such place, for which I was hired to design a large addition, is the
summer home of one of Canada’s wealthiest families.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even though expansion eventually leads to
some sort of change, the most frequently heard comment when drawings were
presented was “No, no – that would be changing it!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The collective memory of an outspoken family was
wrapped up in a certain configuration of wood, stone, water and vista. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other
clans, such as my wife’s, built a tradition on a more realistic budget, but the
“never quite completed” cottage, decorated with dog-eared castoffs, sits on a
rocky outcrop as proudly as any baronial castle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It once looked like the cottage would never
be completed; the very presence of builders and architects in the family
practically guaranteed it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that
hardly matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea of retreat is
what counts, the quiet place at the end of a hectic Friday-night drive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its pristine setting has been the nursery for
my wife’s fondest memories, her family’s best times and the larger-than-life
stories that come with days spent between water and woods.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
fleeting summers of childhood claim a large share of our memory – summer places
tend to underline that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are perhaps
more honest and less guarded as we sit on docks together, half-naked in the
twilight; we are less concerned with pretence and ostentation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are truly at home with ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
cottage has given us that home-fire of refuge we thought we had lost, and has
become in the process a guarded and cherished family seat – Grampa’s Farm for <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>future <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>generations.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> (first published in The Globe And Mail)</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">David Gillett</span></div>
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<a href="mailto:david@davidgillettdesign.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">david@davidgillettdesign.com</span></a></div>
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</span>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-745207427117616178.post-21726220791261048562012-04-13T09:12:00.002-07:002012-04-13T09:36:28.349-07:00ILLUSTRATIONS & STORIES from architects<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Over</span> the Christmas holidays</span>, I spent some late (but enjoyable) evenings illustrating several stories written by architects for the <strong>Ontario Association of Architects (OAA)</strong> journal <strong>PERSPECTIVE</strong>S<span style="color: black;">....</span>line art, pencil sketches, B&Wscratchboard. I had some great chats with editor <strong>Gordon Grice</strong> about the state of hand-drawing in this age of 3D computer simulation. Our conclusion: drawing is alive but perhaps on life support. The upside is that architects and artists who CAN draw, are in possession of an increasingly valuable and rare skill. Keep that sketchbook handy. Draw, draw, draw. There is something about the hand/pencil-eye connection that makes drawing an engaging visceral exercise unlike virtual digital manipulation.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HegjmzhA_S8/T4hTaSH8LSI/AAAAAAAAAEY/N6nIUXlRdcE/s1600/Scan10349.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HegjmzhA_S8/T4hTaSH8LSI/AAAAAAAAAEY/N6nIUXlRdcE/s320/Scan10349.JPG" width="244" /></a></div><br />
The spring <strong>Perspectives</strong> issue has just been released in print and in digital format. Have a look at : <a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/OAAQ0112/index.php?startid=10#/10">http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/OAAQ0112/index.php?startid=10#/10</a>David Gilletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10641020124777134198noreply@blogger.com0