Turning seasons

It isn't even four weeks since I saw this tangle of cobwebs in the woods in that last hot spell of the summer.  The dry spring made it a good year for spiders, and I remember trying to catch the sunlight in one.  There was an intermittent pattering noise as the wind gusted that at first sounded like the first heavy drops of a summer storm.  It turned out to be the first of the acorns being dislodged and falling through the tree canopy.

Most of the acorns are on the ground now, and the ones still falling sound different as you hear them bouncing off the nearly bare branches and twigs, rather than pattering through the leaves.  There aren't many cobwebs left either, and the walkers you meet are in fleeces and hats.

Bonus day

Just for once, the weather forecasters got it right today.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky all the way from an early morning dog walk to a mooring outside Braunston Marina, via lunch at the Admiral Nelson. 

Replating Dover

NB Dover, featured in a TV series about fitting out a few years ago, has been up on the hard standing at Braunston Marina for a while. In a quiet moment I wandered over for a look.  She's having new plate welded on between the baseplate and just above the waterline for most of the length of the boat.  I wonder if the insulation and internal fitting out survive that sort of treatment, or will she need another refit?

On the way back to the marina you often see ducks, sometimes in a row.  These are the first seagulls in a row that I have seen on this stretch though...

Margate and the Turner Contemporary

There wasn't a cloud in the sky this morning as we set off to visit the gallery that opened earlier this year in Margate.  It is a big, airy building, and the exhibition was about youth culture.  One interesting piece had "then and now" photographs and comments from people pictured locally.  "Then" had them in their hippy, skinhead, rocker or goth garb as teenagers, with current pictures showing how they look as adults.  

The modern steel building sandwiched between the Margate harbour buildings and the Victorian buildings behind, some of them looking on the verge of dereliction.

One intent of putting the gallery here was to help regenerate the town through making it more of a destination for visitors, rather than simply a day out on the beach.  I think the jury is still out on that.  In the past few years there has been lots of retail development on the edge of the Thanet conurbation around Westwood Cross, meaning that town centre shops are rapidly reducing in number.  The increased shopping traffic around what was already a bottleneck may also be a disincentive to visitors, judging by the miles of crawling traffic that we passed on our way home.