The blue Blue Mountains

The title I've chosen for this blog post makes me want to burst out into song.  Which is daft because the song is about another country entirely.  Nothing daunted - here it is: Blue Ridge Mountains.

Now that's stuck in your head lets return to my Australian trip.

The five of us went off to the Blue Mountains for 2 nights.  Andy delighted in taking Roger and I on long, strenuous walks.  The first one was on a really hot day so I was worn out by the time we got to the end and almost didn't make it up the final climb.  However the views were great.

Going down always meant the prospect of having to go back up!

A waterfall

Another waterfall

The long climb back up

The view at the top

And the spectacular sunset.

The next day the 5 of us went to the Jenolean Caves.  They were spectacular,  We went on two guided tours.  The first had over 900 steps and the second had over 400.   It's a good thing that what we saw was so great that I could ignore the pain in my knees.

 

 

And this little man?  He slept through all of the first tour, woke up for lunch and then went back to sleep for the second tour.

The next day was another of Andy's long walks.  He said it was mostly flat.  That's a bit like the 'mostly dead' comment in The Princess Bride.  It wasn't mostly flat - it was another of the up and down ones.

And lots more steps at the end of the walk.

We had another day and a half in Sydney before we came home. On the Sunday Roger & I went to Cockatoo Island and on Monday the 5 of us went out to lunch and stopped off to look at this beach.  Looks like somewhere we need to explore next time we're in Australia.

I hope you have enjoyed your armchair travelling with me.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Venice workbook update

During this last week I have been using my Gelli plate.  I have been thinking about my Venice project for a while so I had already bought various tubes of acrylic paint in Venice type colours and purchased the Michelle Ward stencils I told you about.

I watched a couple of Carolyn Dube videos on Gelli Printing (an online class) to get the juices flowing and then launched into playing.  The thing about using this type of monoprinting is that you never know what you are going to end up with.  It is also totally addictive so you may need to set a time limit on your play time.   Here are just a few of the results.  These are the ones I liked best but there is a pile of other prints which I will cut up to put in my sketchbook/workbook.

The scanner decided not to scan the whole page!

 

The scanner decided this was a black & white image although there is some of the peachy colour showing on the original.

This one will probably be printed over again but I wanted to scan the original so I can use it to print out.  I may well print over some of the others shown here.  That's the joy of scanning or photographing your work as you go along.  You can always print out what you've done before.

I don't tend to clean my stencils - I put the painted stencil down onto a piece of paper or in a journal and get the excess off but then leave it.  I really loved the effect on this stencil so took a photograph.  It may well appear in my sketchbook.

During this next week I'll use some of these prints in my sketchbook and show you what I have done next Wednesday.  See you then.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

The amazing tunnel entrance

Last week I showed the Autumn photographs I had taken on our trip to Westonbirt Arboretum.  I included a photo of a tunnel entrance and Mary W from Florida commented: That tunnel is amazing - do you know the story behind it? How old it is? It stirs up many questions!

If you have followed my blog for any length of time you will know that Roger & I love to walk alongside canals.  I love them because on the whole the path is flat.  There are occasional ups and downs alongside the locks but unless it's a whole flight of locks the rise and fall is very little. In addition we are trying to walk the full length of all the canals in the West Midlands although we don't restrict ourselves to just that area.

We were very surprised to find this canal as we hadn't known it existed.

However a little investigation on the map showed that there had been a canal at one time.  And then we did some more research.  It was built in  the late 18th century and was part of a 36 mile inland waterway connecting the River Severn to the River Thames.  At the time it was a really successful Canal.

The tunnel face is most unusual.   It is known as the Coates Portal (the nearby village is called Coates).  It is one end of the Sapperton Tunnel.  It was restored in the early 1970s having fallen into disrepair.  The canal was abandoned in 1910-11 but there are plans for volunteers to restore and reopen the canal.  Sadly the inside of the tunnel is in such a bad state that this may never happen.

The Canal and River Trust look after most of the canals in Britain and they have a great website detailing the history of the canals.

Thanks Mary for asking about the tunnel and the canal.  It has been really interesting to find out more.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice