Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 8 was taken in Chelford, Chesire.
Chelford, 13th July 2008
The Chelford Car Boot sale is purportedly the second largest in England and is held every Sunday in a field outside the village of Marthall, near Knutsford. Farmer Richard Scott started the car boot sale twenty years ago and it now attracts thousands of visitors and sellers each week from across Cheshire and south Manchester.
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 7 was taken in Peatling Magna, Leicestershire.
Peatling Magna, Leicestershire, July 7th 2008
During a weekend break away a husband indulges his favourite pastime, angling, as his wife looks on. Behind them is All Saint’s Parish Church, which dominates the skyline of the Leicestershire village of Peatling Magna.
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 6 was taken at the Royal Show, Stoneleigh.
Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, July 3rd 2008
Participants take part in a Wellie Wanging contest at the 159th Royal Show in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire. The contest was organised to help raise funds for the Farm Crisis Network charity. Wellie Wanging is believed to originated in Yorkshire and competitors are required to hurl a Wellington boot as far as possible within boundary lines.
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 5 was taken in Newport, Isle of Wight.
Newport, Sunday 22nd June
A contestant crashes out during the Isle of Wight Soap Box Derby in Newport. The derby is held on a housing estate and organised by a number of local agencies, including the police, as a community-building exercise.
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 4 was taken in Broadstairs, Kent.
Broadstairs, Thursday June 19th
Members of the Dickens Society, clad in Victorian swimwear, take a dip in the English Channel after the official opening of the Broadstairs Dickens Festival. Charles Dickens visited Broadstairs regularly from 1837 until 1859 and immortalised the town as “our English watering place.”
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 3 was taken at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.
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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 2 comes from the Epsom Derby.
Spectators on The Hill celebrate as Bureaucrat wins The Northern Dancer Stakes at this year’s Epsom Derby. An estimated 100,000 people (most of whom weren’t dressed in top hat and tails) enjoyed the beautiful weather and a fine day’s racing. Saturday 7th June 2008.
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I’m pleased to say that The Times will be running a weekly dispatch from my journey in T2 every Monday. The image will be a digital photograph (the images for the book are being photographed on a traditional 5×4 plate camera – see this post for details) taken from a different location each week.Â
This week the photograph comes from Weymouth.
After torrential rain in the morning, the ladies of Greenhill Bowling Club in Weymouth continue with their Bank Holiday County Fours match against Wellworthy. Â Although traditionally regarded as an old-fashioned pastime, bowling is gaining in popularity all the time, partly as a result of our aging population but also as a consequence of a popular revival in all things quintessentially English.
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We’ve just completed our first three weeks on the road having covered ground in Hampshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
Here’s a family portrait (rather twee I know) taken outside the motorhome in the Forest of Dean.
In the coming weeks we’ll be heading south into Wiltshire then across to Somerset, Devon and down into Dorset.
If you know of any interesting events taking place in these areas, then do post them up.Â
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“Welcome to our beautiful town, Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. Campden is one of the most beautiful tourist destinations in the UK. Take a pictorial tour and get a taste of Olde Cotswold England – but if you really want to appreciate the feeling of staying in an old cotswold stone house in a town, hardly touched by the centuries, you’ll just have to come and visit us.” from www.chippingcampden.co.uk Â
This is one of the only places I’ve come across that actually looks like the postcard. Chipping Campden is eerily picturesque, in a manicured, clipped and tidy way. With so much talk in the media about what it means to be English and about notions of community, identity and stereotypes, it was quite strange to visit a town that felt pathologically, quintessentially English.Â
