Takanabe Sunflower Festival

The weekend of the 16^th to 17^th of August is Takanabe’s Sunflower festival. The main attraction is one of the largest group of sunflower fields in the world.  You can view the sunflowers from the platforms set up or just wander through the fields. There are food stalls and entertainment. The sunflowers are grown in fields which are normally used to grow cabbages so there are a lot of cabbage based products as well. On the final day of the festival, you are allowed to pick and take home the sunflowers as they will be cut down the next day to make room for all the cabbages. 

Archive Photos! The Isle of Arran.

Thought I'd try out introducing some random photos from my travels that haven't been featured in the blog before (either because they predate it or from my own laziness) The plan is ever so often I'll pick a certain location or trip and post my favourite pictures with a bit of commentary.

The first post is the Isle of Arran, a beautiful island of the west coast of Scotland which is in many ways my ancestral home. I've been there many times before but these photos are from a trip I made there in summer 2007.

Arran is often called 'Scotland in miniature' and its not hard to see why as it has:

Majestic Mountains

A rugged coastline with beautiful beaches


Enchanting forests


Windswept moors


And even its own castles and standing stones

This is my family's house on Arran, Burncliff, which I am currently trying to paint. Not having too much luck at the moment though.

That's all on Arran for now. In the future I might do a follow up post on a visit I made last year. If you ever get the chance to visit Arran I highly recommend it. More information can be found here.

Chidham Penisular

I visited the Chichester Harbour area again last weekend, partly to celebrate my recent birthday with a friend whose birthday was on the same day. This time we took a circular route around the Chidham Peninsula beginning in the village of Nutbourne. The scenery was very nice although a bit similar to our last few trips so I feel it may be time to move on from Chichester Harbour.

It was a rather warm day and we didn't take enough liquid so as you can imagine we were very relived to come across a pub after walking through miles of fields. Of course when we left the pub we discovered we were only a short distance away from our start point.Strangely enough we did pass a small local festival called Cobstock which had plenty of food and drink stalls but only for ticket holders and there didn't seem to be anywhere to buy a ticket.

By the train station we found this single rose laying on the ground. Wonder if there's a story behind that?