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bouwvakker achter het Centraal Station
Hij zegt "alleen een foto van me maken als ik aan het werk ben hoor".
When digging for bottles there is a lot of "dump" you dig through. A lot of junk but looking back I wished I would of kept more of it!
Have you been to Newington? The warden at the previous church asked.
Well, I did go twice: first time locked, then the next weekend, on heritage weekend, they double booked with a christening and a display of Roman artifacts, and was crowded outside as the service went on inside.
So, I vowed to return later.
And so, although not planned, I returned today, as I was driving through the town, and to my surprside i found the porch door open and two ladies inside doing flower displays.
Can I take photos, as ask?
Yes I can. Apparently.
St Mary is a large church just off the old A2, and should be better known. It has fine wall paintings, and lots of other points of interest. There is parking down a private road marked as such, but there is a large car park. As long as there isn't a christening on, of course.
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A hugely interesting and curiously little known church, although to those familiar with its location it is `the church in the orchards`. Starting life in the Norman period - a delightful capital survives in the south aisle - it was much extended in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The latter is represented by the west tower which shows the familiar local peculiarity of banded flint and ragstone (see also Higham and Cliffe). Inside the enormous church one is struck by the amazing amount of medieval wall painting that survives including a huge doom on the east wall of the north aisle and a rather special Christ in Majesty in a niche in the south aisle. The octagonal font has a spectacular wooden cover dating in the main from the seventeenth century. In the north aisle chapel is a brass which (unusually) commemorates two seemingly unrelated men of the fifteenth century, whilst in the centre of the chancel is an Elizabethan brass showing an affectionate mother - a very rare find. The south chapel contains what purports to be the shrine of St Robert of Newington, the village's own saint. There is no doubt that it is medieval but how it survived the Reformation if it was regarded as a shrine, and just who St Robert was will continue to be a mystery.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Newington+next+Sitting...
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NEWINGTON.
THE next parish southward from Halstow is Newington, written in Domesday, Newetone, which certainly took its name from its having been raised on the scite of some more antient town, perhaps built in the time of the Romans, of whom there are many vestigia in and about this place. It has the addition of next Sittingborne, to distinguish it from a parish of the same name next Hyth.
THE PARISH of Newington lies for the most part on a flat plain, extending from east to west near two miles, at the edges of which, excepting towards the north, it is surrounded by a range of high hills, most of which are covered with woods, which reach as far eastward within the boundaries of it as the high road leading from Key-street to Detling. The parish is far from being unpleasant, but the unhealthiness of it, occasioned by its being exposed to the noxious vapours arising from the large tract of marshes covered of it, as far as Standgate creek and the Medway, which are blown hither uninterrupted, through the vale, and the unwholesomeness of the water drawn from the wells for culinary uses, throughout it, make it a far from eligible situation to dwell in, and keep it thin of inhabitants, especially of the better sort; in the centre of the above plain, though on a small rise is the village, called Newington-street, containing about fifty houses, most of them antient and ill built, it is encircled by orchards of apples and cherries. In the street almost opposite to the lane leading southward to Stockbury is the old manor house of Lucies, now inhabited by a shopkeeper, and in another part of it is another oldtimbered building, much of it now in a decayed state, belonging to the estate here of Sir Beversham Filmer; bart. formerly of the Troughton's, and before that the residence of the Holbrook's.
Here was, as appears by a presentment made of the customs, &c. of the queen's manor and hundred of Milton, in 1575, a market, held weekly on a Tuesday, but the disuse of it has been beyond memory. At a small distance northward is the vicarage, and a quarter of a mile further on the parsonage and church, and close to the church-yard the manor-house of Tracies. At no great distance north-west from hence there is a spring, which produces a fresh stream, and runs from thence northward, having a small breadth of swampy poor meadow or marshes on each side, till it empties itself into the creek at Halstow, as has already been mentioned in the description of that parish.
The high road from London to Canterbury and Dover, runs across this parish, and through Newington-street, at a small distance southward from which, in the road to Stockbury, is the manor house of Cranbrooke, and about half a mile further, the ground still rising to it, the hamlet of Chesley-street, corruptly so for Checheley-street, as appears by the will of Robert Bereforth, anno 13 Edward IV. who lies buried in this church, and stiles himself of Checheley-street, devising by it his principal tenement called Frognal, and his other called Patreches, in this parish, to his three daughters and coheirs. On a green close to this hamlet there is a handsome sashed house, built not many years ago by Robert Spearman, esq. lessee of the possessions of Merton college, in this parish, in which he resides.
The parish contains about thirteen hundred acres of land, exclusive of about two hundred acres of wood, great part of it, especially in the environs of the street, was formerly planted with orchards of apples, cherries, and other kind of fruit, but these falling to decay, and the high price of hops yielding a more advantageous return, many of them were displanted, and hops raised in their stead, the scite of an old orchard, being particularly adapted for the purpose, which, with the kindliness of the soil for that plant, produced large crops of it, insomuch that there has been one particular instance here of an acre having grown after the rate of thirtyfour hundred weight of hops on it, but these grounds wearing out, and hops not bearing so good a price, tother with other disadvantages to the growers of them, orchards are again beginning to be replanted in Newington, to which these grounds afford a good nursery, till the trees by their increased size are less liable to hurt, though the hop grounds in it are still very considerable.
The soil of this parish on the plain, and towards Chesley, is very rich and fertile, consisting in general of a kindly loam, near and on the hills it is mostly a stiff clay, and to the northward of the street it becomes a sand, where on the hills it becomes poor land, and much covered with broom and furze. This tract of land called from thence Broomdown, belong most of it, as does much other land in this parish, to All Souls college, as part of their manor of Horsham, in Upchurch; in the parts near Chesley-street, at some depth, they come to the chalk, which by means of draw wells is obtained for the manure of their lands. On the continued chain of hills, from the north-east to the south-east boundaries of this parish, there are large tracts of woodland, in which are great plenty of chesnut stubs, no doubt the indigenous growth of them, these join to others of the like sort, reaching for several miles southward, those in this parish and its neighbourhood, being from the great plenty of the above wood in them, commonly known by the name of Chesnut woods, a large tract of them, within the bounds of this and the adjoining parishes, reaching as far as the turnpike road leading from Key-street to Detling, belong to the earl of Aylesford. The rents in general are high, great part of the lands being let from fifteen to twenty shillings per acre and upwards.
THE ROMAN ROAD, having crossed the river Medway at Chatham, is still visible on the top of Chathamhill, the hedge on the north side of the great road from thence to Rainham standing on it, from which place hither it seems to run on the southern side of the road, till within a very small distance of Newington-street, where it falls in with the great road, and does not appear again till it has passed Key-street, a mile and a half beyond it.
The name of Newington, as has already been mentioned, implies its having been built on, or in the lieu of, some more antient town or village; the names of places in and about it, plainly of Roman original, shew that nation to have had frequent dealings hereabouts. Keycol-hill at the 38th mile stone seems to be the same as Caii Collis, or Caius, Julius Cæsar's hill; Keystreet beyond it, Caii Stratum, or Caius's street; and Standard-hill, about half a mile southward of Newington-street, seems to have taken its name from some military standard having been placed on it in those times.
On Keycol-hill above-mentioned, at a small distance northward from the great road, is a field, in which quantities of Roman urns and vessels have continually been turned up by the plough, and otherwise, and the whole of it scattered over with the broken remains of them, from whence it has acquired the name of Crockfield. The soil of it is mostly sandy, excepting towards the north west part of it, where it consists of a wet and stiff clay.
The situation of this field is on an eminence, higher than the surrounding grounds, commanding a most extensive view on every side of it; a little to the southwest of it, in the adjoining field, there is a large mount of earth thrown up, having a very broad and deep foss on the south and west sides of it, from whence there seems to be a breast-work of earth thrown up, which extends in a line westward about forty rods, and thence in like manner again northward, making the south and western boundaries of the two fields next below Crockfield, above-mentioned.
The greatest part of the northern sides of these fields, and the eastern side of Crockfield, are adjoining to the woods, in which there are many remains of trenches and breast-works thrown up; but the coppice is so very thick, that there is no possibility of tracing their extent or form, so as to give any description of them. These vessels have been found lying in all manner of positions, as well sideways as inverted, and frequently without any ashes or bones in them, quite empty; and this has induced many to think this place to have been only a Roman pottery, and not a buryingplace, especially as some of them lay in that part which is a stiff, wet soil, and others in the dry and sandy part of it.
Notwithstanding which, several of our learned antiquarians, among which are Somner, Burton, archbishop Stillingfleet, Battely, and Dr. Thorpe, are inclined to six the Roman station, called in the second iter of Antonine, Durolevum, at or near this place. Indeed most of the copies of Antonine make the distance from the last station Durobrovis, Rochester, to Durolevum xiii or xvi miles, which would place it nearer to Greenstreet, or Judde-hill, a little on the western side of Ospringe; but the Peutingerian tables make it only vii, in which Mr. Somner seems to acquiesce, and it answers tolerably well to this place. If this distance of miles is correct, no doubt but Newington has every circumstance in its favor, to six this station here, if the number of xvi should be preferred, full as much may be said in favor of Judde-hill, or thereabouts; every other place has but mere conjecture, unsupported either by a knowledge of the country, or by any remains of Roman antiquity ever discovered in or near it.
The urns and vessels found here were first taken notice of in print by the learned Meric Casaubon, prebendary of Canterbury, whom Burton stiles incomparable for his virtues and learning, who, in his notes on his translation of the emperor Marcus Antoninus's Meditations, gives an account of the remains found in Newington, which contains many curious particulars relating to the custom of burial, though of too copious a nature to be wholly inserted in this work.
Among other observations he says, that not only the great numbers of these urns, for he does not remember an instance of so many having been found, in so small a compass of ground, was remarkable, but the manner of their lying in the ground; for those who had been present at the digging of them up observed, that where one great urn had been found, several lesser vessels had been likewise, some of them within the great one, and others round about it, each covered either with a proper cover of the like earth as the pots themselves were, or else more coarsely, but very closely, stopped up with other earth. Hence he infers that the custom seems to have been, to appoint one great urn to contain the bones and ashes of all one houshold or kindred, as often therefore as any of them died, so often they had recourse to the common urn, which was as often uncovered for the purpose.
Besides the great and common urn, it is likely that every particular person that died, had some lesser one particularly dedicated to his own memory, and it is not improbable, that there might be still another use of them, and that not an unnecessary one, which was, that by them the common greater urns might be the better known and distinguished one from another, being so much alike in shape and size, in so small a compass of ground, and so near each other; and it seems more likely, as of the many hundreds of the lesser fort which have been taken up, scarce any have been found of one and the same making. What this place has been many would certainly be glad to know; thus much may at least be concluded, that from the multitude of urns, it was once a common burial-place for the Romans, and that from the situation of it, which is upon an ascent, and for some space beyond it hilly, not far from the sea, and near the highway, it may be affirmed with great probability, that this place was once the seat of a Roman station. (fn. 1) Thus far Mr. Casaubon.
¶The great numbers of urns, and the fragments of them, found at this place from time to time, have been dispersed among the curious throughout the county, many of whom have, through curiosity and a fondness for antiquarian knowledge, dug here for that purpose. The last earl of Winchelsea searched here several times for them with success, and had a numerous collection of them; among others, one of the larger ones, which was dug up here, and held twenty-four pints, came into the hand of Dr. Battely, who says, it was dug up among many urns here, being a vessel not to hold the bones, but to be filled with wine, being pitched on the inside, which was usually done for that purpose. It had four handles, by which it might be plunged into the earth, and raised up again whenever there was oc casion, which was of no use to a sepulchral urn, which there was a religious dread of removing; it being their custom to extinguish the funeral pile with wine, to wash the bones, to sprinkle the sepulchres in their funereal sacrifices, and to pour it out as an offering to the funereal gods.
Another of these urns, which held near a bushel, came into the possession of John Godfry, esq. of Norton-court, and another into the hands of Mr. Filmer Southouse; the figures of each of which may be seen in an engraved plate in the folio edition of this history, vol. ii. p. 562.
EWINGTON is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Sittingborne.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a handsome building, consisting of three isles and two chancels, with a square beacon tower at the west end. On the north side of the high chancel is the lower part of a square tower, which reaches at present no higher than the roof of the church, where it has a flat covering. There was some good painted glass formerly in the windows of this church, and among others, the arms of Leyborne, Azure, six lions rampant, three, two, and one, argent; of Northwood; of Lucy, as well with the croslets as without; of Burwash; Diggs impaling Monins; Norton impaling Northwood; Beresford; Diggs; Horne; of the cinque ports; of the see of Canterbury; of archbishops Becket and Warham; of Holbrooke, and of Brooke.
The south chancel of this church belongs to the parish, who keep it in repair. In it were, till within these few years, among many others now defaced, memorials of Brian Diggs and his wife, anno 1490; of Thomas Holbrook, gent, anno 1587; of Francis Holbrook, gent. of this parish, in 1581, and a tomb for Sir John Norton. A stone, with the figure of a woman, and an inscription in brass for Mary Brook, alias Cobham, widow of Edward Brook, alias Cobham, esq. obt. 1600.
Against the north wall of this chancel is a monument for Joseph Hasted, gent. of Chatham, obt. 1732, possessed of a good estate in this parish. His remains, with those of his wife Catherine, daughter of Richard Yardley, gent. lie deposited in one coffin, in a vault under this chancel, in which are likewise the remains of their only son and heir Edward Hasted, esq. of Hawley, near Dartford, obt. 1740; of Anne, his only daughter, widow of captain James Archer, and of George Hasted, gent. obt. 1787, adolescens optimæ spei, the third son of the editor of this history.
The church of Newington was given in the 25th year of Henry II. anno 1178, to the abbey of Westwood, alias Lesnes, in Erith, then founded by Richard de Lucy, which gift was confirmed, among other possessions of that monastery, by king John, in his 7th year.
¶Notwithstanding which the abbot and convent of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, to whom part of the manor of Newington had come in the above-mentioned reign, as has been already related, claimed this church from time to time, as having been given to their monastery by Richard de Lucy above-mentioned. After much dispute, during which Thorne, their chronicler, says, the abbey of St. Augustine kept possession of it, it was at last, by the interposition of their common friends, agreed between them, that the abbot of St. Augustine's should release to the abbot of Lesnes all right to the advowson of this church, for which the latter agreed to make a recompence in other matters, as mentioned in the agreement. (fn. 10) The abbot and convent of Lesnes, having thus gained the firm possession of this church, obtained a confirmation of it from the several succeeding kings, and it remained part of the revenues of their monastery till the final dissolution of it, in the 17th year of Henry VIII. when, being one of those smaller monasteries which cardinal Wolsey obtained of the king that year, for the endowment of his colleges, it was surrendered into the cardinal's hands, to whom the king granted his licence next year, to appropriate and annex this church of Newington, among others, of the cardinal's patronage, to the dean and canons of the college founded by him in the university of Oxford, &c. But this church remained with them only four years, when the cardinal being cast in præmunire, all the estates of the college, which had not as yet been firmly settled on it, were forfeited to the crown.
How long this appropriated church, with the advowson of the vicarage, remained in the crown, I have not found; but at the latter end of queen Elizabeth's reign, it was become part of the possessions of the royal college of Eton, in Buckinghamshire, where it continues at this time.
The parsonage is leased out from time to time on a beneficial lease. The advowson of the vicarage, the provost and fellows keep in their own hands.
The glebe land belonging to the parsonage contains twenty-two acres, and upwards. The family of Short were for many years tenants of it.
The vicarage is valued in the king's books at 14l. per annum, and the yearly tenths at 1l. 8s. It is now of the clear yearly certified value of seventy-two pounds.
In 1578 the dwelling-houses in this parish were seventy-seven. Communicants two hundred and thirty-six. In 1640 it was valued at seventy pounds. Communicants two hundred and five.
The glebe land belonging to the vicarage, consists of only one acre, besides the homestall. The annual value of the vicarage is very precarious, owing to the income of it arising much from fruit and hops, the latter of which have of late years much increased the value of it.
Digging stuff in a 1950s dump, the Silverwood's Cream Top quarts are hard to find intact since they're almost always broken, these 2 have painted logos and the second I go to clean them it will all wash off, same for the Crush bottle. The Royal Milk Guelph pint I'm quite happy with though, the crude bluish clay marble I'm 99% sure is a Bennington circa 1890.
One of the expansion joints on the westbound I-90 East Channel Bridge near Mercer Island, WA is slowly exposed by contracgtor crews. The expansion joint is embedded in concrete nearly a foot deep. Exposing it is hard, time-consuming work.
Contractor crews are replacing the two expansion joints on the bridge because they've outlived their useful lifespan. The joints are 33 years old and deteriorating. There are cracks in the steel and the rubber seal is broken.
Replacing the expansion joints is necessary to preserve the bridge and ensure the safety of drivers.
The 2009 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships are happening this weekend in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The boys and I went down today and had a great morning shooting the races.
GPS survey instrument is used to precisely mark the location of each underground utility. Data collected from the hand-held device is recorded and reviewed before major duct installation takes place.
White-breasted Nuthatch, male
Sitta carolinensis
Okay, maybe just a seed, not gold. Regardless, sometimes it seems as though these fellows are happier upside-down than right side up!
Kensington Metropark
Oakland County, MI
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This site isn’t so much for travel narrative as it is for looking at pictures, so I’ll cut out a full day’s narrative, save for this:
Thursday was close to an eleven hour day of travel to get from Yangshuo to Detian. I spent less than 90 minutes shooting at the falls. From Detian (western part of the province on the Vietnamese border), I had to make my way to Beihai (southern, coastal city on the Gulf of Tonkin). It was, in distance, much shorter than Yangshuo-Detian. However, it turned into a reasonably miserable travel day and took about twelve hours (with about five of those hours spent in a bus station waiting room in Nanning). I got to my hotel in Beihai around 9:30 p.m. on Friday night. (I would stay in the same hotel Sunday night as well.)
The only positive to come from Friday’s travel was on the bus from Detian to Daxin (and on to Nanning). There was a very nice girl traveling with her parents who wanted to practice her English who happened to have visited Beihai. I think she said she was from Guangdong, too. Anyway, what I wanted to do most in Beihai was go to Weizhou Island (Weizhou Dao). She suggested (almost implied it was required) that I needed to book tickets on the ferry to Weizhou Dao in advance, so she helped me and called someone she knew in Beihai to reserve a ticket for me at 8:30 on Saturday morning.
I really didn’t know too much about Weizhou Dao, except that it was listed in Lonely Planet as a place to go. I did try to research it online, too, but couldn’t find too many pictures of the island. I found a few, though, and it was enough to convince me that it was worth going. Besides, Beihai honestly didn’t have too many places I was interested in seeing for two days.
So, I decided before the trip that I would come out and spend the night here on Weizhou Island. That turned out to be about the best decision I made for this trip, as it was much better than I was expecting from the lack of information I could find about the place.
I fell in love with this island. The ride across the Gulf of Tonkin takes a little over an hour on a high-speed boat. The cost is 150 RMB, which also includes admission to the island. The island is the remnants of a volcano, I believe, and is a reasonably circular island with a total area of 25-30 square kilometers. So…it’s small.
The port at Weizhou Dao is on the northwest corner of the island. The main city (that is to say the one place where there’s a main street running along the water for about 1 km) is called Nanwan (South Bay). To get around the island, you can either walk, rent a bike, or take a san lun che (tuk tuk). San lun che is the easiest. Depending on where you want to go on the island, it costs between 20 and 40 RMB to go from place to place. There are cars on the island, and people (though not many) do live here year-round, but for public transportation, those are your options, and they’re more than enough.
I think I paid 30 RMB to a guy to get me down to Nanwan. I hadn’t booked anything in advance (though I tried), so went to the first place that Lonely Planet mentioned: Piggybar. This was a very cheap place and as close to a dive as any place I’ve stayed in China.
This was the tropics in June, so the weather was sweltering. It turns out that I wouldn’t be alone in my room. I stopped counting how many cockroaches I killed somewhere after five or so. Big-sized suckers, too. But, that would be later in the day. At night, the electricity constantly cut out. This was only a slight annoyance because it would turn the air conditioner off. Sleeping wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I also stopped counting how many times the power would go off. (It was never for more than 5 minutes, though.) I certainly don’t fault the Piggybar for this. The power apparently just goes out around Nanwan like that.
I did enjoy the main drag in Nanwan. There are a lot of neat little bars and restaurants (and what seemed like a much nicer hotel about midway along the road). I don’t remember the name of the place, but if I make it back there, I’d definitely stay at that place instead.
After I checked into my room in the morning, I took stock of things, thought the view in the south bay was pretty nice, and headed out for a walk towards the rest of the main drag. As this is an island, almost all restaurants have fresh seafood (which, for anyone who knows me, isn’t appealing…but seafood lovers would be in heaven here). I stopped at a restaurant and grabbed an early lunch of generic non-seafood Chinese food. It was so generic that it was forgettable. Maybe it was huntun, which is like a small dumpling soup. I really don’t remember.
While sitting there in the open-air shade enjoying the view of the sea, three college girls came along on bikes they rented and joined me. They, too, were from Guangdong if I remember correctly. I was beginning to think everyone was from Guangdong, but I know better than that. At any rate, they were friendly and we were talking about what to do around the island.
For me, the most interesting place to photograph was going to be the Catholic church. There are two churches on the island – one Catholic (founded by the French), one protestant (founded by Germans, I believe), both around 100 years old, if not a little older. Of the two, the Catholic church is the much more photogenic of the two, so that was what I was most looking forward to shooting, and that was the first place I was going to head via san lun che. It cost 40 RMB to get there. The girls had bikes, so I told them to try to get there – it was on the opposite side of the island…somewhere in the northeast part, but not on the water. They didn’t quite make it, but no worries. I saw them later, and they told me they did eventually get to it.
I wandered around the church and church grounds, and also the streets in front of it for an hour or so in the early afternoon. The church itself was quiet and peaceful and the street in front of it was lively with lots of vendors.
Besides the church, there are a lot of places with natural beauty on this island. As it’s created from a volcano, there are a lot of fascinating rock formations, but those tend to shoot best in lower light closer to sunrise or sunset. There’s even another small island nearby that you can apparently get boat rides to. While near the church, I was enjoying a map of the island with its scenic spots and their flowery names. I decided to go to one that they called Drippy Red Screen. (After all, who doesn’t want to see a screen that drips like blood?)
Really, it’s called that because it’s a dark-colored rock that, close to sunset, apparently turns a vibrant red. I figured, if this is a good place to see a sunset over the sea, I’m there. I left the church around 3:00, and paid a guy another 40 RMB to wheel me back across to the southwest corner of the island.
Though it was far from sunset, I was all too happy to go rent an umbrella and wooden beach chair for 30 RMB with a “front row view” of the sunset. This was vacation, after all, and what better way to spend it than relaxing next to a beach, people watching. At first, there weren’t too many people around. Just a few groups of entrepreneurs like these who took a little area of the beach and rented the umbrellas/chairs. There were also people who you could pay to take you around on jet skis and things like that. Other than that, just sit back, enjoy a drink, and watch boats drift by in seemingly slow motion. This was a good afternoon.
After a few hours, as it got closer to sunset, the tide started to roll out, though, and my front row view began to take more and more of a back seat. Not to umbrellas, but just to people crowding the view. During the 4 or so hours that I was at the beach here, I did manage to take a walk down the way to the Drippy (Not So) Red Screen closer to sunset to see that it wasn’t quite what they hyped it up to be. (That’s a shock…) I didn’t wander more because, as a lone traveler, I was worried they might sell my spot to someone else, even though I said I’d be back. They didn’t, though, and I returned to my umbrella for a few minutes more. There came a tipping point, though – before sunset – when I made the decision that the sunset wasn’t shaping up to be so spectacular that it would warrant being in this crowded an area, so I eventually abandoned hopes of getting jaw-dropping sunset pictures and made my way back to Nanwan before the rest of the crowd did the same. At least this san lun che would only cost 20 RMB, since Nanwan was barely a 10-15 minute ride away.
Back on Nanwan’s main drag, I had the driver drop me in front of the hotel, but I wasn’t ready to go in. I just wanted to walk along the main road there, and eventually discovered all of these unique indoor-outdoor bars. I stopped and had dinner (fried rice, if I remember) and a mango smoothie that was so good that I had a second one in this neat little restaurant where tourists write their memories on the walls.
After that, I continued down the road – all this as the sunset was turning the sky to a deep blue (and I was, after all, quite pleased with what I was able to see here) – and stopped at another bar for a drink. I had a mojito that was honestly forgettable. It tasted more like carbonated soda water than anything. Not seeing much to do besides drink myself into oblivion (which I don’t care to do), I went back out and enjoyed the last of the day’s light before walking back towards the Piggybar. On the way back, I bumped into my college friends from earlier, who told me they’d enjoyed the island, and they did get to the church after all. On the way back is when the first of the power “flickers” happened with electricity dropping on the island.
Without much to do in my hotel room, I tried to stay as comfortable as possible with the air conditioning that continued to go off. It wasn’t as hard to fall asleep as I imagined, and I fell asleep early, which also gave me an early start the next morning for sunrise over the bay.
After checking out of the hotel, still very early (around 8:00), I set off with my backpack and bag and started the walk uphill. My only goal for Sunday morning on the island was to go to the protestant church and photograph there before heading to the dock and making my way back to Beihai.
It was a nice little walk as the road away from Nanwan does a zigzag straight uphill to give a nice view of the town and bay. Also, like western Guangxi, Weizhou Dao’s “countryside” is nothing but banana farms, which was quite nice to see. I shot there a little bit and, when I tired of walking after an hour or so, flagged down a san lun che and paid 30 RMB for him to take me to the protestant church, then to the dock.
The protestant church, unlike the Catholic one, had a 10 RMB admission, and wasn’t nearly as interesting (for me, at least) as the more famous Catholic church. It was nice, however, and I was glad to see it as my “farewell” to the island. From there, I went to the dock and got a ticket for the first available boat back to Beihai.
I really enjoyed my day and night here on Weizhou Dao and was looking forward to one last, relaxing evening in Beihai before getting back to the daily tedium of Chengdu. But first, one more night to go…
(Calidris alpina) Some of these little birds winter here on Cape Cod. Migrating from Alaska and the Canadian arctic. I love photographing these little ones. They allow us to get within feet of them. They are foraging for worms, mollusks and crustaceans. The female has a longer bill than the male. Unfortunately they are on the IUCN Red list of Threatened Species.
I bought a big bag of Squirrel & Critter Mix the other day thinking the squirrels would just love this new mixture of corn, peanuts, sunflower and red wheat. Well, they don't. They dig through it hunting the peanuts and then hours later when they get hungry they come back and pick through the rest.
I don't know how to break it to them - but it was a BIG bag.