Mellow fruitfulness

We spent Sunday morning picking fresh vegetables on a farm just east of the edge of Brussels. La Finca runs a farm specialising in local organic vegetables. They have a shop and a small restaurant and run activity weeks for kids. Once a year they open to the public and let you pick your own produce and watch demonstrations of apple-pressing and the manufacture of woollen goods.

Even though summer is lingering, Indian-style, the gourds were already out on display:

We brought home a basketful of tasty veggie goodies, but I was more interested in the visual aspect of many of the plants. The swirl and bulge and violet hue of these leaves.

These alien purple tubers.

Basically anything with a hint of purple in it caught my eye.

Later in the day we visited a see-through church in Flanders, and on the way passed by fields of corn…

…and orchards bursting with ripening apples.

The hedgerows nearby were also full of less familiar seeds, berries and blooms.

These seed pods were probably my favourite:

Although these were a close second:

#senses, #time

Reading Between The Lines

“Reading Between The Lines” is the name of a sculpture located in a field just outside the small town of Borgloon in the Belgian province of Limburg. The satnav brought us to a small residential street where we saw a sign pointing along a path leading up the hill to the “Doorkijkkerkje” (literally the “little see-through church”).

The path runs through apple and pear orchards, and after about ten minutes walking we came to another sign explaining that the church/sculpture is made of 100 layers of steel weighing 30 tonnes.

And there it is.

Because it’s constructed of horizontal layers of metal, its transparency varies with the angle at which you view it.

As you get closer to it and look up at it the layers start to overlap, giving an impression of solidity.

Inside, looking up at the ceiling, the layers overlap completely. Apparently the type of steel used “is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rust-like appearance if exposed to the weather for several years.”

Looking up inside the steeple.

And of course even semi-transparent structures can cast solid shadows if the light is coming from a certain angle.

Here’s a timelapse video of its construction in 2011.

#art, #belgium

Red Sea

A mid-August afternoon in Devon. An impromptu trip to Sidmouth. Warm enough weather that there were even people in the water.

Sidmouth is part of the “Jurassic Coast” World Heritage Site, which includes the more famous Lyme Regis, known for its rich pickings for fossil hunters. I had to resist the temptation to do my best Dickie Attenborough impersonation. “Welcome…to Jurassic Coast!”

But on this particular day in Sidmouth people seemed more interested in buying a little plastic nets and hopping across the rock pools in search of live specimens.

Beaches all along this stretch of coast have cliffs made of distinctively terracotta-coloured sandstone. It’s soft and crumbly, which makes rockfalls common and puts cliff-top properties in frequent danger. It also makes it easier to carve a message of undying love into their surface.

Climbing the set of steps known as Jacob’s Ladder to the top of the cliff allows you to see the extent to which the sea, particularly on a day like this with a bit of wind and a strong current, has been stained red by the eroded cliffs.

Ten

As of today I’ve been blogging for ten years, man and boy. I can remember when it was all open fields around here.

In Piazza

Exeter, where I’m from, doesn’t really have one main, central public square. It has a large lawn in front of the cathedral, a long main shopping street, some parks and some open space down by the quay on the river. But if you wanted to hold a big event for a lot of people I’m not quite sure where you’d do it. Most Italian towns on the other hand have a principal piazza which can be used for any number of events, demonstrations, or just as somewhere to hang out and feel like you’re part of the life of the town.

This summer we experienced two different Italian squares, on two different scales. Campiglia Marittima, just inland from the beach where we were staying, is a fairly small place, but of course it has a main square.

With an alliterative eatery.

It also, we discovered, has an annual street theatre festival called Apritiborgo. For such a small town this was a pretty good event, with acts from all over the world. The streets and squares (there are several smaller ones apart from the central square) were packed, there was a market and a few food stalls.

The Uruguayan jugglers were fun.

This was the first time I’d seen someone spinning a hula hoop around their nose.

Of course the advantage to events in public squares is that people who live there get a free show right outside their window.

Whether they’re interested or not.

A few days later we passed through Siena. We’d not been there for over a decade, but it was much as we remembered it. Siena, of course, has a large main square called Il Campo, which is the site of the town’s most famous event: the Palio. As luck would have it we were in town a few days before the event, so preparations were well under way. In fact there are several test runs before the big day, so we got to see all the decorations, crowds and horses in action, albeit a little slower and quieter than the real thing, which we saw on TV when we got home the following week. Most people crowd into the centre of the square, so that the horses race around them. Alternatively you can rent a seat on a balcony above the hoi polloi, for around €400.

When we arrived it was still quite quiet and they were spraying the sand on the ground to stop the horses kicking up clouds of dust.

Colour-coded children from each ‘contrada’ (a team representing a town district) were seated in a prime spot in front of the town hall.

An hour or so later there was standing room only. Usually I hate crowds, but this was a very relaxed atmosphere.

Again there were cheeky peekers in various windows around the square, although not many people actually live in the buildings looking onto Il Campo.

Each team’s supporters would take turns singing football-style chants.

For some reason only the men sang, while the women sat in silence.

Here’s a sample of the singing and general atmosphere.

Horses and their riders emerge from under the town hall.

After much shuffling and faffing around they line up.

And then they’re off for three circuits. The first turn was quite fast, but they slowed down for the next two. It’s basically just to let the riders and horses get the feel of the course.

If you want a bit more detail of what actually happens on the day, I recommend Stef’s blogpost. And here’s the actual race:

#italy

Backwash

I like going to the beach, but rarely feel the desire to swim in the sea. When I do go in the water, I’m often happier just standing at the water’s edge, letting the waves lap at my feet and lower legs. If I do go in for a full immersion the water has to be pretty warm and even then I take it slowly, wading out and waiting a minute before ducking under.

But the area where the waves spill, plunge, collapse and surge is more fun. Like many people I can stand there and watch them for a good long while. Allowing them to swirl and pull at my lower extremities while I do so adds a sensual element. On the beach near San Vincenzo in Tuscany this summer I took to standing at the edge where the waves would slide up the gently shelving sand. They would crash up to around the middle of my shins and then wash backwards, creating gurgling vortices around my ankles.

As they did so they also pulled at the sand under my feet, and with each passing wave I would be sucked a little deeper into the surface of the beach, heel first, which made it increasingly difficult to keep my balance.

The power of the water was surprising, given that it was only a few inches deep.

The glassy smooth surface of sand freshly washed by the sea is probably my favourite part of the beach, and I love walking along it and seeing it change tone and dry out under the pressure of my feet.

#senses

Han Ting in The Hague

We only went to The Hague to eat dinner, but almost as soon as we arrived we wished we’d booked a longer stay. Our hotel was located right on the main shopping street, a wide, pedestrianised area full of interesting architecture and wacky sculpture. This is our hotel:

This is the department store just opposite. Note the large bird head at right. The next building along had a line of them all around the first floor.

This gauzy wrapping reminded me a little of the famous Dancing House I saw in Prague.

Bikes, because Netherlands.

The aforementioned sculptures on the main street. This is one of the more normal-looking ones (it’s the one on the right).

We only had a couple of hours spare before dinner, which would have been a bit tight to try and squeeze in one of the admittedly tempting arts and culture highlights such as the Escher museum (by the way it was only on this trip that I realised that Escher was Dutch, and so his name should be pronounced closer to ‘Esker’ than ‘Esher’, as I had always done). So we just spent the early evening wandering the back streets, mentally noting other promising lunch options for future visits.

Han Ting is a Chinese-French fusion restaurant which this year received its first Michelin star.

The decor leans heavily on the Chinese aspect, although the food was actually more Frenchified than I expected.

We went for the “Tea menu”. I chose wine pairings and my wife went for tea pairings, for the sake of novelty (and sobriety).

We were given chopsticks, but ended up using western cutlery for most dishes, as a lot of them involved creams and foams and other types of slippery liquid.

Amuse-bouches, from the top: celery foam, “duck stomach”, tofu roll, cold mackerel soup.

Veal with cauliflower cream and shaved macadamia nut.

Bread. Steamed, with pieces of shallot (the dark brown spot in the middle).

Our drinks. Can you tell which is the wine and which is the tea? The sommelier introduced each tea with some spiel about how each one interacted with the hot or cold “energy” of the dish, according to Chinese dietary theory. Whatever. They were nice, if all a bit samey.

This one was definitely the highlight of the evening. The purple swirl is eel marinated in beetroot, and there’s salmon underneath the white layer, which is rice paper. The orange lumps are pumpkin. Bursting with flavour.

We were then given a small bowl of sticky rice and crème fraîche as a palate cleanser. It works in terms of refreshing your mouth after the bold flavours of the previous dish, but for me was a little too filling, compared to a sorbet.

Sea bream, razor clam. Beautiful and with a welcome spicy kick.

Sole marinated in ketchup (the red piece at the top).  And another sole fillet with goji berries and celery. Slightly overpowered by the mango sauce.

On the side was a small dish of bone marrow and panko. Not a big fan of bone marrow, and the abiding impression was of a mouthful of crunchy panko and not much else.

Back on track with the main meat course: beautifully cooked beef with shiitake mushrooms and Jack Daniels.

Dessert. A bit of everything: fruit, ice cream, panna cotta, macaroon, popcorn.

All very nice and pretty reasonably priced at €65 for the full menu (without drinks).

The following morning we just had time for a walk along the sea front before heading home. Note the handy signs, a different one every twenty metres or so, for lost children to help them find their parents again.

More wacky sculpture.

And some persistent bathers. What do they think this is, summer?

Fortunately The Hague is only a little over two hours by car from Brussels, so it’ll be easy to come back again some day soon.

#gastronaut, #travel