End of Term and the Autumn Countryside Show at the Weald and Downland Museum

I like being busy but it doesn’t half make the time fly by. The last thing I remember I was expecting the Summer to start and suddenly here we are at the Weald & D0wnland Open Air Museum’s  Autumn Countryside Show, the last of my long season which stretches from March to October. Where did the summer go?

Another consequence of being too busy is that I don’t seem to find the time to post so it’s time to get back in the habit with a quick write up of the show last weekend, heavy on pictures and light on prose.

Jon Warwicker,sitting on the shave horse and wielding a small Adze, discusses the finer points of his bowl carving with Besom Broom maker Arthur Hafendon.

We managed to put on a good show in the horticultural tent where for the first year a woodcraft category was included. Congratulations to everyone who entered as the standard of the work was very high – giving the judge (yours truly) a very hard time indeed. I wanted to award at least 6 winners but well done Wayne – the spoon master – Bachelor who won with, yes you guessed it, his spoon. To Jon Warwicker who came second with his oak bowl and Sarah Ridley who came third with her sculpture.

Yes it’s a show, but the autumn is a busy time and it’s built around a lot of things that do happen on traditional farms at this time of year. The steam powered threshing drum works all weekend, weather allowing, as it threshes the museum’s crop of traditional  longstraw thatching wheat which will be used on the museums thatched buildings in the coming year.

Well almost all weekend, as even the threshing has to stop for a cup of tea now and then.

Barbara came by with one of her donkeys giving me the opportunity to admire the replacement pins I made for the pannier harness last year.

Up in the farmyard behind Bayleaf  Guy was masterminding the scratting (shredding) of the apples and pressing to make the juice that will be fermented into cider at the museum. While this seasons apples are being pressed, on the Saturday night we were sampling the cider made two years ago – which was voted an excellent vintage by the experienced team of greenwood working cider tasters.

The Sunday morning was a cold one as the thick ice on one of my display tables shows. I don’t care what the weather forecast said – this much ice means a temperature well below zero degrees C in my book. Chilly.

But with lots of sun we soon warmed up and Alan’s plum tart was delicious  – thank you Alan.

There is plenty going on at the Museum as well these days, with a new cottage ‘Tindalls’ being erected on site. I say new, but it’s hundreds of years old and has actually been in store for about 30 years since it was taken down by the museum awaiting an opportunity to reconstruct it. To me the frame at this stage of construction looks really spectacular and has a beauty all of it’s own.

In the blacksmith’s forge Martin Fox is fast becoming a devotee of the English Scythe and has taken on the restoration of a really long old English blade which he found in the scrap metal pile and has been busy straightening out. I reckon a lot of old English blades have been scrapped partly because people don’t know how to use them and also because they don’t know where to find a blacksmith that can repair them – so it’s very good to see a blacksmith working on repairing scythe blades again.

If  you’ve visited the museum you will know that the gardens around the buildings are busy and productive places as well, especially in the autumn as harvesting the last of the summer crops and protecting the winter crops from the birds is key to preventing a hungry wintertime.

As if there wasn’t enough already going at the show we decided to run a besom broom making competition – and I’ve run out of space here so I’ll post on the brooms at the show next.

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Fancy Learning to be a Charcoal Burner?

Perhaps you like the idea of becoming a charcoal burner, maybe you just want to turn some unwanted waste wood into a valuable product or perhaps you just want to experience the magic of spending the night in the woods and making charcoal the traditional way, either way there is an event you might like to take part in coming up in August.

From 11th to the 13th August Alan and Jo Waters of Wildwood charcoal are running their annual earthburn in the woods on the West Dean Estate near Chichester. Alan kicks the earthburn off on the 11th August which celebrates the feast day of St Alexander, the patron saint of Charcoal burners.  But this year as well as demonstrating the ancient craft of burning charcoal in an earth covered clamp they have assembled a team of charcoal burners to burn with a steel ring kiln and a new design of mobile retort at the same time. It’s always a great event, very atmospheric at the beautiful site in the West Dean woods and this year  it will be a unique opportunity to compare the past, the present and the future of charcoal burning.

As is the way these days the event has to have a name, so it’s the CharFest in the Woods. You can participate in the event for a small cost per day – to book your place contact Jo Waters at Wildwoodcoppice@btinternet.com – and dare I mention that it may be your last chance to see the old man hobbling – and be able to run away faster – before he gets his new bionic knees (only joking Alan!)

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We Had a Ball

The second weekend in May is the Annual Bodgers Ball when members of the Association of Polelathe Turners & Greenwood Workers gather somewhere in a field for the Annual General Meeting. When I turned up early on Thursday Morning the weather was non too auspicious. That’s an understatement – it was terrible. The clouds down on the ground, raining all day in galeforce winds. You couldn’t see one side of the field from the other, you know what I mean – typical British camping holiday weather! Great weather for a weekend event in a field in West Dorset.

Luckily for us as if by magic the weather cleared and the sun blazed down on the site revealing the West Dorset Countryside and the sea at Charmouth only a couple of miles away between the rolling hills.  Although you couldn’t drive onto the site on Friday morning by the afternoon it was drying rapidly enough for everyone to set up camp.

A fine array of shelters, lathes, greenwood working demonstrations and activities filled the site which for this year included the large beechwood just behind the main field.

The Ball is an opportunity to meet up with friends not seen since the previous season and to catch up on events – though it always seems to flash past and there is never enough time to meet, see and do all the things I planned. Sean Hellman gave a great worskhop on sharpening with stones. If you missed his workshop there is some great information on his blog – but make sure you’ve got some time to appreciate it, it’s a great source of valuable information – here a link to a stone article to get you started – Natural Stones on Seans Blog

It was good to meet up with Barnaby (aka Barn the Spoon) the maestro of itinerant spoon carving. Though for this ball Barn went upmarket with a friend, old series IIa Landrover Safari and awning to make the most of the blazing sunshine.

Hard work, great conversation late into the evening at the pub constructed on the site with local Lyme Regis ales (great beer) and Cider from Dai Saltmarsh at Five Penny Farm led inevitably to the morning after. You’ll have heard of the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, but may not know it was actually 1 Yorkshireman and three from Shropshire. Here they are in action, Bob, Neil, Tony and Richard – casting aspersions on all and sundry around the fire on a sunny but chilly morning whilst awaiting the kettle to boil (again).

The pub for the event was an old stone shed at the edge of the field cleaned out and fitted with woodburner, bar and local beer. Did anyone take a photo of the Pub, particularly the pub sign as I managed not to?

Robin Tuppen from Royal Sussex Trugs joined us at the ball for the first time with his apprentice and it was great to see his work. I particularly liked the steamer based upon a solid iron monster of an old army stove and a wood and leather steam chamber.

It does take all sorts. We had polelathes, bungee lathes, treadle lathes and I don’t think this one actually has a name. No pole and it works on a flywheel system which provides plenty of inertia for turning bowls and plates. I know – lets just call it a lathe.  The tools are scraping with a burr rather than cutting like a knife – one of the tools is actually a file squared off at the end and then rotated as the burr wears to present a new surface. Very interesting approach and great to see so many ‘rules’ being broken at once!

Since we were in Beechwood the logs for the log-to-leg race were from local beech. For a few years now we’ve been spoilt with exceptionally straight and knot free Ash for the racing so I think it made a good contrast to be using the local Beech.

Not an easy task to split the wood into clefts as James discovered when the froe bounced off the end. Even the wedge didn’t want to go in – at that point we renamed the event the ‘Bouncing Beech Ball’.

In the half hour challenge greenwood workers make a product of their choice. Somehow, despite being busy all day Ben Orford got his lathe setup and made a great baby rattle for the challenge.

West Dorset is a long trek from Yorkshire and Richard Law didn’t bring his lathe – but that didn’t stop him from entering the half hour challenge with some hand tools. Good man! They look great, but what is it you are making Richard?

I didn’t get any photos of the log to leg races as I found myself competing in both events. At the last minute I failed to argue my way out of the team event and then had to do it all again for the individual race. The times were a lot slower with the Beechwood, but despite my shavehorse breaking in the individual event I still finished.

It seemed only minutes after the last race finished that I looked up and the field was empty again. The clouds were back and rain in the offing.  Was it all a dream? It almost seems like it. But it’s a dream I will remember for a long while, so thank you everyone who came trusting in the weather and particularly the organiser Dai Saltmarsh and the owners of the site who allowed us to use it, it was a pleasure to work with you. Great place, great people and an amazing event – it’s going to be a hard act to follow, but we always do. We don’t yet know  where we will be next year, but we’ll sort that out in the next few months so stay tuned if you fancy coming to the ball next year!

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Beltain at Butser Ancient Farm

Beltain marks the mid point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice and this ancient festival still remains in part with our tradition of marking the start of May with a holiday and the naming of the Hawthorn as the ‘May Tree’. I love to see the Hawthorn in full blossom – if only because it bodes well for a good harvest later in the year.

At Butser Ancient Farm near Petersfield the festival is still celebrated with a traditional bonfire in the form of a giant wicker man. A must for any lovers of the cult movie ‘The Wicker Man’. Butser’s celebration is on tonight (Saturday 5th May) and details are on the website here.

I managed to be there last year and in marked contrast to this year the drought was still in full swing resulting in spectacular colours. Sadly I can’t make the celebration this year as I’ll be setting up (in the rain I expect) for the South Downs Show at the nearby Weald and Downland Museum.

There’s plenty of other attractions on the site – here is Matt Melton and his amazing invisible saw pit. But sawing above ground would have been normal, especially where logs were sawn up in situ – it’s a lot easier to move planks then massive butts. If you have the right shape of ground or fell the tree over another log as a bench then you can also do away the trestles at either end – though you need to be careful the log doesn’t pivot on the bench with you on it – or you’ll have invented the see-saw!

Personally I think the ancient landrover fitted the site very well. Very iron age – but yes I am biased.

Or you can just sit and admire the wicker man  for a short time before he meets his end.

My photos can’t really do justice to the spectacular site – enhanced here by the flaming head falling off and rolling down the side of the figure.

I’m sorry that I can’t make it this year but I’m sure that Butser Ancient Farm will do the festival of Beltane justice but I will be there in spirit!

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Press Gang (yes more cider)

With a lot of apples you need a big press or a lot of presses or both. At the New Forest Cider Pressing weekend on the New Forest Cider Farm in Burley we had both and the bonus of great weather over the weekend. This pile of apples ( and you are lucky you can’t smell it on the internet – ripe would be an understatement!) is Kingston Black, the holy grail of cidermakers. By the end of the weekend you’ll find you grow to quite like the smell of smoke and fermenting ripe apples, though it’s an acquired taste.

Despite taking part as a woodturner it won’t surprise you to know that the cidermaking is the major attraction for me. I had to work hard to finish pressing my own apples before leaving for the show.  So the weekend is a great opportunity to finish off the season by talking to more cidermakers than you are ever likely to see in one place, taking in some history and consuming plenty of the product – all in the pursuit of knowledge of course -  as well as turning a bit of wood. It’s more than a little bit indulgent, but in this article I’m going to look at the role that wood traditionally plays in pressing apples and I’ll save the greenwood part of the show for the next post.

There were several presses working over the weekend and all were either manually powered or assisted by steam engines. This steam driven press is trailer mounted and has a mill (or scratter) in the center with a press on either end so that one can be loaded whilst the other is pressing. A great example of the type of mobile press used in Hereford and Gloucestershire at the beginning of the 20th Century.

As you can see, though the metalwork is the key to the moving parts, the press itself is largely wooden – and for good reason – as the cider apple juice is very acidic and full of tannins so will corrode iron if it comes in contact. So wood is used for the press, the tray and originally for the troughs and barrels though plastic and stainless steel have largely taken over these days.

Even the tools would have been wooden – a good wooden shovel was in use on one press. Typically the apple pomace (shredded apple pieces the size of peas) are pressed in cheeses, formed in a wooden frame and held together with hessian, cloth or even straw, built up on top of each other to the capacity of the press before all being pressed together.

You can never have too many presses. Over recent decades many old cider presses have decayed outside or in barns and cider houses and with barn conversions, it’s not unusual for them to be discarded as the apples they used to process are left rotting or the trees are grubbed up. Often only the metal work will survive, so how do you restore a vintage press ?

Over the weekend a team of cidermakers, sawyers and carpenters showed us how to restore a big wooden press.  Here’s the wood in flatpack form, but you’ll need more than just an allen key to put it together. First up is the Stenner rack saw, again driven by a belt from a steam engine,  to convert the oak butt into the big beams needed to take the pressure of the press.

This is a twin screw press and the screws are mounted up through the base of the bottom beam. Even the metalwork is too heavy to move by hand, one screw is almost in and the other is offered up with the help of a telehandler.

With the screws mounted in the bottom beam the top beams await mortice drilling (by chainsaw) to fit onto the top of the press.

By Sunday afternoon the press takes shape. While the beams are persuaded onto the screws the racksaw is busy milling out the timber to make the tray and boards to operate the press.

A great idea to rebuild the press at the show – as all of the woody The press didn’t quite make it into operation by the end of the weekend, but it wasn’t far off and I found it a really interesting demonstration of the skills needed to make, and also to keep these presses in operation year in and year out.

There was a very similar press to the one being rebuilt that was in use over the weekend which I understand was itself restored about 20 or so years ago – though it certainly looks as if the woodwork is older.  It’s mounted on wheels and has a winch to assist in the raising of the top beams. So now you know how to do it there’s nothing to stop you making a press for next season?

Of course you might not want to start with such a big press, and that’s fine there are plenty of smaller presses around, or you can make your own to process the juice from spare apples from a couple of trees. The small fruit press and mill by Vigo are well made – though you pay a steep price and it’s not to hard to make up one yourself if you are so inclined. I started with a similar size of press but I soon built a bigger one though I am still (just) getting by on the Vigo scratter.

All too soon, apples pressed, cider drunk and even some wood turned – but that will have to wait for the next post – it was time to pack up and leave. A great weekend, lovely show and the very best of company – I’m very grateful that they all put up with me. I’ve learnt a lot and I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Before leaving Burley and fighting my way back to Sussex on the M27 I stop at Picket Post on top of the hill for a few minutes to take in the view and in the tranquility I enjoy the afterglow from the hard work of the weekend – not such a great sunset this year, but it’s become something of a tradition for me. 

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More Steam and Apples

The final show of the season for me is the Annual Cider Pressing weekend at the New Forest Cider Farm, Burley which is on this weekend. Link to more information is on the side bar of the site at the moment or visit the new forest cider blog.

 

If you are near to the New Forest it is worth a visit. A great little show with proceeds to charity and a last chance for nostrils full of fermenting cider apples, wood smoke, coke and steam. As I don’t need to make stock now I am planning to relax, enjoy the event and turn a few bowls I’ve been thinking about.

 

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Apples, hurdles, turning and threshing – what more could you want?

This is a long post so feel free to browse through the picture – or perhaps you’ll want to go and get a cup of coffee (or cider if it’s the right time of day) and soak up some of the atmosphere of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at its best with a tale of threshing, woodland crafts, some turning (but not much) and plenty of apples. The Autumn Countryside Show is one of my favourite events, a celebration of many of the things that mark out the rapid change in pace of the seasons and preparations for the long winter to come.

Some weeks ago the wheat on the museum fields was harvested, stooked and then stacked in a traditional rick ready for threshing.  With the weather looking changeable the threshing team started early, working hard through Friday and both days of the show to get all of the wheat threshed.

The wheat grown at the museum is a traditional long straw variety (triticale) with a much longer stem than a modern wheat variety which makes it useful for thatching straw. The threshing machine has an extra unit to sort and bundle the long straw so that the thatchers can store it whilst the shorter straws are discarded and baled.

I think it’s very unusual to see a threshing machine working all weekend and really rare to have two working at the same time. I particularly liked the way that Ben used one of the museum waggons as a part of the threshing display.

Normally I demonstrate on my own as I find two polelathes can be a bit of a crowd, but the Autumn show has always had wood at its heart and this year we decided to put on a bit of a show. No longer ‘Billy-no-mates’ I was joined by friends from the Sussex & Surrey Coppice, Hampshire  Coppice and the Polelathe turners and Greenwood Workers groups.  Thanks to everyone who turned up – it was a pleasure to work with you.

If you read the posts on this blog occasionally you’ll be no stranger to most of the talented greenwood workers who came to demonstrate at the show, so I won’t go through everyone even though they do deserve it for putting on such a great display. Thank you!

The traditional Chestnut lathes that Justin, Tony and Freddie make for many building projects were particularly appropriate to the museum and it was great to have them with us at this show.

First time at the show, Martin, Chris and Catherine aka ‘The Special Branch’ added some willow weaving activities for children.

Wot no pegs? The recipe section of the Horticultural Marquee needed pegs, so thanks to ‘the special branch’ we soon had it pegged with some simple but very effective twig pegs. Hardly a big issue, but it’s simple skills like this that are so rarely used today. It’s not that we can’t do it, virtually anyone can make pegs with a twig, a  knife and some wire, but we don’t respect these skills anylonger.

Melvyn made an impromptu appearance to make liggers for the day. And yes I did include this just so I could use the word ‘liggers’ which are the long thatching spars used at the top of the roof to bind the thatch together.

Alan Waters spoilt us all with an excellent freshly baked apple tart on Sunday morning. Thank you Alan! There will be more on the subject of apples at the show, but first…

The Hurdle Making Competition. A great event, which is fast becoming a fixture at the show, takes place on Sunday together with the (thatching) Spar making contest. Luckily the weather held up, though it was extremely windy on the Sunday during the competition.

This year somehow Rosie (Alan’s apprentice and responsible for keeping Alan in line) was persuaded to take part – not an easy thing to do, I remember the sheer terror of the first time I took part in a polelathe turning log-to-leg competition. Rosie managed to find a quiet spot at the back of the area and as she’s none to keen on cameras I had to pretend to be taking a photo of the tractors in the ring (OK so not much pretence needed  – a fine example of a field marshal by the way).

I am often asked if I make hurdles, somehow it’s seen as the epitomy of a rural craft, but as a woodturner I am well aware that it’s just one step too far for me, though stepping on it is something that Rosie demonstrates here with fine style.

At the other end of the competation area Robert (from Wiltshire) is getting there with his hurdle. He claims to be an amateur and amongst his many amateur skills Robert also makes fine cider and country wines, which we sampled over the weekend. A good opportunity to compare notes on apple milling and pressing.

All done. To my inexpert eye a fine example of a wattle hurdle. But the judging is tight and points are lost for using loppers and not having enough twists. Still as Rosie said, it didn’t come last!

Meanwhile back at the farm, up in the courtyard the apple mill and press are busy pressing something like a tonne of apples over the weekend.

We got to taste some of the product around the campfire in the evening, the two year old cider seemed to go down very well together with plenty of music and singing.

Most of the apples are from the West Dean estate adjacent to the museum though the apples from the museums own orchard are great traditional varieties.

Julian tells me that they managed to press about 80gallons of apple juice, and quite a lot of it was given away as samples but perhaps 70 gallons will be fermented on to make cider, which will be ready for drinking in a couple of years.

The show is very much an end of season marker for me, so as we packed up it was auspicious to have such a fine sunset, marking a great show with great friends, to say goodbye for a while and look forward to the coming season as we all return to the woods.

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Looking for some old slag – at the Fernhurst Furnace

If you like some old slag then last weekend was your thing, at the annual Fernhurst Furnace Open Weekend. With a forecast for bad weather as the remnants of hurricane Katia lashed the country I wasn’t expecting much, but in the event, apart from the odd shower, we escaped the worst of it and the show went on. Sheltered in the woods on the track down to the site of the old Wealden Furnace I hardly noticed the wind.

Unlike many of the shows and events that I do, this one is not commercial, being primarily a small community based event and has another purpose, to raise awareness of the remains of the North Park Iron Works which operated  on the site for over 200 years.  One of dozens of Iron Furnaces in the Wealds of Sussex, they were eventually put out of business by the successful use of coke for smelting in the Ironbridge gorge, releasing the ironmasters from their dependance upon charcoal as a fuel source and allowing iron working to be concentrated on massive sites.

It’s hard to get a sense of the size, noise and activities of the iron workings from the remains on the site you can see today. Almost all of the Wealden Furnaces have disappeared leaving little trace which makes this site something special. The most obvious feature is the size of the furnace pond and it’s retaining bank, availability of water being one of the biggest restrictions on the Wealden sites. Below the sluice it is possible to make out the remains of the wheel pits, the casting floor, furnace base and the charging ramp. You can even just make out the remains of the casting pit for the naval cannon that were made on the site.

This model gives a better feel for the scale of the buildings in the photo you can see the actual wheel pits and stream just to the right of the one in the model. You can learn more of the history of the site at the furnace website.

The iron industry in the Weald existed from Roman times (and probably well before that) but as the industry in the north of England scaled up in the 18th Century the Wealden Ironmasters were forced to rely upon their iron making and casting skills to compete. As well as making ‘pig’ or lump iron for the hammer forge at Pophole on the nearby Wey the furnace cast cannon for the Navy.  This cannon is a good example of the type that would have produced by the Wealden furnaces (though this one is not from this furnace).

The two sites, furnace and forge needed to be separate because of the restricted supply of water (power) and charcoal (fuel). This cannon ball was found in the grounds of a cottage close to the hammer forge at Pophole on the Wey and was most likely cast from pig iron smelted at the furnace 2 miles away.

Making iron from the ore requires a lot of heat, fuel and plenty of power on hand so we weren’t able to demonstrate it over the Weekend. But Fergus and Penny from nearby Butser Ancient Farm did take us right back to the start of the technology by demonstrating how to smelt copper from ore, very much the same principles which were refined (pun entirely intended) to smelt iron.

Fergus used Malachite which is a very rich copper ore, copper carbonate, the oxide of copper giving the mineral it’s characteristic green colour.

To turn the green malachite into copper the temperature in the clay furnace needs to reach almost 1400 degrees centigrade which is achieved using good quality lumpwood charcoal and plenty of air blown through the fire from the hand powered leather bellows.

The green tinge of the flame indicates that the furnace is reaching the right temperature and the copper in the malachite is being released. This happens as the charcoal creates a reducing action by burning and producing carbon monoxide that then steals oxygen from the copper oxide to make copper.

At the end of the process the crucible containing the molten copper and remains of the malachite mixed with some charcoal is removed from the furnace to pour into moulds.

Though in this case the copper pulled a disappearing stunt and flowed to the base of the crucible where it stuck fast until cooled and released by Fergus – though it does look more spectacular in this shape and contrasts with the original green of the malachite.

I was impressed that you can produce your own metal with some clay, charcoal, a pair of bellows and some ore. You really could try this at home. Though it might be better to try it with Butser ancient farm first and you can find out more about their courses including Fergus’ metal making on their Butser Ancient Farm website .

The title of this post is a shameful attempt to attract hits and maybe even readers via the search engines, though whether they will be impressed with my old slag is doubtful. Given the centuries of iron working at the site, and at nearby Pophole hammer forge, slag tends to turn up all over the place and would have been used to fill in the notoriously poor Sussex roads, but I found my old slag in the end and a fine example it is too. I shall have to leave the rest of the weekend to another post.

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2011 Fernhurst Furnace Open Weekend – September 10th – 11th

If you fancy a visit to the site of the medieval  North Park Iron Works near Fernhurst (that’s in West Sussex, close to Haslemere in case you are wondering) – it’s the annual open weekend on the 10th and 11th September. I will be there with my lathe and shavehorse as will friends making besom brooms, blacksmithing, smelting bronze (or is it copper), burning charcoal and there will be plenty of refreshments on hand. Not forgetting the highlight of the event the Sealed Knot civil war reenactors. More (and probably more accurate details) from the flyer below or the furnace website at http://www.fernhurstfurnace.co.uk/

Poster-2011 – pdf flyer for the event this weekend

Look forward to seeing you there!

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Out of the Woods – with added Instruments

The High Street is not my normal habitat these days. But I came  to see Mervyn Mewis’ excellent display of his woody creations at Godalming Museum ‘Out of the Woods’.

I rate Merv’s skills very highly and I think the combination of  Trees, Wood and Music is compelling.  The exhibition is a  great mix of  wood shapes and textures.  The natural shape, grain and character of the wood plays a big part in Merv’s work. Sadly I only had my phone camera with me so the photos leave a lot to be desired.

The exhibition will stay on at the Museum throughout August. If you are in the Godalming area don’t forget to take a look!  There will also be a range of activities and events (mainly Saturday’s) throughout the month based upon Mervyn’s Exhibition, trees, music and wood. Take a look at the museum website here for details – Godalming Museum – Out of the Woods Events.

But as well as a tree surgeon and woodworker Merv is also a talented Luthier and for me the instruments that Merv makes and plays are the icing on the cake. You may have seen or heard Merv playing them with Catherine as a duo – if not they will be playing in Godalming on Saturday 13th August (details on the museum website).  They are traditional instruments and you don’t get to see them very often let alone hear them played. I think this one is called a Bowed Psaltery?

The Hurdy Gurdy – I would love to have heard this one being played but unfortunately it was on display in the cabinet.

……..and the hammered dulcimer. Well done Merv an excellent exhibition. But the music didn’t end there because when I spoke to Merv the day before he reminded me to bring my guitar…..oh dear…..

Somehow on the way back to the station I found myself in the Star with Merv and the dulcimer, Catherine and the rest of the Monday evening folk session. As far as I can remember I’ve not played folk music anywhere other than around a campfire at a woody event before. So playing  in a pub with other musicians was quite an event for me – a real Coming out of the Woods for me as well.   They were very kind and tolerant to put up with me! I really do promise to do a little more practise, and if only I could remember all the words…….

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