Almouth Arts Festival

Well an almost productive weekend... depending on how you measure personal production rates.. we had a lovely wander around Alnmouth Arts Festival. This is my third year of going to this local eclectic event. Each year it brings something new and inspirational and its a really enjoyabe experience. 23 different venues showing an exceptional range of very varied art, everything from children's mosaics to top class professional artists and lots in between. I bought a fab book written and beautifully illustrated by David Hall about the life cycle of puffins, I.ve seen his work at previous festivals and around various shops and galleries and always admired it.

Its a really nice way to explore Alnmouth village as well, many of the venues taking you down snickets and back streets which are obviously historical and often very pretty. Tea and cakes at Riverbank House is a welcome break and the opportunity to share the wonderful views from this lovely house is really appreciated.

Another artist I encountered was a woman called Laura Edgar who did the most beautiful embroidered textile scenes and brooches. For me her work was the best at the festival and I shall look out for more of her stuff. Really interesting and inspirational.

The weather held for most of the weekend so when we got back from Alnmouth I did a bit of gardening which mainly involved sitting with a gin and tonic and planning the next weeding session.

Sunday was a walk on a windy beach day, a trip to the Sunday market for some plants and then a failed attempt to make our house look less cluttered..... yes less cluttered and that's by my standards!!!! The smash it in look is getting a bit out of hand... made worse by the fact I keep making more things... the clippy rug is growing and there's some more patchwork in the making... its a lost cause really....

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Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

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The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop. More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained. The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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