Martin's Mag.

Esme likes her new boots, as do I. Sadly, they don’t do them in a 45.

We spent a week in East Sussex, which brought back some distant memories of holidays long ago.

Saint Thomas the Martyr Church, Winchelsea. The last resting place of Spike Milligan. The inscription, in Gaelic, reads “I told you I was ill”.

The Pipewell Gate at Winchelsea, and access to one of many medieval cellars and tunnels under the town.

Sally’s new favourite shop, Merchant & Mills Ltd, in Rye.

The Ypres Castle pub next to the actual Ypres Castle, in Rye.

The view across our home for the week, looking from Rye towards Rye Harbour.

Views of Hastings.

Camber Castle.

Views around Rye, ending with some fabulous local scallops, prawns and crab claws.

Five miles north of Newport, in Monmouthshire, Caerleon seems to have escaped our attention, up until now. The local volunteer in the town’s museum confessed that this was something we shared with half of his town’s own population. It was, we learned, the first permanent Roman site in Wales, and there still seems to be quite a lot of it left.

A great thing to do on a cold Winter’s day, specially if one is of a certain age and have a nostalgia for the ephemera of days-gone-by. The museum is up the road from us at Portbury. And it’s huge!

It looks the same, despite there being a different Prince of Wales.

I remember when 1984 seemed like an impossible time in the future. 2023! Where will it all end?

We are now through the looking glass that is Christmas and New Year, and, although we had a nice time with family, friends, and our new granddaughter, there was not a lot of news, or photos. All the family, including Rosie home from Madrid, came to us on Christmas Eve, MF&E staying ’till Christmas Day. Other than that we’ve been keeping warm, going for walks (and a jog or two in my case) and eating (and drinking) the leftovers. Someone has to do it.

The Brean Bird Screen was build to prevent disturbance to an important high tide waterbird roost on the Severn Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which is just beyond the screen. It is located at Brean Cross sluices, in Somerset, which were built in the 1970s at the tidal limit of the River Axe and which protect 15,000 acres of agricultural land as well as farms and residential properties.

A Victorian masterpiece, illuminated in the evening in the run-up to Christmas (what we used to call Advent). Even better after sharing a drink with Fi and Paul in Mary’s Bar.