Picture post

I've finally got round to developing the pictures from my film camera, so here are a few of them.Above is my home, the Croft, covered in snow. Just three days before we'd been sitting in the garden drinking gin and tonics in the sun. (By the way - if you look upwards from the apex of the conservatory to nearly the very top of the trees behind, you can see a small speck. That's the magpie nest I mentioned in my last entry.) Next are the rocks at Shakira, just down the hill from Philipe's vegan farmstead. This is where he comes to drink his home-grown coffee every morning. The view from here is amazing - far, far below the Rio Magdalena cuts through green hills, that have twelve waterfalls cascading down them. The following are some of the monsters that litter the countryside all round San Augustine.

This is the racing butterfly that came and landed on me while we were walking around one of the archaeological parks. I wonder what happened to the other eighty-eight of them?

This is the pleasant little guest house we stayed at in San Augustine.

Ah, back to Shakira. This was taken from near the rocks where we were sitting in the first picture. I somehow managed to miss all of the waterfalls. That's Chappy on the horse. He's from Middlesborough, him, like.

I think the next four pictures were taken around Salento when we went to visit the coffee finca.

This is the main square in Salento. You can see the mists rolling off the mountains to the right.

Here is the night-time view from the cabin in Taganga. What is incredible is that absolutely nobody in the village pays for their electricity. Everybody just hooks a coat hanger up to the power lines.

This is the beach at El Cabo, in the Tayrona national park, where we spent New Year.

This is Pershore Abbey covered in snow. It once extended to about where I took the photo from, but most of it was knocked down in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monastries. It was all supposed to be demolished, but the people of Pershore had a whip-round and gave the wrecking squad £400 to leave the part that remains today. The butresses were added in 1911 to stop it falling over. I've always thought they make it look like a puppy sitting up waiting for a biscuit.

This is one of my favourite pubs, The Fleece at Bretforton. It's an incredibly historic place - it has one of Englands largest collections of pewter plate and there are designs painted on the hearth tiles to stop witches coming down the chimney. One of the last stories I wrote for the Evesham Journal was my eye-witness account of it burning down. It's since been immaculately restored. My cousin Andy is getting married to Eleanor there in June.