A time-travelling artist's date

I do like a spot of time travel in my lunch break. And what better way to remove oneself from the tedium of modern transmission than a stroll through the centuries.

Following the winding cobbles down this street, the years peel back as you pass every quaint house and the noise of traffic thundering through Warwick fades. In fact, if you listen not terribly carefully you can actual capture the sound of a jousting contest floating to you from the other side of the river (and that's not actually a flight of fancy, I really could hear one!).

Coming from here... the view at the bottom of the road.

For the uninitiated, an 'Artist Date' is an hour or so a week where you take yourself off to soak up creative inspiration; to 'fill the well'. It's all part of a 'creative finding of yourself course' I'm taking through Julia Cameron's book. Regrettably, I'm a little over-committed at the moment - there's only so much of myself I can handle finding at one go - so I have stuck on Chapter 1 but with a definite ambition to move further once a few of my other creative projects have taken flight. I will however, endeavour to keep up my weekly date. This was actually last week, it's just taken me a while to post. This week was spent in HobbyCraft and cost me a King's ransom. No photos there but hopefully some creative output!

And so, where did this first date take me? Did we wander romantic battlements or lurk in haunted dungeons. Actually none of these, for the castle was merely decorative backdrop to a wander around a quintessential English country garden in a setting of such beauty as to send any pre-Raphaelite painter into a frenzy of oil and canvas.

Imagine what trysts and assignations were carried out in the shadow of this bridge. Did you ever see anything quite so romantic? And how kind of that swan to just glide by at the precise moment I chose to click my shutter. Then, dear readers, if you've not swooned enough over ruined bridges, how about diving in, all guns blazing into this riot of colour!

... all the more dramatic when you spend a patient time in Photoshop

I feel quite wistful composing this posting. Tomorrow I return to work after an absence of a week nursing a minor illness. I feel the garden calling me again. I want to envelop myself in the soft scents and drink in the magical elixir of colour and then stand, bankside and dream of ghostly knights in shining armour galloping over long-gone bridges fresh from slaying evil demons and back to claim the fair lady's hand. This lady of course would have been busy in his heroic absence saving the castle from the torment and starvation of a lengthy siege. By her wit alone, was she able to defeat.... Yeah, yeah, another time perhaps.....

And was the date with my creative muse a success? Is my well over-brimming? Well, actually YES, IT WORKED! Tune in later this week to see the output of what happened when I immersed myself in a magic garden and mixed it with an ear infection!