I’m back from two beautiful weeks on Bryher …
there I beach combed and found many wonderful things …
… filled my sketchbook with words and paintings
and took loads of photos…
but the treasures I wrapped carefully and held tight in my hands to bring home will take a while to uncoil.
I was only there for two weeks. Much of that time I spent with my family and friends, swimming, kayaking, snorkelling and wandering about doing nothing – not drawing and painting or thinking. Then I have spent the weekend sorting out all the camping gear and washing and packing everything away. Oh and swimming and kayaking and enjoying the last of the summer… and now I have to go back to work. So things will emerge here slowly.
I’m thinking about why I love going back to Bryher and the Scillies? I go every year, never wishing to be anywhere else, always wanting to stay longer, always finding inspiration and things I’ve never seen before and loving it more and more each year. What is so special? I will probably never travel to exotic far away locations but I’m beginning to think I don’t need to. There is a great richness to going to a small place and returning again and again to that place. Bryher is exotic to me. I don’t live there and it is beautiful and full of strange things, but it is also close and familiar. The land, the sea and the wildlife make sense to me. Full of adventure and beauty, exotic and familiar at once. Just like Cornwall, my home.
