The Countryside Museum, Hawes

On Sunday I ran a Stone Carving Workshop at the Countryside Museum in Hawes.  It is about a two hour drive from my workshop, but a beautiful drive.  It is fascinating to watch the countryside change and the styles of housing and walling alter depending on the stone and building materials available in each area.

It was a really misty/foggy start, all the wheat fields were strung with dew drop filled spiders webs, creating soft silvery swathes between the tips of golden crop.  The sun pressed hard and soon it had turned to a beautiful morning.  I saw deer in the roadside verge.

I'm always made to feel very welcome at the Museum and got help unloading my work benches, tools and stone.

Soon we were underway and after a quiet start, I was throng with visitors coming to have a go at stone carving.  There was spectacular thunder about midday and a short shower, and although the thunder continued to rumble, it remained a beautiful sunny day with some very enthusiastic carving by youngsters, and parents!

 

An Abstract Carving

A wonderful self portrait carving by this young lady sticking her tongue out!

Very proud of his letter carving.

 Carving with real verve, individuality and experimentation including lots of textures on the surface.

After a happy and busy day, I set off for home.  The sky had become greyer, steel grey and more thunder - as I climbed up out of Hawes there was a beautiful section of rainbow.  Aren't they always a wow!?

Very soon it had vanished and only moments after big rain came.  Just ahead the road was closed and I had to take a detour along a wiggly windy road back to Leyburn.  It got wetter and wetter.  Water was bursting up out of the tarmac road, breaking the surface and driving mud, silt and stone in waves ahead of me.

A farmer, up to his knees in water frantically rodded a drain in the road, but his fields were already submerged.

I was rather relieved to get home safely!  And now feeling for all those caught in this flooding.