St David's: October 2016: Part 1

 

Down in West Wales for our annual sojourn in St David's. Here are a few photographs as a record.

The cathedral basking in autumnal sunshine. To the left are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace.

The choir I sing with whilst we are down here - the East Wickham Singers. Based in Kent but augmented with itinerant singers such as myself. We sing all the services as the cathedral choir is away for the half term. Our programme consists of what I regard as 'proper' church music. A delight to sing and a delight to be with such a talented group of singers.

And this is where we sing for most of the week - the mediaeval choir stalls. To the left of the organ pipes in the organ loft, Mrs P acts as page turner for Nick, our organist. For someone who doesn't like heights, it's a triumph of duty over fear.

The south face of the clock on the cathedral tower. The choir sponsored the regilding of the numbers III, VI and IX. A very nice touch, methinks.
 

We've had a few days without our car and this has meant walking to and from the cathedral for rehearsals and services. You get a different perspective on foot and this is a plaque we came across that we would never have seen as we whizzed passed in the car. The plaque commemorates a tragic air accident a few months after the end of the European phase of WW2. Apparently a lot of pilots were retrained to fly aircraft being used in the far East and the crew of Liberator KH 183 were part of this. Unfortunately KH 183 lost an engine mounting shortly after taking off from nearby St David's airfield and crashed in a field, killing all four crewmen. A quick Google revealed that this was not an isolated incident and there were many similar crashes scattered around West Wales, some due to engine failure and some due to navigation errors.

The last fruits of summer. A few blackberries are still around but they have long passed peak flavour. Not that the birds feeding on them would care about that.

Common Toadflax was one of the few flowers still present in the hedgerows. A yellow jewel standing out from the green of the grass.

It's too late in the year for many flying things but I did spot this moth - a Silver Y. It has the wonderful, and easy to remember, name of Autographa gamma. The eponymous Y is quite prominent on the upper wings. And, if you are interested, this is a polyphagous moth, meaning that it will feed upon a variety of foodplants. In fact, it's quite promiscuous and will munch on any plants that happen to be around.