East Yorkshire Wolds, looking across Holme Wold towards Moneypit Hill Farm.

Today is Friday.

A break from Brexit !

The weather is political, that is, very stormy, with 50 mph winds and occasional rain. Today was another such day, challenging, interesting and rather wild, so different from Monday.  I set off after a late... ish start aiming to travel to Huggate, however, the wind was too strong to consider painting at that height and so I shortened my ambition and headed for the lower Wolds around South Dalton. It was still far too wild and windy, bending trees and flattening, the rippling seascape of green fields. I saw a red kite, it had abandoned its aerial haunts and tentatively fought against the gusting wind for a perch on the top of a low hedge. Traveling along now familiar roads, I tried to find a sheltered site. I stopped outside Lairhill Farm and was amazed to find that the wind, on this corner, sheltered by a combination of geography and a small copse, was much reduced. I quickly set up and set out the view on the canvas. I liked the far distant farm, on the skyline enshrouded in a silhouetted tree blanket, something so typical in this area. I quickly tried to capture the angry sky and then blocked in the undulating fields. A noise made me look up, it was someone on a ride-on lawnmower cutting the grass. He came over and we chatted about the area, the mole population and the occupants of a nearby farm. He lived in a newer building but had had the tenancy of Lairhill Farm in the past. I enjoyed our conversation. I carried on, checking the relationships, the inter-sectional nature of conjoining hills when ...... suddenly a huge, powerful gust came from nowhere and sent everything flying. I managed to hold on to the easel and kept the canvas in place but had smudged a large area. I waited for the wind to abate and then went off looking for the palette and brushes and water container and some tubes of paint. Phew, what a time. As I progressed the wind was changing direction, it caused the canvas to flap on it's frame. I would just start to put some finer detail onto the painting and then , FLAP, the detail became a splodge. The joys of open air painting. Another man stopped and came over with Sprocket, a small, elderly, deaf terrier. Again, we chatted about the picture, now nearly finished except for the road sign, before he drove off. So, in the end I was very pleased that I had managed to get something done and decided to stop at the Pipe and Glass for a posh coffee.