Saturday 12 August 2017

Castles, painting and beer !

We are just back from a very pleasant week in Yorkshire. Weather was great and it was nice to have some downtime in a very quiet location near the village of Hovingham. With most family holidays I plan on doing some painting in between trips and shopping and meals. This was no exception and I did pretty well. Also managed a couple of castles and picked up a couple of excellent second hand books and a German Kfz 69...... but I haven't painted this yet πŸ™‚
Helmsley castle well worth a visit the village is nice too
Clifford Tower...bit of a rip off but the views were great
Can never have too many books and I had been painting more Moors
This is an outstanding book even on my brief skim......very rare to find something quite so specific and relevant in a charity shop ! 
Also excellent...very detailed covering a significant amount of the use of elephants during the ancient period
And the painting.........

British reinforcements for Operation Sealion
German pioneer squad....mainly crusader but with a couple of slightly modified Warlord
Blacktree Arabs/Moors
Moorish archers
Not actually painted on holiday but I finished off the bases when we got back...my first unit of confederate cavalry
and the beer..........πŸ˜€πŸ˜€πŸ˜€

17 comments:

  1. Matt, a very productive holiday for you! Great to see your work on the BTD Warriors of Islam. I love that range of figures. More nifty shieldwork from you too. More ideas for me!

    The photo of Clifford Tower built upon a mound reminds me of a Mayan temple. Is the tower mound a natural feature or man-made?

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    1. Jonathan,
      It is probably man-made, like the earlier (2nd castle mound) at York.

      Here's two links for further information - both feature some nice images and plans of York's third castle (and later rebuilds), and Clifford's Tower in particular.

      http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/cliffords-tower-york/history-and-stories/history/

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Castle

      Clifford's Tower has a rather gruesome history due to the pogrom and suicide incident of York's Jewish community in 1190 CE.

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    2. Thanks Roy...classic Motte and Bailey, they would find a suitable bit of ground probably already a small hill of some sort then dig ditch and use this material to increase the size of the the hill, then build wooden stockade on the top, these were then enlarged when the Normans arrived in 1066 and started building stone structures on the top πŸ˜€

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  2. Top week. Everything looks perfick

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  3. Looks like a great break to me!

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    1. Cheers it's the going back to work I don't like 😒

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  4. A fine haul of books there and great progress on the toys front.

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    1. I have a lot of books now so only limit buying to really good ones. Finding three was a real bonus.

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  5. Nice castles (Helmsley is one of my favourite castles I went with my dad when I was 13 and took the family last year and it was still great! )Lovely figures and I haven't read a bad David Nicole book, he's got a lovely style of writing.
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks I haven't really had a chance to get into the books yet but the illustrations are great....πŸ™‚

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  6. Sounds like my sort of holiday! The books look very interesting...particularly the Battles one!

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    1. A very rare find in a charity shop πŸ˜€

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  7. Wow, wonderful and productive holidays, well done Matt!

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  8. some of my favourite things.... hmmm and chocolate.

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