STILE STYLES

Our first stile - near the home of friends we were visiting in Surrey

I’ve been going through my photo albums – now over forty years’ worth – and getting some of my favorite photos saved digitally. For a while I was scanning them into my laptop, but that was time consuming: take out the photo, scan it in, tape it back into the album.  (Yes, I use tape, double-sided tape. I am not Margaret Bourke-White, none of my photos (well, maybe one or two really good ones) will stand the test of time. So, tape it is.) But now I just take a picture of a picture. Oh, I do sing the praises of digital cameras.   

That's Frank slipping through in Penshurst, Kent

But, as usual, I’ve digressed. So - In saving the photos I came upon several pictures with a theme I thought of on our 1984 trip to England.  You don’t see many stiles in the United States – in fact, I’ve never seen one here - but you do see them all over England because of their public rights of way system and all the footpaths through the country. I think stiles are a marvelous invention.

A then rather new installation at Bodiam Castle, East Sussex

At Battle, East Sussex

This stile at Tenterden, Kent, is really more of a gate, like the
one at Bodiam, but the livestock don't know that.

At Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire

And this beauty is at St. Anthony Head in Cornwall
That's Frank up there, ahead of me as usual because I was always stopping
to take pictures. That trip? Exactly 1000 photos. Just think of all that film!