Take a stroll down Rosemary Lane

Blogs don't come any better than Rosemary Lane, and Sandy Beach Almanac is now proudly twinned with Stuart Buchanan's loving creation.

Stuart and I met on the Internet only in December when SBA was planned for a January 1 launch. I was delighted to find that on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England near Southampton, he was doing a similar gig.*

Stuart's love of place and Nature shine through every word of Rosemary Lane, and his knowledge of the folklore of the calendar warms the heart of your almanackist. We have something else in common: we both have bananas growing outside our doors. I look forward to every new post on RL and know that in coming months and years I will learn a huge amount, as I do from RL's archives. If I had a stove, I might even try some of Mr B's scrumptious-sounding recipes. Naah, that's a pipe-dream. I'm over cooking for a while. But checkem out.

Definitely a blog to bookmark, but you'll always find our twinning link in SBA's sidebar. Thanks, Stuart, for the honour of a special twinned-blog relationship!

[*'Gig' is right, I guess; after all, the Isle of Wight was the scene of one of rock's most famous concerts (Isle of Wight Festival, 1970), which The Guinness Book of Records listed at the time as the largest recorded gathering of human beings (600,000 -- much bigger than Woodstock, almost as big as Crabstock!), and you'll recall The Beatles singing "Every summer we could rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight" in 'When I'm Sixty-Four' on Sgt Pepper's. I'm sure a lot of the locals would prefer not to be reminded.]

Antique maps and prints of the Isle of Wight