Up On Solsbury Hill

Yes, I do mean the Solsbury Hill of Peter Gabriel fame. It's about 10 miles from where I live and is the site of an ancient fort. This is the view looking towards where a community orchard will be (where the lines of trees meet and it will be about 4 acres in size), the greener grass marks the public footpath. A lovely, peaceful typical English countryside scene right?

Here's the view looking the opposite way. Two of our choir members live on Solsbury Hill and they'd invited us to join them on their property to Sing Our Socks Off (shhh don't tell Kate, James or Aunt Debbi - else the Sock Wars et al. might start up all over again). There's a natural amphitheatre in the field, backed by their barn on one side and a wall at the top. Andrew wanted to see what the acoustics would be like when the site was filled with loads of singers and about 100 of us were keen enough to try.

The day started with walking for those who wanted to, followed by a leisurely picnic - that's where I came in. We started singing mid-afternoon with Chris our usual choirmaster, Ali from Sing for Water, plus Wendy and Dee who have choirs in Portishead and Bristol respectively. There were lots of new songs to learn, all themed around the outdoors and included a rousing version of Cliff Richard's In the Country. We also sang a beautiful South African song whose words when translated say 'May the days shorten until we meet again' - a lovely sentiment. After a short break, we then formed into scratch choirs to perform songs we'd learnt previously. Thus I joined a reformed Wiltshire Wailers to sing Lily of the Valley, Sing for Water's Let's Go and a random choir for anyone who knew Plovi Barko. As for the acoustics, they were tremendous - it's given Andrew ideas about making an amphitheatre.

An extremely chilled and relaxing afternoon was had by all. I think the sunny day, good company, the tremendous hospitality of our hosts Andrew and Annette - including the chilled bottled beer on tap from the ultimate dispenser pictured below, helped to make it so. Fingers crossed it becomes an annual event :D
Coming up next: Synchronised Singing - singing at Portishead's open air Lido!

Comments

  1. Mr. McGregor's Daughter21 July 2008 at 23:02

    That looks like so much fun! I am so jealous. Do you live in the coolest place on Earth or what?

    ReplyDelete
  2. VP22 July 2008 at 21:36

    MMD - It's not bad id it? But then I also liked Chicago when we visited there!

    ReplyDelete

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