I’ve “challenged” myself to write about a “travel trinket” and associated memories. Here are my trinkets:

Actually, only two belong to me: the top book, Wensleydale, and the third one down, Glorious Trees of Great Britain. They were written and illustrated by a Yorkshire-based artist named Piers Browne. My parents and I discovered him decades ago, when I was a twenty-something, tagging along with them on a trip to visit my mother’s family in England. I had been working at a very demanding job and they were worried about my stress levels, so they invited me to join them in Yorkshire, where my mother’s cousins lived. We stayed at a B&B run by the local pub, which meant that my parents stayed in one village home while I stayed in another, and we met up for breakfast at the pub. The home where I stayed had dozens of gorgeous limited edition etchings done by one Piers Browne. When my mother and I were admiring them, my hostess said that he lived nearby, that he sold his etchings out of his artist’s studio sometimes and that he didn’t mind visitors. So off we went, my middle-aged parents and I, to seek him out.

We drove through the beautiful rural Yorkshire Dales that are the subject of so many of his artworks, winding our way through remote lanes and up moors, until we reached his studio. And yes, he was there, and no, he didn’t mind visitors. We pored over his etchings and came away with a few, including one that my parents bought for me as a gift.

Fast forward twenty-five years. Continue reading →