The picnic above took place in southern Uganda in the 1920s five thousand miles from Georgian Britain . . . but this was all the more reason to maintain standards. A silver tea service, bone china and white linen were essential, as were the attendants standing at the ready to pass around the cakes. The children were politely happy with their wooden toys and cloth dolls. In the background is a swampy valley virtually devoid of habitation.

Incidentally, the dog on the right has had a lucky escape. Leopards roamed the hills. One evening, my grandfather had to shoo one away that had put its head around the sitting room door to eye the dog (leopards just love dogs – they could eat a whole one) which was snoozing in front of the fire.

I tried to get a picture from the same spot on a visit to Uganda recently but was thwarted by the houses that have sprung up and their high security walls. If I had been able to capture the same view it would have shown that the swamp has been obliterated by a sizeable town.

The moral is: never assume a picnic spot – or a style of picnic – will be there forever.

We are now four decades on – the early 1960s. The Empire has crumbled and my family are reduced to sitting on a blanket on the ground. However, we seem to be enjoying ourselves in the great outdoors, although have had to simplify now we don’t have the attendants and the silver . . .

And so to 2008: we’ve reached rock bottom in the story of the decline of the picnic. The cutlery is plastic, the food is plastic, and although the view is the wild Ishasha river in southern Uganda with its reverine forest bustling with primates and turacos, its seen through the dusty windscreen of a vehicle. At least she has the door open.

There is a consolation: the only way now, is up. It’s time for a come-back for the 1920s book by Jean Rey: The Whole Art of Dining – Picnic and ‘Al Fresco’ luncheons.

If you are looking to enjoy a nice day in the park, and you’re in Madrid, then you should definitely head over to what once was the private land of kings and queens, the Parque del Buen Retiro. The park is around 350 acres, which means there are plenty of options for that perfect picnic spot. Maybe you want to sit by the duck pond, or near the Palacio de Cristal, a large glasshouse that holds art exhibitions - mostly sculpture and installation. Or maybe a little wine by the rose garden is more what you’re looking for. For me, my favorite spot is off to the right of the Plaza de Independencia entrance. Here I can sit for hours looking up into the trees.

Spending time outdoors helps get my creative juices flowing - so it’s not a shock that my first novel, CLASS PRESIDENT, about a girl who must overcome her past so as to move forward in her present, was developed while outside.

For more attractions in Madrid go to
http://www.mapmagazine.com/madrid/Attractions/

The Sunday drive over to the park was lovely and low-key, and we easily found a parking place near the entrance of the park. With just a few fellow hikers passing us as we ascended it seemed like we’d picked a good time to get out of the house. Halfway to the top, we all stopped to take a short breather, looking out at the magnificent view of Berkeley, the Bay and San Francisco beyond. Then, as Paul and my wife continued up toward the crest, I settled into a shady spot near the base of a large hollow tree and kept reviewing my pages.

If you’re in the East Bay (Berkeley/Oakland, California) and would like an uplifting location for a picnic, I can’t imagine a more amazing place to spread a blanket, hand out some sandwiches and unwind in the majesty of a world-class vista!

……………

Rick Schmidt blogged several times on his prescient political novel BLACK PRESIDENT published by Picnic, 4 November 2008. Please check into Picnic’s author blog.
http://www.picnic-publishing.co.uk/blog/index.php/category/black-president/

……………

Comment from Picnic Admin: Rick lumbered up the hill/checked BLACK PRESIDENT galleys instead of enjoying the glorious views photographed above for the Picnic community?! All Picnic authors - Hear, ye! Hear, ye! This is what we call dedication . . . Thanks, Rick.
View Larger Map

Hi there. I am tapping this out in California. My novel BLACK PRESIDENT was published by Picnic in Britain in November 2008. I am an independent movie producer and when not filming or editing usually write non-fiction between teaching gigs. Around 1997 or 1998 I got a concept of following the lives of a black family where one child, secretly an illegitimate son of JFK, grows up in America. I figured there must have been at least one woman JFK seduced who decided to keep her child. At some point in the writing it became obvious that the child should rise to be a candidate for the Presidency. And as I wrote out his childhood experiences I decided to also include the US political climate and timelines, re-write all those poisonous historical moments from the 1960’s on that had clogged my consciousness, the assassinations and secret Ops, presidential plottings, imagining it all from the point of view of the perpetrators. Basically, BLACK PRESIDENT is a distillation of my research of forty years of US history, politics and subterfuge right up to the present. The novel concludes in the White House 2012. Not too many places to picnic around there . . .

Rick Schmidt
View Larger Map

Brian Landers, author of EMPIRES APART: THE AMERICANS AND RUSSIANS FROM THE VIKINGS TO IRAQ, writes:

This beautiful tourist village is located in southeastern Connecticut, on the Mystic River as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Picnics are welcome on the town green. There are a host of restaurants and shops, many with a nautical theme. Among the many tourist attractions are an aquarium and Mystic Seaport, a replica of a working seaport at the end of the nineteenth century. Nearby there are vineyards and a casino. The township is steeped in history, most of it prominently displayed although the most important event to have happened in Mystic is ignored. For further information visit www.mystic.org

Extract from EMPIRES APART:

In the annals of terrorist atrocities 5/27 should resonate with Americans as much as 9/11.  The events of the 27th of May 1637 changed the American psyche forever. History has yet to show that 9/11 will have anything like as seismic a long-term impact. In both cases an act of unprecedented carnage was coldly planned and callously inflicted. In both cases the victims were “civilians” perversely regarded as “combatants” only in the eyes of men blinded by religious bigotry.  In both cases the objective was to terrorize populations who had no comprehension at all of what was happening to them or of what could possibly be motivating their attackers. In both cases surprise was total.

The villagers of Missituck (present day Mystic), Connecticut, had gone to bed as usual on the 26th of May. Many of the menfolk were away but four hundred, (in some versions seven hundred), women, children, elderly and infirm remained. They could have had no idea that all but five of them would never see another sunset.

Just before dawn an English militia leader, Captain John Underhill, looked down on the sleeping village with grim satisfaction. As the first rays of the new day’s sun tinged the eastern sky he gave the order to attack. The killing began. Seven years after the founding of Boston ethnic cleansing had arrived in New England.

‘Down fell men, women and children” Underhill wrote triumphantly in his journal, “Newes from America”.  “Great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that had never been in a war, to see so many souls lay gasping on the ground, so thick, in some places, that you could hardly pass along”.

Underhill returned to Boston a hero. William Bradford, the leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, gave praise for the “sweet sacrifice” of natives “frying in the fire”. Seven years later when the Dutch, who had founded a colony on the Hudson, needed to cleanse their own land they called on Underhill’s services again. This time he was even more “successful”, killing more than five hundred Algonquian in a single raid on a native village. But it was the Mystic Massacre that had the most profound impact on the development of America. From that moment European settlers realised that the continent was theirs for the taking.
View Larger Map

Brian Landers, author of EMPIRES APART: THE AMERICANS AND RUSSIANS FROM THE VIKINGS TO IRAQ, writes:

Fort Ross was the site of the first and last Russian colony south of Alaska. It is located 12 miles north of Jenner in California and is now a state park. There is only one original structure, a house built in 1836, but there are some very interesting reconstructions. There are also picnic tables near the parking lot, in the orchard near the Call House, and in the fort compound itself. See further details on www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=449

Extract from EMPIRES APART:
In the spring of 1812 Napoleon was massing his troops in Poland ready to strike east, General Andrew Jackson was calling for volunteers for “the conquest of all the British dominions upon the continent of North America” and in Russia most eyes were turning fearfully west, most but not all; the Russian pioneers in Alaska were looking south - to California.

California offered not only an abundance of sea otters but fertile agricultural land. In March 1812 the first Russian settlement in California was founded at Fort Ross (from Rossiya, the Russian for Russia). Reminiscent of Peter Minuit in Manhattan the land all around was bought from the native inhabitants for three blankets, three pairs of breeches, two axes, three hoes and some beads. The settlement initially prospered and farms were established inland. Again like the French, but unlike the English, the Russians inter-married with the Californian natives and the Alaskans they brought with them.

Meanwhile the golden boy of Europe, the young tsar Alexander I, was becoming ever less attractive as he grew older. He developed an almost messianic conviction that autocracy was God’s plan for the entire world. His constant lecturing left other European rulers bemused; when he extended his musings to life across the Atlantic the consequences were more serious.

First Alexander tried to extend the frontiers of Russian Alaska further south.  In 1821 he decreed that all lands along North America’s Pacific coast as far south as Latitude 51° North belonged to Russia. If implemented a significant part of the Oregon Territory, already claimed by both America and Britain, would have become Russian. Even though the United States only really occupied territory east of the Mississippi American leaders were convinced that the whole of North America should rightfully be theirs. In 1805 Lewis and Clark had reached the Pacific reinforcing this view. (Some American texts write as if they were the first to cross the North American continent but they were only sent because it had been done before. In 1801 the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who had already twice crossed Canada to the Pacific, published his book “Voyages from Montreal”, directly inspiring US President Thomas Jefferson to send Lewis and Clark to repeat Mackenzie’s feat).

The Russian Tsar could pass whatever decrees he liked but the reality was that he had no way of enforcing them. The settlers at Fort Ross reached agreement with the Spanish to the south but the British in Oregon outmaneuvered them. In 1839 the Hudson Bay Company agreed a trade deal with the Russian colonies in Alaska and two years later Fort Ross was sold to American settlers; the Romanov flag was hoisted for the last time over Russian California a few months short of the colony’s thirtieth birthday. Fort Ross had been far more successful than the first English settlement on Roanoke Island but the Russians were too late. North America was no longer “available”, the world had moved on.
View Larger Map

Extract from EMPIRES APART: AMERICA AND RUSSIA FROM THE VIKINGS TO IRAQ by Brian Landers to be published by Picnic in April 2009:

During their war against the British, the colonial rebels had been desperate for native allies. In 1775 the new Congress concluded its first treaty with natives living in southern Ohio and Indiana, a treaty that suggested the creation of a fourteenth native state with representatives in the Congress. Once the War was over however the victors turned on what the Declaration of Independence had described as “the merciless Indian Savages.”

Fifteen years after that first treaty was signed, it was ripped up. In 1790 and again in 1791 the American army invaded what was called the Northwest Territory, a vast swathe of land between the Ohio and Mississippi stretching from Pennsylvania as far west as the modern states of Michigan and Wisconsin. On both occasions it was soundly defeated by native forces led by the Miami general Michikinikwa or Little Turtle. In 1794 a reorganized army made one final attempt at conquest. British troops moved south from Canada in support of the natives but in the event failed to intervene, although a hundred British volunteers stiffened the resistance in the Battle of Fallen Timbers that eventually took place south of Detroit.

An enormous force of Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, Miami, Delaware, Pottawatomi and other tribes under Little Turtle and the Shawnee general Blue Jacket faced the American troops of General Anthony Wayne. The American advance guard of Kentucky militia were ambushed and when they turned and ran the Shawnees made the crucial mistake of leaving their heavily defended positions to set off in hot pursuit, running into the path of the main American force and into range of their artillery. The Americans successfully counter-attacked and by the end of the day native troops were streaming north seeking British protection; those left on the battlefield were scalped and mutilated by the American soldiers. Losses on both sides were heavy with the casualty rate highest among the British volunteers who had fought to the end. The American army then advanced along the Maumee River destroying native villages and crops in an orgy of ethnic cleansing.

In the subsequent Treaty of Greenville the natives were forced to give up most of modern Ohio and Indiana and the site of today’s city of Chicago. The treaty in fact was a total travesty: the federal government solemnly guaranteed territory to the natives which it had already sold to speculators or promised to Revolutionary War soldiers. Any idea of the natives having a state of their own had evaporated. America would expand through further white (or black and white) colonisation not through the incorporation of native states. And it would expand by force. In 1797 American settlers in Natchez rebelled against the Spanish authorities; US troops marched in and the future state of Mississippi was born. It was a demonstration of what would happen repeatedly in years to come from Florida to Hawaii.

Today there is a monument to the Battle of Fallen Timbers set in a park that provides an ideal picnic site outside Maumee, Ohio, where routes 24 and 23 intersect.

The monument was erected in the 1930s and commemorates the dead on both sides. There is also a small memorial with the names of some of the dead buried in an unmarked grave nearby and a rock said to be the spot where the natives rallied before the battle.
View Larger Map

Sandling Road
Saltwood
CT21 4HL

tel:01303 266327

Opening times:
9am to dusk or 9pm. Whichever is earlier.

Brock Hill Country Park not far from Hythe in Kent, is one of my favourite picnic places.

Situated within a valley, once the former estate of Brock Hill Manor in the 1900s, it is now open to the public, as a pleasure area.

The park pleasantly laid out, with wooden picnic benches (where many families gather for barbeques) a children’s play area, pathways leading down to a fair sized lake abundant with many large carp fish and various wild life,

Along with Brock Hill stream, which cuts through the valley, all this together creates a lovely picturesque peaceful environment.

For the more avid walkers there are two planned routes of approximately 4 miles and 8 miles surrounding this beautiful park. Boasting many types of shrubs and trees, several different species of birds and animals of the smaller variety, a deer enclosure and butterflies of many sorts.

My 7 year old grandson loves it here. With its winding tree covered pathways and water falled stream it’s a children’s dream adventure land.

A few places for making brass rubbings of butterflies and insects are available.

A decent size (pay as you go) car park as you enter the area and a very nice café alongside, make this a very worthwhile venue.

While mentioning cafés, perhaps you could pop into W H SMITHS (Ashford) on the way and purchase a copy of my book “The Dinosaur And The Dragon Juice Café” an exciting story for 7 year olds to read whilst winding down from their Brock Hill adventure. It is also available in Waterstones, all good bookshops, and on Amazon.

Enjoy your visit! Bye.

JAMES A CRABB

View Larger Map

On a sunny day, one of the finest picnic spots in London is on the green near the Houses of Parliament. This is a sort of ‘grassy island’ with traffic on all sides - and traffic fumes as well (!) - where you can chomp on your sandwiches and watch sometimes dramatic political events unfold.  Invariably, at times of national or international crisis, you will come across dozens of television crews from all over the world interviewing politicians only feet away from you.  (The politicians themselves have a rather less polluted place to eat their sarnies i.e. on the terrace of Parliament overlooking the River Thames . . .)  The majesty of the area is captured vividly in Philip Bright and Sarah Ramos’ JIMMY RAT, published by Picnic in October 2009. 

View Larger Map

Robin Hood’s Bay is a former fishing village, now chiefly a tourist destination, between Whitby and Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast.  It is also the eastern end of the coast-to-coast walk.  Picnic author Robin Ramsay visited it regularly between 1984 and 2005 and did quite a lot of his writing there inbetween drinking in The Laurel Inn and walking the many paths and trails which lead out of the village.  What is ‘the Bay’, as it is known locally, like? Well, there are four pubs in the village and in all of them dogs and walkers are welcome. ‘Nuff said?
View Larger Map