I found this on the Downs above Great Ballard, Eartham. My brother says, after having great difficulty in looking it up, that it's called Phacelia tanacetifolium and is an annual garden flower used as agreen maure or to attract insects. It's sometimes called scorpionweed. Of course its not in the wild flower books. It isn't pretty, but rather striking. 

By Michael

This is Halnaker mill, as in the poem by Hilaire Belloc

Ha'nacker Mill

Hilaire Belloc

Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha'nacker Hill
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly;
And ever since then the clapper is still...
And the sweeps have fallen from Ha'nacker Mill.

Ha'nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And Spirits that call on a fallen nation,
Spirits that loved her calling aloud,
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.

Spirits that call and no one answers --
Ha'nacker's down and England's done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers,
And never a ploughman under the Sun:
Never a ploughman. Never a one

. 

UK, Opium poppies

Years ago, in Andalucía, I saw a field of what I could only think were opium poppies. I had no idea! I thought they were all grown illegally in Afghanistan. Apparently not. Yesterday, walking on the chalky downs at Eartham, West Sussex, we saw clumps and fields of big pink poppies and fat green seed heads. Very pretty. Apparently they're all over the place, quite legal.
This is what the Kew Gardens website says:

Opium poppy

Opium poppies yield valuable alkaloids used as medicines. Medicines produced from opium poppies include morphine and codeine. Its cultivation and production is strictly controlled because opium poppies are also used to make illegal and highly addictive drugs such as heroin.

British opium poppies

In the nineteenth century opium poppies used to be grown in Surrey, Britain as a source of medicine.

Grow opium poppies

Opium poppies grow well in the British climate - why not try it? Most seed companies in Britain stock opium poppy seed, and the poppies should even grow from poppy seeds sold for cooking, though they may not have such attractive coloured flowers.

Legal cultivation

India is the only country that alows the legal production of raw opium on a large scale for export. Cultivation in India is confined to a few regions. Opium is harvested by making a cut in fruit capsules and collecting the milky sap that oozes from it.

Over-the-counter medicine

The pain-relief medicinecodeine is derived from opium poppies.

Anyway, here is my photo of the poppies.

Orchids and other wildflowers

Today is a holiday in Jaca, Santa Orosia. After getting some bread dough ready, I went for a short walk from my house and round the hospital, past the new hotel and the old people's home. The wild flowers in that area were amazing!
I only took these photos as I hadn't brought my camera, just had the phone, but there were also chicory, common tansy, poppies, vetch, buttercups and dandelions, thistles and so on.

Borage

Borage

Borage flowers

Pyramidal orchids

The one at the back was enormous!

Panticosa Spa

Peña Telera from Bubal reservoir

Bubal reservoir, very full!

Some years back, the spa resort of Panticosa, in the Tena valley was rundown and pretty. It was sold to a consortium from Zaragoza. New buildings were put up, and basically the resort has been ruined. The buildings are hideous and I think the spa is closed. There are still some pretty places there, but the complex is dreadful!

Petersberg Park

This morning, we went to a book fair in Sabiñánigo: people brought their unwanted books to sell on behalf of the public library.
After we had looked at the books we walked up the steep streets to Petersberg Park. At the top of Sabiñánigo, on Monte Corona, a delightful space with some reconstituted arches.

Then we went for dinner with some friends, whose huntsman friend had given them a haunch of wild boar. It was cooked for hours and hours, and made a delicious stew.

Alquezar again

Alquezar is about an hour and three-quarters' drive from Jaca. We went there last year and it rained. This year, in spite of it being a very cold, rainy spring, it was a beautiful day. Once the whole family group was ther, we went on a brilliant walk along the rugged path down into the gorge of the river Vero.

Down to the water, and then back up the other way.

Ramonda myconi oreja de oso or bear's ears in Spanish  (Pyrenean violet or rosette mullein)

Narrow walkways

Lovely flowers, beautiful views, clear, cold water. A nice day.

Goya

Zaragoza, Saragossa to the English is very proud of Goya. He was born not far away in a village called Fuendetodos, where they show some old houses and usually art exhibitions.
There's a lovely monument to him in the Plaza del Pilar in Zaragoza. The man himself is on a high plinth, overlooking two "Majos" and two "Majas", based on his paintings of the same names; young men and women sitting on the ground.

 Next to this tribute is what looks like a stone pillarbox, in which Goya was buried in Bordeaux.