Blue Boar

I drove to Maldon, the town of my birth, to photograph the sign outside the 14th century Blue Boar Hotel for my personal Coronation Invitation challenge. (There's a little blue boar in the margin bottom left of the invitation.) I had intended to stop briefly outside and snap it. It wasn't there. I had to park in a car park and walked there. I was told that the sign had fallen down. It was stored in the courtyard. I've tweaked the colour to match that in the Invitation. This blue boar comes from an English aristocratic family the De Veres. Their crest incorporated the device of a blue boar invoking the family name (‘verres’ is the Latin word for ‘boar.’)
The family lived in the Blue Boar as an occasional residence, supplementary to their main seat at Castle Hedingham.   

The boar in Queen Camilla's coat of arms comes from her father Major Bruce Shand. The Shands went to Aberdeenshire in the 14th century and it is thought that the boar's head on the shield indicates some connection with the Gordons, whose ancient arms featured a boar's head. The blue boar in her arms is a supporter. It, the unicorn that supports the arms of King Charles and the lion that supports both coats of arms, appear in the margins of the Invitation 

I decided to go to Burnham-on-Crouch to try to find heartsease blooms, which feature in the Invitation, in a field where I have seen them blooming years ago. As I negotiated the Burnham bends in my yellow Honda S2000 a crouching guy with a big lens snapped me. I doubled back to see what it was all about. He was from GetAPic.co.uk and was waiting for a convoy of Essex Ferrari owners who had asked him to get images of them. I considered staying with him and getting pics too but changed my mind. I pulled over a bit further on and decided to wait but thought better of it again.

When I got near the field on the northerly bank of the River Crouch I was shocked as the whole area is now a huge vineyard. I walked in the rain to where I had seen the wild pansies but there was no sign of them. It's probably a bit early for them to be in bloom.

It's St George's Day. I've added an image of the flag of St George flying over Maldon Moot Hall.