These days if you hear the word urchin, you may think of a ragamuffin kid, probably painted on black velvet with eyes that are too big. So why is the sea urchin, with no eyes at all and too spiky to look good on velvet, called that? The answer is that urchin is a old word for hedgehog…

… and a sea urchin looks a lot like a curled up hedgehog.

I saw this little fellow beetling through a churchyard. I haven’t seen one since I was a kid, and Paula had never seen one in the wild, so I was pretty excited. Unfortunately Paula was back on the boat, but I managed to corner it, and it went into the defensive crouch and erected it spines while I called Paula so she could come and see it.

The church, St James in Christleton, is the usual story, some 15th century bits, but mostly rebuilt in the late Victorian period.

There are some nicely goofy bits though, like the font cover featuring tools and a sewing machine. It looks like they’ve just been left there, but they are actually part of the font.

There’s an 18th century battle swan feeding its young by pecking at its breast.

It was supposed to be a pelican, but the wood caver had never seen even a picture of a pelican so he carved a swan instead.

Continuing the Local Artist Makes Bad theme we have the royal coat of arms of Charles II.

The royal motto, HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE was spelled HONI SO IT MALI Y PENƧE, the E in DIEU was added as an afterthought, and the N in MON is backwards.

Yes, the lion and the unicorn are pleased to see you, but this is Charles II we are talking about here, so that’s about right. The lion looks as if he has indigestion…

… and the unicorn is sticking its tongue out suggestively at the lion.

The font is full of fossils.

It’s pretty hard to deny the reality of evolution when the evidence is right there in church. Not that the Church of England has a position on evolution, or as far as I can tell any other doctrinal matters. You can be a member so long as you accept that there might be a god and he, she, or it is probably a jolly good chap.

We are moored next to a pub called the Cheshire Cat, and the local law school has a warning about rabbit holes. Coincidence?

Christleton is quite a pretty village.

They were regularly winning Best Kept Village awards…

… until 2013 when they put up a big sign with a battle swan on top.

Coincidence?