I was back on the Thames Path again last week. I’ve already had two goes at it, here and here. There’s no hope that I shall walk the length of it in an ordered sequence, but no matter…. This time, I started in Woolwich once more but walked away from London. And not very far either- just two or three miles there and back again.
Woolwich fascinates me. The elegance of the fine buildings constructed during its time as a military centre of great importance contrasts with its sometimes down-at-heel tower blocks and shopping streets, and its more recent apartments which are anything but shabby.
See what I mean?I showed you a detail from’Assembly’ in a recent post. This group of men, sculpted by Peter Burke is intended to reflect the industrial heritage of the Royal Arsenal, which was previously a major munitions factory.
But it was the Thames that really commanded my focus. Selections of waterbirds, like this one ….
Egyptian goose
… industrial life. Look at the weight of that sand and gravel weighing down the barge purposefully ploughing onwards.
Suggestions of the river’s industrial past and present were everywhere.
Little dramas played out before me …
And a cemetery’s worth of abandoned bicycles spoke perhaps of thefts abandoned once the reason for taking them no longer applied.
The shore itself was worth exploring …
And the views back to London …
Even the lichens on the concrete walls edging the Thames merited a look.
In fact there was wildlife a-plenty…
Who knew that only a few hundred yards or so away from the path, double decker buses, lorries, cars, trains, shops, pedestrians and all the trappings of city life were carrying on regardless of the tranquility I enjoyed as I explored the riverside path?
I thought of Brian on Sunday. Here’s why. Brian is the blogger charged with introducing this week’s theme for Monochrome Madness. And he’s chosen ‘On the Roof’.
I was with the family in Borough Market on Sunday. And we were having fun as we picnicked, at the expense of this poor gull try to land – time after time after time – on the roof of one of the sales kiosks.
Every time his feet touched down, he slithered and skittered, unable to find any purchase, until at the bottom, he more or less tumbled off … again. He persisted and persisted until, finally…
Here are some more herring gulls, all in either Whitby or Staithes: the seaside in fact. Perhaps they feel more at home and comfortable.
Here are birds who are definitely at home on a roof. Storks. A roof’s the perfect place for nest-building and raising a family. Let’s go to Tudela in Spain.
We could go to North Macedonia now, and stay in a hotel crowded with peacocks. One even had to escape to the roof for a bit of peace.
Back home for some more domestic shots: a crow on a nearby chimney pot, and a robin on the roof of a nearby bird house (does that count? I think so.)
We’ll finish off with a shot to complement the featured photo. Here’s a line of pigeons on some ridge tiles. They echo the ones which begin the post: a host of ceramic cockatoos (?) decorating the roof of a house in Busan, South Korea.
As you read this, I may be on a train to London. No not THIS train, silly. Something far less romantic, which may or may not run on time. But which will not bring me to journey’s end covered in soot and smelling of coal. Signing off for a few days.
British readers! Did you take part in The Big Plastic Count last week? We did. It involved tallying together every single bit of single-use plastic that we bought that week. The yoghourt pot. And the plastic film that covered it beneath the lid if it was a a big pot. The plastic net bag that the satsumas were in. The cellophaney-plastic that the package of pasta/rice/dried fruit/coffee/tea/you name it was packaged in. The plastic disc wedged into the lid of the (plastic) pot of kimchi. The cling film parcelling up the cheese, bought loose from the cheese counter. And so on.
Our haul for the week
So why did we do it? Well. The Big Plastic Count is a Citizen Science project aimed at collecting evidence on household plastic waste to pressure government and supermarkets to take action. It challenges the idea that solving the crisis is purely a personal responsibility, arguing for systemic change to reduce plastic production.
So we and hundreds of like-minded individuals, school students, cubs, brownies, scouts, guides, U3A groups and so on tracked our plastic waste for one week to build a realistic picture of how much plastic is thrown away and what happens to it, highlighting that much less is recycled than widely believed.
Past results showed that only 12% of UK plastic waste is recycled, while 45% is incinerated, 25% is landfilled, and 17% is exported.
Honestly, we try to be plastic free. We buy unpackaged goods where we can, use our local refill shop, never use products like clingfilm. But still we assembled 18 pieces of plastic last week.
Litter is a whole other issue. Living in the country, as we do, albeit along a main road, the quantity of plastic bottles, crisp packets and other packaging that we see on any roadside stroll is truly shocking. The same applies to a beachside walk.
Local litter
On a personal level, this audit encouraged me to redouble our efforts to cut out single-use plastic. Whether our results, gathered countrywide, have any effect on either government or supermarkets remains to be seen. And whether the world will eventually be knee-deep in plastic waste, as we ingest a daily diet of micro-plastics also remains to be seen.
A scene in America; courtesy of Documerica, via Unsplash
I used a monochrome version of one of these photos earlier this week, and thought I’d submit the entire set, though they hardly suggest that we were travelling at speed.
This is one of an occasional series from our days living in the Ariège-Pyrenees. We returned to the UK pretty much exactly 12 years ago. As we’re feeling nostalgic, please indulge me if I spend a few posts over the next few weeks revisiting the Good Old Days. Even though this post is Old News, I hope Jo will consider it couldqualify as a Monday Walk.
Plateau de Sault Calling
March 17th 2012
Down here in the foothills of the Pyrénées, nobody’s interested in how far you walk as you stride up the mountainside. It’s all about the DNV (dénivelé, or number of metres you’ve climbed – and remember a hillside can go down as well as up: coming up again after a descent starts the DNV counter all over again). On Thursday, we did 791 metres. That’s 2959 feet in real money. Our mileage was less impressive: 19 km. or 11.8 miles – in the circumstances pretty damn’ good.
But we didn’t know the statistics till we’d finished. We were far too busy having a very special walk.
A signpost and waymarks
To reach our departure point, you leave Belésta via a switchback forested road, over the Col de la Croix des Morts, and emerge onto a high and slightly bleak plateau. This is the Plateau de Sault, home of the region’s potato growers. We stopped at an insignificant track signposted Langrail and parked the cars. As we got our boots on, we met another walker on a brief holiday from his home in Durban for a good long solitary hike (‘Durban? Where do you suppose he meant? Durban-sur-Arize in the Ariège? The one in the Aude? South Africa even?’). He was the last person we met all day.
Our path through the woods.
It was the 14th March. There were large patches of snow all along our route. Yet we wore tee shirts all day and became lightly bronzed in the hot sun as we crunched through that still hard-crusted snow.
A pause for breath
Through the forests we could see the peaks of our more local mountains: Maguy, born and bred round here taught us how to recognise each one.
A first view of Montségur.
Then, quite unexpectedly, we emerged into a splendid expanse of pasture interspersed with areas of snow. In every direction, there was a distant fringe of mountains: our day-to day familiar slopes, the more distant and higher peaks of the Hautes Pyrénées,and behind us, bereft of snow, those of the Aude and Pyrénées Orientales.
Our path through the pastures.
It was a really special pleasure to tramp across this apparently unending pasture, enjoying views of our constant neighbour Montségur, as well as the small towns and villages where we all live, and much further away, the Montagne Noir, with the sky clear and blue above us.
A bit of snow to tramp through – then a lunch spot by a mountain refuge.
It kept us happy till lunchtime. We’d arrived at a refuge by then, thoughtfully provided with a table and benches in the sunshine. After the picnic, we left our rucksacks with Gilbert, the honorary man in the group and went off to investigate the Belvédère, the local viewpoint. Craggily folded rocks plunged down deep towards the Gorges de la Frau and still we had our views of Montségur. We were impressed.
Views from theBelvédère
Our route for the day was a simple there-and-back. But the views were quite different, looking towards more eastern slopes so we didn’t feel at all short changed that we were retreading our path. And most of the return was downwards too. Which was helpful. When you’ve climbed 2000 feet or more, it can get quite tiring as the day nears its end. Lucky that there was cake and coffee to look forward to, provided this week by Gilbert..
Nearly back for that all-important coffee and cake.
It’s my turn this week to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness challenge. And I’ve chosen Walls. We’re all surrounded by them: at home, at work, in town, in the garden … even in the countryside. What can we find?
Let’s start off in town. Here’s a wall that’s lived a bit, in Alella, Catalunya.
And another, in Premià de Dalt, where a town wall becomes a place to celebrate the work of a poet who came from there, Marià Manent.
A smarter wall this time, from the Unterdenlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace.
Here’s a wall in Lewisham, London, with a message that needs shouting loud and clear. Why is palm oil so hard to avoid in the average weekly shop?
Walls can support plants as well as paintings and messages. Here’s a walled garden in the grounds of Beningbrough Hall, Yorkshire.
But walls can be all-encompassing too. Here are tunnel walls on a motorway in France.
But this Yorkshire lass can’t forget the emblematic drystone walls of her home county. I’ll leave you with these picture postcards from home.
And the header photo? That’s me on the Thames Path in London, my shadow against a wall in Woolwich.
- If you would like to participate in this challenge ... - Please post photos on your blog and use the tag Monochrome-Madness. - Include a link to the host’s post for the theme, and link back to Leanne’s post. - The next theme is announced the week before the theme. - The themes are every second week, and on the alternating week, you can post what you like.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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