Howardian Hills

Early morning mistiness: looking across to the Howardian Hills.

We’ve just come back from a weekend in the Howardian Hills – that slice of Yorkshire that includes Castle Howard, where that iconic TV series Brideshead Revisited was filmed in the 1980s.

For farmers, it’s a wealthy little corner of the county, with fertile fields offering a steady income in return for careful husbandry.  Well-constructed farm gates at the end of tidy tracks are handsomely buttressed by smart stone gate posts.  Crops stand to attention and weeds show their faces only at field margins.  Agricultural labourers are no longer tenants in those postcard-perfect villages.

Trees neatly marching across a hill crest.

Our late August break was not accompanied by late summer weather.  Although it didn’t rain, skies remained sulky and black.  Wind bustled and gusted fiercely against our faces.  The temperature hovered at 11 degrees all weekend.  Perfect for this week’s Photo Challenge, for which brightly luminous blue skies contrasting with the golden hues of harvest simply Would Not Do.

This month's final assignment - Experiment with using two or three Complementary colours. Try to make one or two colours the focus of the image, and use the other colour to enhance the overall image.

I’ve taken images from fields, from distant vistas, and from the one abandoned ruined grange we came across, where farm animals still grazed in the grassy yard. I’ve played around with colour contrast: aiming to make my results what my eyes thought they saw, rather than what my camera knew it saw.

This is what my eyes, not the camera saw.
I liked the only splash of colour here: those orange beaks.

2020 Photo Challenge #35

Author: margaret21

I'm retired and living in North Yorkshire, where I walk as often as I can, write, volunteer, and travel as often as I can.

35 thoughts on “Howardian Hills”

      1. you KNOW that I wasn’t speaking about temps…. 😉
        But I know, we had a temp drop of over 15°C in one day and Ark Noah-like rainfalls – whereas in France at our former living grounds the sun was shining…. What a crazy world this is!

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  7. Nice those golden dandelions and the dark and stormy sky. A max of 11 degrees! Here we are complaining because today, the first day of spring, reached a max of only 13 degrees, Unusually cold for us even in winter! However, by the weekend the daytime temps are forecast to be over 30 degrees. Crazy.

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  8. I loved the dark sky and flowers. Going back to Mr Chilli, if we ever get back to A-V I’ll pass on your best wishes. We should have been there now and going on to have 2 weeks in Corsica but quarantining makes it almost impossible because we can’t walk the dogs while we’re isolating. The result is Jeremy is ignoring the significant birthday and 2 weeks in Corsica has turned into 2 nights in the New Forest!

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    1. Oh dear. You too. Malcolm had a significant birthday and our trip to the Netherlands got cancelled – well, we hope postponed. Not the New Forest for us in a week or two, but a sojourn in Dumfries and Galloway. Could be worse. Life’s complicated … but Happy Birthday Jeremy!

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  10. Both those shots are arresting – in the nicest possible way! Much as I love those uppity geese, I think I prefer the brooding sky and the hopeful tansy. (Is it a tansy, just a guess.) Despite the weather, I hope those few days away gave you a good break. A change being as good as a rest and all that 😊

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