Balkans – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Ambling Home …

.. in Korçë , Albania.

Night Time

Night photography isn’t really my thing, so Elke, this week’s host for Monochrome Madness, provided me with a real challenge when she proposed Night time as her theme.

Unsurprisingly, towns and cities provided me with a few ideas. Let’s go on a quick tour. Let’s visit Albania, England, Spain, France, South Korea and Poland…

Really though, Country Mouse prefers to dodge big cities. My featured photo is of the moon as darkness fell recently, while the photo below was taken just at the end of the road.

Finding abstract images from among my collection of photos has been quite the challenge. And yet this is what Ritva has asked of us for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. I’ve never been all that good at playing with all the dials of my camera. I’m no expert at ICM – Intentional Camera Movement, though rather excellent at its opposite, UCM (work it out …) – I usually delete those. Nor do I do much processing of my images. Nevertheless, I came across this little batch of abstracts in my search through my photos. Can you guess where each is from?

My feature photo was deliberately taken for its abstract qualities. As was this one …

Water’s often good at being abstract, and in different moods too. Look.

And it doesn’t have to be deep water either.

… or look at these …

Perhaps even the absence of water …

Here’s a little glossary of where each image was taken, in order:

a: An entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
b: A bridge over the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Gargrave, North Yorkshire.
c: Albert Dock, Liverpool.
d: Reservoir, Nosterfield, North Yorkshire.
e: Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia.
f:  A winter puddle on a track near home.
g:  The beach at Filey, North Yorkshire.
h: An aquarium at the Horniman Museum, London.
i: A display of bubbles on the South Bank London.
j: Scar House Reservoir, North Yorkshire during the drought of 2020.

Further Adventures of Major General Algernon Gove

Poor Algernon (if I may be so familiar). I abandoned my Major General last month as he planned further destinations in a trip to invigorate him in his old age. He’s my stooge as I attempt to complete Paula’s Pick a Word Challenge. The five words Paula offers us are intended to be a stimulus to us to choose five appropriate photos: I decided a bit of verbal silliness would add a little extra difficulty. Not ‘alf. These are Paula’s chosen words: distinctive; floating; fortified; playful and saddle. Make something of that, Major General!

In case you’re not familiar with him, this is how his saga began …

A retired Major General from Hove
with the moniker Algernon Gove
said ‘Before life unravels
I must finish my travels.’
And forthwith he made plans to rove.

But it gets worse …

His next plan was to go pony-trekking.
He booked something in Wales without checking.
It might be quite a chore ?
He could get saddle-sore?
Oh dear no - there’s a plan that needs wrecking.

Our old chap nursed a long-term ambition
to explore sites with years of tradition.
A castle, he voted,
fortified, or deep-moated.
He’d find one - he'd make that his mission.

Perhaps all his plans were restrictive?
He should aim now for something distinctive.
Something playful and fun.
‘Cos when all’s said and done
to enjoy life should just be instinctive.

He knew he’d no taste for long trips
that took him o’er oceans in ships.
But he’d go in a boat
floating nowhere remote -
while enjoying some fresh fish and chips.

When the Major General saw frisky ponies like these, he knew he’d never be able to stay in the saddle.

He started off at Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland. Not very adventurous. So he went to the Château de Lagarde in the Ariège, France, shown in the featured photo, and then…

You can have a playful time on London’s South Bank, and at the London Eye. But it’s more distinctive to discover pastures new – at the evening fair in Gdansk, perhaps.

That’s more like it. Floating quietly on Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia. He had the fish he’d caught in the lake later, where they cooked it for him at the lakeside restaurant.

WP is being very irritating today. It won’t let me centre some of my photos, or alternatively to align all my shots to the left, whatever I try, and however loudly I shout at my laptop. So I have to admit defeat.

Mainly about reeds and rushes.

This week’s Nature Photo Challenge from Denzil is about water plants. My archive has not been especially revealing, and if you think I’m going out on this day of torrential rain to find more, you’ve got another think coming. Perhaps this is a chance to join in to with Jez’s Water Water Everywhere challenge too?

I’ll issue a challenge of my own too. I rather like the images below of spiky, statuesque reeds and grasses in black and white. But perhaps you prefer the original colour?

My first one is from the lake at Kiplin Hall, North Yorkshire

Then we’ll move to Lake Prespa in Greece, where the reeds obscure a handsome egret.

Then back to England, to the River Wye in Derbyshire.

This is a local Nature Reserve at Staveley, North Yorkshire on a bitingly cold day which at least the bulrushes could endure.

My header photo is also from Lake Prespa. I thought the egret and his reedy background demanded colour. Just as my final shot, taken in the gardens of the National Museum, Seoul. South Korea rather requires that splash of orange.

Skyscapes

Amy has invited us to thumb through our archives for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge #250 and choose skyscapes and clouds. I’ve found it impossible to be dispassionate about this. There’s something about these images that’s so bound up with memories that I can’t distinguish good photos from the merely ordinary. I’m transported to that place, that time, that set of souvenirs.

Take my header photo, for instance, which I’ve posted before, more than once. It takes me immediately to that special day when I was part of an evening boat trip quietly floating through the lagoons of l’Albufera near Valencia, while birds made their final flights as the sun settled below the horizon. It’s a memory which will never leave me, whether the photo is a winner or not.

Longish sea trips to the continent bring memories of languidly looking at cloudscapes from early morning till nightfall as our ship smoothly purrs towards its destination. Here’s one …

… or this…

Or there are those memories of January days in Cádiz. An unmissable part of our routine was to head to the beach at dusk to watch the sun slowly disappear into the sea.

This shot, from our time in the Balkans shows that a slightly neutral skyscape can be a perfect backdrop for a questing bird of prey. And this was a holiday of birdsong, wild flowers – and memories of a still wild landscape.

A quick visit to France, to the Minervois for a moody sky. This was a trip just a few weeks ago, when on the same day as this shot was taken, we saw tiny daffodils sheltering from the brisk wind.

I can’t leave this post without a local shot, taken as we walked a habitual path alongside our River Ure.

Alone Time

I don’t have a problem being alone. As an only child who was often uprooted while growing up, I was used to my own company. Nowadays, though I value family and friends, time to myself is important too. My happiest memories of lockdown are of the Daily Exercise we were permitted, when I’d take myself off to enjoy the differences each day made on familiar daily walks, and discover new tracks and pathways.

Here’s a rather random gallery of landscapes that may meet the needs of the solitary walker. Put on your hiking boots and yes, why not? We’ll go and enjoy them together.

…. and then you could just go off by yourself if you wanted …

For Ann-Christine AKA Leya’s Lens-Artists Challenge #238 Alone Time

The header image is from l’Albufera, near Valencia, Spain, where I had a wonderfully solitary afternoon and evening one November about four years ago.

Postcards from 2022

How to summarise 2022 in just a few photos? That’s what the Lens-Artist Challenge demands of us this week. What makes it so hard is that a memory is invested in every photo. My own favourite photos may demonstrate no particular skill, but can transport me – and not you – straight back to a treasured moment. Ah well, let’s give it a go, and see what I can find that we can all enjoy.

Let’s book-end the year with ordinary pleasures: Fountains Abbey in springtime, and in late autumn…

Let’s remember summer with – here – an extraordinary sight: Scar House Reservoir, almost unable to do its job of providing water.

Let’s have a look at happy moments: Ripon’s first Theatre Festival took to the streets, Masham’s annual Sheep Fair returned after a couple of years’ Covid-hiatus. And my family enjoys one of life’s simpler pleasures: curling up with a good book.

Memorable May: a fantastic few days in the Balkans: North Macedonia, Albania and Greece, to enjoy its wildlife. A very few photos stand in for the whole experience of this area, still in many ways rooted in its traditional past.

Shepherds on the move all day and every day. leading their sheep and goats in quest of pasturage.

… and not forgetting the stars of the show: peacocks at Lake Ohrid.

The header image shows Lake Prespa, and the island of Agios Achillios, where we spent a few days.

In Catalonia with The Barcelona Branch of the family, we had an unforgettable trip to what may be The World’s Best Museum, CosmoCaixa, Barcelona.

We’ll finish off with Christmas lights at Eltham Palace. It was so cold, no wonder my fingers slipped!

A Monday watery portrait

Was it really six months ago that we were in the Balkans? Was it then that we spent our days exploring Lake Prespa, bounded by Greece, Albania and North Macedonia? Apparently so. And these days, the news from there isn’t good. The pelican population, already catastrophically hit by avian flu, has seriously declined again since then. The Great Crested Grebes are still doing well though. Here’s one, featuring as a Monday Portrait, and for Water, Water Everywhere.

Summer Travel: it’s worth it in the end

This is turning into a Sunday Thing. Experimenting with different types of poetry. But with added photos. Always with added photos. This week, as my contribution to Tanka Tuesday‘s task – to write a 4-11 (the clue is in the name: 11 lines of 4 syllables each – last line repeats the first) I thought I’d focus on summer travel.

Summer travel

was always fun.

But now passport

control (Brexit!);

Covid control;

train strikes and queues;

airport queuing –

make journeys long

and so irksome.

Worth it though – for

summer travel

And to prove that travel’s always worth it, here’s my photo gallery. There’s just one problem. Most of these photos were taken in January, in February, in March … you get the idea – any month but August …