Just because you can barely see them doesn’t mean the benches aren’t there. Morris dancers at Ripon Theatre Festival needed to take the weight off their feet from time to time, and their dresses and general Festival clutter seem to cover from view the benches they used pretty effectively.
For Jude’s Bench Challenge.
British readers will recognise the allusion to the Flanders and Swann ‘A Transport of Delight’, celebrating the good old London bus. These specimens aren’t from London, but to be found transporting visitors round the vast site which is the museum at Beamish. This is a marvellous place celebrating the day-to-day life of working men and women in the North East of England, mainly from 1900 to the 1950s, but with glances back to earlier times too.
By the way, this is the last day for sending your 100 word story: ‘But What if She Says Yes?’ suggested in my post last Saturday. Only two of you (well, three, counting me) have been brave enough so far.
For Becky’s #SimplyRed.
and Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
For Becky’s #SimplyRed
something beginning with H. That’s what Sarah of Travel with Me wants from us today for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.
Well, in among all the other acts, Ripon’s Theatre Festival included a few sets of Morris dancers – just as likely to be women as men these days. And they all flaunt terrific Headgear on their Heads. I mean… Hats. Here are a couple: and including two more in the featured photo.
Horses. I won’t show you show-jumpers, or mares with their foals in bucolic meadows. Here’s one waiting patiently for the 159 in Masham one evening as we were on our way to Photo Club. The last bus had left an hour and a half before. In truth, she was on the way to Appleby Horse Fair, an event that. although centuries old, isn’t as long-established as Morris dancing. This horse was one of dozens of horses and vardoes we see making their slow way there in the weeks before.
Let’s continue to be a little Olde Worlde. Here’s a House spotted last year in Vitré in Brittany, a town which boasts almost no other housing style.
Or shall we go for a little Hut in the grounds of Sleningford Old Hall, or a tiny House, fairies-for-the-use-of, in Nidd Hall?
Fairies make me think of other out-of this world creatures, as seen at Hallowe’en.
Not frightened yet? I can sort that out. Here’s the Hideous Head of a Gegant in Premià de Mar , and a Haunting Harridan from the Puppet Museum in Cádiz.
I don’t want to leave you quivering though. Let’s go back to Morris Dancing and Hats of course, and let the Slubbing Billys cheer you up. In black and white, and in Glorious Technicolor With Red Highlights for Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.
The featured image, spotted in Buxton, in England’s Peak District sets the tone. Here is is, a cheery chappy, just waiting to receive your letter. If you write letters any more ….
Then there’s our local post box, still with an image painted on the wall behind dating from 2014, the year we moved here, and the year that the Tour de France started in Yorkshire, and passed through the village. And in a nearby village, the box dates from the reign of Queen Victoria. Look! ‘VR’: Victoria Regina. And finally, a box spotted last autumn topped off with yarn bombing for Hallowe’en.
For Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.
This rusting wreck is multi-tasking today. It’s lived a blameless and long life in the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey, offering views of the Dales and what’s left of the Abbey in the long years since Henry VIII had it made unfit for purpose during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Today though, it’s doing a tour of duty for Becky’s #Simply Red; for Jude’s Bench Challenge; and for Debbie’s One Word Sunday. It’s a little dishonest, as I’ve had to tinker a bit to make it Simply Red. Don’t tell the ghosts of those monks who once called this place home.
I’ve even managed a tweaked shot of part of the Abbey looking a little red too.
We had some friends staying a while back. The sort who don’t outstay their welcome because, even though they’re there long enough to need to run a few things through the washing machine, they muck in, do the shopping, cook a meal and generally become part of the family. Here’s part of the washing line during their stay …
For Becky’s #SimplyRed Squares.
The theme Dawn has chosen for this week’s Monochrome Madness is Transport. That’s a bit of a facer. I’m not the sort of person who ever thinks to take a shot of a car, or be part of a cluster round someone’s state-of-the-art motor bike. I only notice trains or buses if they’re late, and you’ll never catch me on a bicycle.
So my best bet seems to be a visit to the past, and a trip we took last year to Beamish, a wonderful open air museum, telling the story of life in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s.
The site is huge, and public (well, public to those who’d paid to get in) transport a necessity. We had fun popping on and off trams, trolleybuses, and single decker buses, and inspecting the bicycles of delivery boys.
My feature photo shows no trams and bikes. There are tramlines, but what it illustrates is the most common form of transport there is, world-wide. Shanks’s pony. I’m not sure if this phrase has spread as a description of walking beyond the UK, nor am I sure of its origins. There ARE various theories on the internet: but I believe none of them.
Here’s a gallery of all the transport we used as we explored this site.
Trams …
… and buses …
… and bikes.
And does a merry-go-round horse count as transport? My granddaughter thought so.
And here’s a final photo, as evening drew in, and people hurried onto whatever form of transport they could find to take them towards the car park, and their journey home.
We’re lucky to have so much woodland here where I live. In recent weeks I’ve taken my camera round and about to capture fresh new growth emerging – pungent wild garlic, delicate wood anemones .. and last of all, the trees’ fresh new growth, optimistically unfurling from their tights buds of winter.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness #35 – Woods, Rainforests and Bushland.
Over and out. Nothing now (maybe a Virtual Postcard?) until the back end of next week. Even commenting and reading your posts may be a bridge too far with my phone as my only tool.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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