Category: England

Geometry-at-Sea

It’s time for Squares again. It’s a month when Becky takes up her place on the Blogging Podium to orchestrate photographic offerings from all over the blogosphere. Just two rules. The photo must be square, and this month, its theme must be Geometry.

I’m scheduling my post. As you read it, we’re probably battling extremely high winds as we drive to the south coast on the first leg of our journey to Daughter-and-her-Family-in-Spain.

We should be travelling by cross-channel ferry. But even if it sails, I don’t want to be on it, so we’re going instead by train under the Channel, courtesy of Le Shuttle. I’ve picked a shot taken on a different ferry journey, crossing the North Sea from Rotterdam to Hull. Those decks look suitably angular to me. And the day wasn’t even a little bit stormy.

For GeometricJanuary

WP again! I was careful to tick all the right boxes in order to schedule this post: something I’ve done many times before.  As you may have realised, good old WP published it anyway,  immediately. And I deleted it, immediately. Here it is again. Grrr. Sorry.

Life on the Ocean Wave – Again?

In 2010, we were living in France, and often made the trip back and forth between our home there and England courtesy of the cross-channel ferry from Boulogne to Dover. One April, in 2010, we had a Bad Experience. This week, we’re off to Spain, by the same route (well, Dunkerque rather than Boulogne). And the forecast is beyond awful. By the time we arrive in Dover, there will have been 50 mph + winds for more than 24 hours, rising to 70 mph as we arrive. Reader, we have cancelled the ferry (but lost our money) and booked the Chunnel instead. Why don’t you sit in front of a cosy fire and read about our Bad Experience?

Life on the Ocean Wave?

We generally cross the English Channel by ferry.  Neither of us is keen on the Tunnel, and a nice breezy trip on a boat always seems a cheery, day-out-by-the-seaside way of travelling between England and France.

Not that Dover’s much fun.  Despite having some elegant and interesting buildings, Dover always seems a dingy, down at heel and down-on-its-luck sort of place. And this time, it looked as if we’d have longer than usual time to kill there, because LD lines sent a late text saying our ferry would have to leave at 1.30 p.m., not midday, and we’d arrived in town just before 10.00.

Why not go down to the port, then, and see if the ship before had been delayed, and whether it could perhaps squeeze us in?  Down at the booking office, the news was that because of atrocious weather, the 6.30 a.m. sailing still hadn’t been able to leave.  But it was loading, but if we hurried, we could go too.

We hurried.  We caught the ferry.  We regretted it.  Even behind the harbour walls, the ship was pitching and tossing.  As we started our voyage, the well-named tug DHB Doughty struggled to keep us on some kind of suitable path between the harbour walls.  Out among the waves and spray of the open sea, the ship immediately started to lunge, roll, and sway, and kept up this uneasy surging throughout the trip.

I’ve always been a rotten sailor, but told myself firmly that this time it would be different: it was just a case of mind over matter.  Less than 10 minutes later I was sick for the first time.

Nearly an hour and a half into our hour and a half journey, the French coast was nowhere near.  Then the captain announced that some cargo had come adrift, and we’d have to stop till it was sorted out.  Half an hour passed.  Then yet again it was Our Captain Speaking.  There was, he said, a Force 10 gale going on.  He didn’t propose to risk getting into the harbour in Boulogne in these conditions.  We’d just have to sit it out.  I went green.  I went yellow.  I went glassy eyed. I used up several sick bags.  So did half the passengers.  The other half (including Malcolm) only had boredom and ailing partners to contend with, but they weren’t having a lot of fun either.  Malcolm struggled off to find water for me, and found broken crockery all over the cafeteria, books and souvenirs strewn over the shop floor, and the toilets awash.  He lurched back empty handed, though stewards came round with water and sympathy later on.

And we sat, hunched miserably in our seats, until finally, the captain reckoned there was a slight change in the weather. At last the French tug Obstiné brought us into port .  Those tugs with those inspired names were the cheeriest things about the whole journey.

The photos show the sea hitting the harbour in Boulogne.  That’s the sea as it lost power and hit the coast, not the raging sea we’d been putting up with in what felt like mid ocean.  For six long hours.

Next time there’s a storm, I ain’t sailing.  I’ll just sit it out on dry land.

Thanks everyone for commenting about the Featured Photo debacle. It looks as if the problem may lie with our phone settings (particularly for Android users), and sorting this out is currently beyond me. As reading your posts and commenting either on them, or on my own posts may be too – for the rest of the week – as we plan for and embark on our 1800 km journey in less than ideal conditions.

Nevertheless… Happy New Year!

Above the Clouds

Here in the UK, we know a lot about clouds. And at this time of year, we know a lot about grey clouds. Looking out of the window just now yields an unending vista of smoky grey, darkening over Mickley way to gunmetal and slate. No cotton-wool puffs of cumulus for us.

So let me whisk you to a day in June, when the plane transporting me from Barcelona to Leeds offered me a constantly changing cloudscape below me, with tantalising glimpses of beaches, landscapes and the Pyrenees, the Atlantic coast, and then crowded old England. The featured photo shows us just leaving Barcelona – hardly a cloud in the sky. And then …

Mist rather than cloud, to start with.
The foothills of the Pyrenees
Well, who can tell?
Cresting the Pyrennean peaks
Over the French coast now…
Here too.
Still France
Nearly home
Even more nearly home.

Although generally a big fan of monochrome, on a grey day like this, I’m not sure I like these clouds and vistas in black and white. My memory of that summer day was of clear bright and optimistic colours. But needs must. This is for Monochrome Madness, and hosted this week by Brian, of Bushboy’s World.

These Made Me Smile

Ann-Christine of Leya fame has offered us a challenge. She wants us to forget, if only for a moment, that we’re in difficult times: politically, economically, weather and climate-wise. What a good idea. Let’s smile.

We’ll start out with the intentionally humorous.

Here’s a battered house in down-town Seville. I hope the owners don’t hurry to slap on fresh plaster and paint, and cover up this jovial crocodile.

And here’s a puppet from the Puppet Museum in Cádiz, together with a jolly fellow who was part of a scupture trail in east London supporting chidren’s wheelchair charity Whizz-Kidz 

Here’s a sign outside a bar in Liverpool:

All those intended to make you smile. These didn’t. I hope you’ll smile anyway, when you see our neighbour’s dog Poppy meeting her first snowman, and then spot this tree at Jervaulx Abbey.

We’ll finish with two different kinds of smile. The very first snowdrops of the year, I hope round about two months from now, always bring me joy. As did these wild flowers in the car park at Harrogate Hospital last summer.

My header photo is a shot that always delights me. Going down the drive early one winter morning, I just happened to have my phone on me. I recorded this scene for posterity: that serendipitous moment always brings a smile to my face.

Lens-Artists Challenge #326 – This Made Me Smile

Where Words Fail, Music Speaks

Where words fail, music speaks: so said Hans Christian Anderson. And when Leanne invited me to host Monochrome Madness for One Week Only, I thought Music might be a good theme. We bloggers come from all over the world. Though many of us, in many nations, have English as our first language, there are dozens of different ones in the WordPress melting pot. But we can all enjoy music together, whether singing, playing instruments, or dancing, Or all of the above at once. Let’s do it.

My header image was taken at the neighbourhood Festa Major in Gràcia, Barcelona. It’s out of focus, and I don’t care. It captures I think the verve and enjoyment of those performing drummers.

Here are some dancers in neighbourhood festivals: in Catalonia; and in England – Morris Men.

Instrument players now. The drummer accompanying the Morris dancers; drummers celebrating Chusak in South Korea, and brass players marching in London in those heady optimistic days when some of us still thought Brexit might not happen.

Of course some instrumentalists out in the street are trying to earn a living. Here are buskers in Ripon and Bath.

And a harpist playing at a friend’s wedding in the grounds of the ruined Abbey at Jervaulx ….

Here are singers in Seville, relying simply on the beauty of their voices; and a singer-instrumentalist, heavily dependent on a supply of electricity to produce a sound.

Of course, first you have to have your instrument. Here’s a music shop in Málaga.

This thrush is a musician from the natural world. He commandeers a high branch here, spring after spring, and simply sings his heart out from early morning to early evening, almost without stopping. I wish you could hear him.

And while we’re in the Great Outdoors, is there anything more musical than a tinkling and plashing stream, tumbling tunefully over rocks?

Please do join in with your own musical offerings. And link back both to this post, and to Leanne’s site too, here.

‘A Line is a Visual Trail of Energy’

So said Mick Maslen, Yorkshire artist and teacher. And perhaps none is more energetic than the Leading Line: the one that draws you insistently into an image to discover what lies at the other end. And which may leave you wondering, because you often never reach it.

My header image is from Cádiz, and is a bit of a text book classic. Pavement, road, seawall, cars, kerb-side buildings – even to a lesser extent the wispy clouds- all lead you on and drop you outside the city’s cathedral.

In other examples, it’s the journey along the lines, rather than the destination that commands our notice. Here’s one from Chalons-en-Champagne: the wall paintings rather than the chap at the end, are the story. Just as the couple in the underpass in Premià de Mar attract less attention than the graffiti they’ve just walked past.

Other leading lines have no destination that we can see. The Chirk Aqueduct, with viaduct behind is going somewhere. We just don’t know where. The same with the Rolling English Road in the Yorkshire Dales, and the track in another part of the Dales whose path has been enveloped by fog.

Chirk Aqueduct: from Shropshire to Wales.

Just one more image today. The astonishing Millau Viaduct in France, some two and a half km. long, sweeps majestically about 35 metres above the River Tarn and the landscape and communities beneath- sometimes (and oh how I’d love to see it then!) even above the clouds.

Millau Viaduct

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness and her guest host this week Sarah, who writes Travel with Me.

Flowers for Two – No Three – Blogging Friends

Rebecca, of Fake Flamenco fame has suggested with typical generosity of spirit that we send virtual flowers or autumn colour to Becky, Queen of Squares and to Cee, Queen of Challenges. Becky, in England, has kept us up to date with the health difficulties currently being experienced by Cee, in America.

I’m sending flowers from a phone box to each of them. These cheery additions to the urban scene can be found in Bath, where I spent yesterday with both Becky and Anabel, The Glasgow Gallivanter. Lucky me! Spending time with fellow bloggers is quite the best fun.

The header photo features the central box, which is the work of Mr. Doodle.

The So-Bad-It’s-Good Experience

Well, we ‘did’ the Chillingham Cattle. So now, maybe some culture, some history at the nearby Chillingham Castle, parts of which date from the 12th century?

Perhaps we should have guessed. We drove through the gates, then bumped along the drive, deeply pitted with pot holes. The parking area was filled with random notices relating to a golf course that was nowhere in evidence. We found the entrance, where a slightly surly individual examined our pre-booked tickets and gestured us through a door. ‘Ramshackle’, rather than ‘weathered’ was the term that occurred to us as we passed through the courtyard. Still the cafe offered home made soup and cakes, so that was alright.

But our visit! An ill-lit room offered instruments of torture, in no way explained or contextualised, but which included a broken down skeleton in a broken down wheelchair. Progressing further, we found halls scattered with elderly croquet mallets, rooms featuring peeling table tennis bats, torn and yellowed newspaper cuttings roughly pinned to a mantelpiece – one drawing pin having fallen out. A box of magazines from a bygone age tossed into a Fyffes banana box. Windows dressed with rotting and ripped curtains. Somewhere in among all this, it was just about possible to pick out a family story, and witness at first hand a high-born family descending into genteel poverty.

Actually, the formal gardens weren’t too bad. Here’s a view from the roof.

But perhaps we’re miserable old curmudgeons, unable to recognise a National Treasure when we see one. Here are some reviews from Trip Advisor. There are those who loved their visit. Is it now on your ‘must visit’ list?