This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, set by Donna, asks us to look at Time. So … I’ve decided to focus on traditions: traditions about celebration – long enjoyed, long maintained, and still meaningful in the communities where they take place.
Transhumance for instance. It’s that time of year when in the Pyrénées (and in other mountain regions too), near where we lived in France, the cattle and sheep are moved from the lush summer pastures in the mountains down to their winter quarters down on their lowland(ish) farms . They stay there till spring, and then they’re taken up again. And each time, it’s the excuse for a party. Here are some scenes from Seix a few years ago, of the upward part of the year.
Patriotic cows are led to townCattle trudge patiently down the road …Sheep come tooIt seems strange to ride a plaster pony when there are so many real ones aroundDancing – always dancingMore dancersTraditional clogsShepherds from the Landes on their traditional look-outs – their stilts.Traditional géants
They were dancing in Seix. We dance to celebrate wherever we live – always have. Here are Morris Dancers in England, traditional dancers in Catalonia (and more of them in the featured photo) and dancing for the big Harvest celebration of Chuseok in South Korea.
What next? How about Shrove Tuesday, the day when it’s the last excuse to have a bit of fun before the privations of Lent? The day when eggs and butter and other indulgences get used up in the making of pancakes, some of which end up in a race. Participants run the course, pan in hand, tossing their pancakes as they run towards the finishing line. It’s part of every Shrove Tuesday, as it has been for hundreds of years here in Ripon, and in towns and villages throughout the land.
Restaurant and café cooks take time out and celebrate a race well-won. Schools vie with each other for the prize.
Street entertainers have engaged out attention as long as there have been streets. Jugglers, Punch and Judy shows … anything goes.
Juggler in RiponPunch … but no Judy.
Anyway, let’s finish off with a dance, the Sardana, dear to Catalonians for … well, centuries. It’s easy enough – join in the circle and just copy the person opposite you. Come on – you don’t even need a partner!
Friends and strangers enjoy the Sardana in a Catalan square.
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…
… Sagunt, near Valencia.
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.
If you look at this girder in a certain light, it looks slightly orange. Maybe. But I just wanted to find an excuse to post this photo: almost the only one I took in colour on our Newcastle sortie the other day.
Our day in Newcastle earlier this week wasn’t just about people-watching. We’d come to walk the banks of the Tyne, weaving back and forth over at least some of its seven bridges. Let’s take a bird’s eye view of the scenes we saw.
This is what those pigeons in the header photo were looking for.
This is the Tyne Bridge, with just beyond, the Sage Gateshead and the Baltic Centre.
This young herring gull was inspecting me as I inspected him. He was tucked behind a railing just beyond that first planter.
We wandered onto the Swing Bridge, which luckily didn’t want to open to allow river traffic through. Its elderly wooden jetties provided the perfect resting place for gangs of pigeons.
Then we walked down this walkway, for another view of the Millennium Bridge …
… but one of our views of the Sage was reflected in a nearby office window.
We didn’t really see any more wildlife. Unless this counts.
I’ll see if I’m allowed to sneak both the pigeons and the herring gull into I. J. Khanewala’s Bird of the Week.
On Tuesday, Country Mouse (me) went to the Big City (Newcastle). Big cities are busy, full of life, of people. And that’s why I was there. A friend in my fairly-newly-joined photographic club had offered to take me in hand, get me over my diffidence in photographing people I don’t know, and communicate as well his affection for black-and-white photography. Newcastle was the place to go.
We started in the station. We walked along the banks of the Tyne. We criss-crossed several of the seven – yes seven – bridges spanning the river between Newcastle and Gateshead. The shots we took there are for another day.
We took pictures of bridges, buildings, windows, shadows, gulls, pigeons, statues, rotting wood, city swank and urban decay. And we took shots of people click on any image to see it full-size.
Man meets sheep
The two of us take our last shot of the day -reflected in a shop window.
In this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, Denzil has asked us to focus on seedheads. You won’t get any more ripened seeds in one place than in a field of cereal crops awaiting harvest. Here’s a local example in my header photo.
And here are some close-ups of barley and wheat.
And here’s a gallery of their wild cousins – grasses. Not one of which I can more accurately identify. Any offers?
Then there’s cow parsley -or a close relation. It can be yielding its seed, perhaps in the midst of a field of crops round about now, or picturesquely hosting a spider’s web in misty November.
At this time of year too there’s rosebay willow herb: it seems to develop seed pods earlier every year. Here are some at a local reservoir, Grimwith.
Shrewsbury in Shropshire. How to pronounce it? Shrowsbury or Shrusebury? I was brought up with the former. Apparently most locals prefer the latter. Apart from those who don’t. I give up. Let’s go on a stroll round this lovely, quiet, tucked-away town with oodles of history. Click on any image to reveal it full size, with caption.
As regular readers know already, I’m a huge fan of Food for Free. Especially at this time of year, I never leave the house without a useful ‘au cas où’ bag stuffed in my pocket . This is a bag that any rural French person will have about their person always – just in case they find something useful – a few nuts, berries, fungi or leaves to add interest to the store cupboard. At the moment, this is all about the apples, blackberries, bullace and mirabelle plums all growing wild locally. At other times it might be young nettles, wild garlic or other leaves. Soon it will be puffballs. I’m not especially knowledgeable, but I do my best.Yesterday’s haul? Windfall apples (simple stewed apple) mirabelles (frangipane and jam) and bullaces (crumble and bullace cheese – think a plum version of membrillo – very labour intensive).
Although I was brought up foraging, my commitment to it was sealed when we lived in France. Here’s a post I wrote in October 2012.
‘All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin’*
October 25th, 2012
Well, at this time of year, it isn’t really a case of ‘au cas où’ . You’re bound to find something. A fortnight ago, for instance, Malcolm and I went on a country stroll from Lieurac to Neylis. We had with us a rucksack and two large bags, and we came home with just under 5 kilos of walnuts, scavenged from beneath the walnut trees along the path. A walk through the hamlet of Bourlat just above Laroque produced a tidy haul of chestnuts too.
Yesterday, we Laroque walkers were among the vineyards of Belvèze-du-Razès. The grapes had all been harvested in the weeks before, but luckily for us, some bunches remained on the endless rows of vines which lined the paths we walked along. We felt no guilt as we gorged on this fruit all through the morning. The grapes had either been missed at harvest-time, or hadn’t been sufficiently ripe. They were unwanted – but not by us.
So many vines: there’ll be unharvested grapes there somewhere.
The walnuts we’re used to in the Ariège are replaced by almonds over in the Aude. You have to be careful: non-grafted trees produce bitter almonds, not the sweet ones we wanted to find. But most of us returned with a fine haul to inspect later. Some of us found field mushrooms too.
A solitary almond
Today, the destination of the Thursday walking group was the gently rising forested and pastoral country outside Foix known as la Barguillère. It’s also known locally as an area richly provided with chestnut trees. Any wild boar with any sense really ought to arrange to spend the autumn there, snuffling and truffling for the rich pickings. We walked for 9 km or so, trying to resist the temptation to stop and gather under every tree we saw. The ground beneath our feet felt nubbly and uneven as we trod our way over thousands of chestnuts, and the trees above threw further fruits down at us, popping and exploding as their prickly casings burst on the downward journey.
Just picture whole paths, thickly covered with chestnuts like this for dozens of yards at a time.
As our hike drew to an end, so did our supply of will-power. We took our bags from our rucksacks and got stuck in. So plentiful are the chestnuts here that you can be as picky as you like. Only the very largest and choicest specimens needed to make it through our rigorous quality control. I was restrained. I gathered a mere four kilos. Jacqueline and Martine probably each collected three times as much. Some we’ll use, some we’ll give to lucky friends.
I think these chestnuts represent Jacqueline, Martine and Maguy’s harvest.
Now I’d better settle myself down with a dish of roasted chestnuts at my side, and browse through my collections of recipes to find uses for all this ‘Food for Free’.
*From the words of an English hymn sung during Harvest Festival.
That’s this post, really. We’ve been away all week, discovering Shropshire with friends who’ve moved there. Getting to know this county and its landscapes, its industrial history, its towns and villages is a work in progress for us. But it’s left me only with time to throw together a quick response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists Challenge: Work in Progress.
We’re all Works in Progress – all our lives. But children especially so. Fierce concentration here, and enjoyment too …
Hard at work with bucket and spade.
Slightly older children can hold their own with adults when it comes to demonstrating proficiency – in this case sheep-handling at Masham Sheep Fair.
Sheep-handlers young and old at Masham Sheep Fair
Over in the city, street art out-numbers sheep. Here are two works in progress: the first in Valencia, Spain, the second near Brick Lane, London.
And finally, two shots from India that I remember well: the house opposite my hotel in Puducherry, whose construction was a work-in-progress from about six, till late… it’s up there as my featured photo … and a metalworker hard at work producing figures inspired by the nearby temple at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.
As soon as Denzil asked us to focus on tree bark for this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, I remembered a visit we’d had to Westonbirt Arboretum with my daughter-in-law’s parents. I blogged about it at the time: it was all but ten years ago. Time to re-purpose this old post!
‘Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven’*
September 22nd, 2013
On Friday our co-in-laws took us to Westonbirt Arboretum. If you’re spending a few days round Bristol and Bath there’s no better place to recharge your batteries. You could pass the morning in the Old Arboretum, a carefully designed landscape dating from the 1850’s. There are something like two and a half thousand varieties of tree – 16,000 specimens in all, from all over the world, planted according to ‘picturesque’ principles of the 18th and 19th centuries, offering beautiful vistas, enchanted glades and stately avenues. After a light lunch in the on-site restaurant you could go on to explore the Silk Woods an ancient, semi-natural woodland, or the grassy meadows of the Downs.
It was Robert Holford who designed and encouraged the planting of the Arboretum, back in the mid 19th century. This was a period when plant-hunters were bringing new and exotic species back from their world-wide travels. Holford was able to finance some of these expeditions, and the Arboretum contains many of the specimens his scientific adventurers brought back.
Truly, it’s a magical place. We arrived, let out a collective sigh, and simply allowed stress and worry to fall away. Strolling about, we gazed upwards at trees whose end-of-summer leaves seemed to be fingering the clouds, into copses where we could glimpse others already turning to the ochres and russets of Autumn, and then closely at the trees themselves. It was the bark that caught our attention close up. Smooth and silvery, brown and knobbly, grey and wrinkled, the variety astonished us. Take a look at these. And if you get a chance to visit this Arboretum, at any time of year, then take it.
Common beechQuercus roborCalifornian buckeyePrunus aviumToona sinensisManchurian cherryMetasequoia GlytostroboidesJapanese bush sprucePseutonsuga MenziesiiNorway spruceLodgepole pineCommon yewAcer platanoidesThuja plicataSessile oakGiant sequoia ‘Wellington’Japanese cedarScots pine
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
You must be logged in to post a comment.