This week, Dawn of The Day After fame, has asked us to consider Spring for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. No, she doesn’t want daffodils, blossom, gambolling lambs (though actually they would definitely do). Instead she wants us to treat the word as a verb, and find images about springing, or synonyms thereof.
So I’ve headed straight for some shots from Ripon Theatre Festival last year, from the weekend of street entertainment:
… which put me in mind of more dancing, of the Morris variety …
The dancers of Four Hundred Roses are my featured photo, where Morris dancing meets belly dancing meets steampunk.
Then I remembered an exhibition in The Baltic, Gateshead where an astronaut was about to leap on my head, And the day at Thorpe Perrow Birds of Prey Centre, when an owl plunged down to seize a meaty titbit, before springing up and away once more.
And then those springing lambs. Considering I live in Sheep Central, you’d think I’d have plenty of energetic shots. Nope. This is the best I can do.
Finally, I’ll give water a look-in. It can be fairly lively. Here’s poor Atlas at Castle Howard, bearing the whole world on his shoulders. And getting soaked in the process as water leaps and plashes around him. And next to him is a frisky and ebullient waterfall near Muker .
I thought of taking a walk, and pointing out all the textures I noticed, from moss to tree bark to muddy paths to rocky outcrops. I thought of showcasing an example of every different texture I could think of. But in the end I settled for this: a random gallery of Texture, in all its hard, soft, smooth, rough, grainy and prickly variety.
You’re not crawling out of bed at 3.30 because you’ve got an early shift at work. You’re not getting up at silly o’clock because you’ve got to go through the whole dismal business of airport security and a flight before beginning your holiday. No. You’re getting up because you want to. You can even largely skip getting washed, let alone finding presentable clothing.
That was me, last week.
3.45: I crept out of the house before it was even light, not waking anyone else up. In the car, on the way to Studley, the full moon shone cold white in an charcoal sky. The first glimmer of light – a sort of navy-with-apricot-ish coral stole across the horizon. Rabbits loped along the verges. A barn owl rose silently from the road ahead, clasping its prey.
About 4.05: At Studley, those rich salmon sky-tones were flaring brighter now. A blackbird sang. Just the one. Within minutes, he was joined by others. Then robins, song thrushes. After that, wrens, bluetits, then blackcaps, chaffinches, chiffchaffs and nuthatches. Even a curlew. Even a tawny owl. Not that I’d have known all this if it hadn’t been for Merlin.
I walked towards the trees, not yet quite in leaf, silhouetted against the brightening sky. Deer, more curious than startled, came to gaze at me before resuming grazing, or sometimes deciding that fleeing silently away together was a better option.
Gillet Hill gave views of Ripon and beyond, the now magenta sky beginning to halo the cathedral. But maybe the view from St. Mary’s would be even better? The deer thought so.
The church was a fine sight in its own right, but haze now hid the cathedral, and down the hill I went to catch, at 5.20 (not 5.35, as advertised), the sun rising over the horizon. I watched it climb – rather quickly, rather dramatically actually.
Then the early morning chill (1 degree ….) finally got to me, and I elected for the warmth of the car home, then a hot shower, cosy clothes, and – just a bit later, breakfast, fresh-brewed coffee, and the chance to share news of my adventures.
I told Tina in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t be joining in her Lens-Artists Challenge: Phone Photography, as my antique bargain-basement phone and I weren’t up to the job. She wasn’t having that, so I went and had a trawl.
And discovered that reflections seemed to come up as a theme that had worked quite well on days when I hadn’t got a camera to hand.
These were the first two I came across, both from Cosmo-Caixa Science Museum in Barcelona.
Walking down to the lower galleries.The magnificent aquarium set in a would-be South American rainforest.
Still in Spain, we’ll pop to Valencia and its ancient Gothic bridge above the Turia Gardens.
Puente de la Trinidad, Valencia
And now we’ll return to England, and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Gargrave, where one day, this was the scene we saw as we walked under a bridge there.
Under a canal bridge near Gargarve.
And finally, a little gallery of other watery local photos- and that includes my header image too.
Thanks Tina. I’m glad you made me dig these out. Perhaps my phone doesn’t do so badly after all …. After all, that last photo got me second place in a public vote at Masham Sheep Fair the other year (I got first place too, but that wasn’t a reflection shot).
For this week’s Lens Artist Challenge, Beth asks us to show shots of what has astonished us, and takes her inspiration from this short poem by Mary Oliver.
For some reason, my mind was drawn back to Lockdown. For us, Daily Exercise was one of the pleasures of that peculiar time. Country dwellers, we could range freely over our home patch without meeting a soul. And here, it happened to be a wonderful spring, where plants, birds and all life could flourish in balmy temperatures and just the right amount of rain.
Walking by myself down deserted paths – M was exploring on his bike – I discovered Wonder and Astonishment anew. Day by day, I could watch leaves unfurl from tightly-bound buds; flowers appear; lambs totter their first hesitant steps.
I had the leisure to enjoy the intricately-designed feathers of a common-or-garden mallard, or the complexity of dandelion petals.
Best of all, creatures we rarely saw close up crossed my path. Who expects to stumble by a toad on a riverside stroll? Or, best of all, come across shy curlews nesting within a foot of a normally well-used road across the moors.
Skies, undefaced by plane trails seemed more multi-faceted and interesting. And back home, day after day, hour after hour, from dawn until darkness, this thrush gave an apparently unending performance with almost no breaks.
Such a time of loneliness, grief and isolation for many remains in my memory a period of joy in the rediscovery of the astonishment offered by the countryside just outside our front door.
Saudade is a Portuguese word, introduced to us by Egidio, who proposes it for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. Here’s what it means:
... an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something. It is a recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events, often elusive, that cause a sense of separation from the exciting, pleasant, or joyous sensations they once caused.
It’s what we both feel so very often about our years in southern France, now some ten years gone. Of course we remember the landscape – the foothills, the Pyrenees themselves, the seasons, the climate , the slower pace of life …
Of course we do. But we remember even more the happy Sundays and Thursdays we had discovering these landscapes with our two local walking groups. We were the only British members, and how different these expeditions were from their English equivalents. After a morning slogging up a mountain, we were rewarded with views, perhaps a stream, a wild-flower strewn meadow. Then Marcel the butcher would produce his own home-cured sausage; Sylvie offered her daughter’s sheep’s milk cheese; someone would bring bread; Yvette and I brought cake; wine was on offer, and an apéro, and after that someone or other would hand out sugar lumps, on which to drip just a little of their grandfather’s special home-confected digestif. After a nice long rest, we’d pack up and find a different path downwards.
Eating was at the heart of so many activities. Here’s another community meal, tables ranged over the town square so everyone could get together and enjoy each other’s company while celebrating some local highlight..
In fact enjoyment came high on everyone’s agenda. Every July, for instance, in a small village a few miles from ours, a group of volunteers spend months devising Le Jardin Extraordinaire. People come from miles around to enjoy strolling through bowers confected from still-growing gourds, and climbing upwards through woodlands with surprises: beautiful, silly, witty – every year was different.
Then there was the annual firework display on the lake at Puivert, which took the concept of fireworks to a whole new level. It reduced the audience of 1000 or more, who’d all come with families, friends and the makings of a fine picnic to astonished silence as the spectacle ended, before simultaneously roaring their tumultuous appeciation of the astonishing creations set before our eyes.
Our French friends taught us about ‘au cas où‘: the need to have with you at all times a bag or similar ‘just in case‘ you found walnuts, wild cherries, sweet chestnuts, mushrooms – all sorts of food-for-free for the thrify householder. I was au cas où–ing only yesterday, finding crab apples, pears, apples, mirabelles all there for the taking, just as our French friends recommended.
I’ll stop there. The feelings of longing, of saudade are strong …
My turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness this week. I thought it would be fun to explore those shots which, by accident, design, or clever editing, are monochrome in any colour but black and white. Let’s go…
Winter scenes can often offer opportunities. The camera often seems to re-register those – to our eyes -crisp white snowy scenes to muted greens and blues.
Some years ago, this church in Bamberg took my eye, its doorway saints ravaged by the weather, and presenting to the world as olde-worlde sepia.
Sepia again. It was a sepia-ish sort of day when I spotted this young herring gull in Newcastle.
And this cherry blossom? I had an afternoon of blameless fun playing with the special effects on my camera.
One day – quite a few years ago now – my grandson and I enjoyed ourselves at the Horniman Museum, where a tent was in place bathing us in a range of different colours. Here William is in blue – and inevitably- red, because who knew that eventually, the shot would find its way into Becky’s Squares challenge #SimplyRed?
We’ll finish off in the natural world again.
I think this final shot just about squeezes under the wire as monochrome. What can you show us?
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.
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.
I have thought hard about how to respond to Egidio’s Lens-Artists Challenge: Serenity. This word always calls to mind an early evening I spent, content and alone, in l’Albufera lagoon, near Valencia. The utter peace and serenity it delivered has provided me with material for several posts, including this one.
So my serenity this time will be more humdrum, more local, but restorative too. It’s a local walk I take at any time of day. The other day it was an evening walk, not long before sunset. I had only sheep for company.
It’s a very domestic sort of walk, and under three miles long. Along a quiet lane; across sheep pasture; the grounds of a spacious country estate; fields of crops; and then, turning homewards along a different path, the River Ure; and finally a stretch of woodland .. and home. Varied enough to be quietly interesting as I enjoy the changing seasons, but with positively no drama.
On May morning, I got up at 4.30, to celebrate daybreak, sunrise and the dawn chorus. Here is the bench I found almost at the end of my walk.
And here is the story of my walk, from my home in North Stainley to the next village along, West Tanfield: then back along the River Ure – in pictures.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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