Leeds – From Pyrenees to Pennines

A Bench on the Waterfront

Back when I lived in Leeds, its waterfront was emphatically not A Thing. It was certainly not called The Waterfront, being a disregarded area of town rotting behind the station, with long-closed mills and factories collapsing into weed-smothered decay. These dessicated buildings stood alongside ill-repaired streets, deserted except by cars whose owners parked here for free before scurrying off to work or shop in a more salubrious part of town. The River Aire, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal were uninviting, rubbish-clogged. The area wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good day out.

Nowadays, what a surprise! Mills and factories have been restored: repurposed as offices, shops, bars and restaurants. It’s busy day and night with local workers, tourists and pleasure-seekers. Canal boats saunter in and out. Here’s a woman enjoying a quiet moment, probably in her lunch break, on a bench overlooking the canal.

And here are members of a local art group, sketching the area in all its vibrancy one sunny August day. They seem to have commandeered all the benches-for-one.

For Jude’s Bench Challenge.

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 …

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.

Window Shopping Three

This shopping malarkey’s getting tiring, so this week, I’ll just slot in a few shots that didn’t make it into the previous two posts. Like the header shot, for instance. Who knew that facials, waxing, nails and massage were a prerequisite for returning to school?

The Yorkshire lass in me thoroughly approves of this window, spotted in Leeds.

And this image from Barcelona of a rather up-market grocer, Queviures, with the reflections of the street behind remains a favourite too.

My last one may not be a shop at all – I can’t remember. It comes from a more optimistic time, when we still believed that marching in London in our thousands, and community action might help to save us from the disaster which is Brexit.