Let’s hope that, with vaccines developed, next year will end more positively than this.
This photo shows the view from our study window in Yorkshire, in a year when we had snow in England – 2018.
Yesterday, the last day of our ten day tour, I took you to the Pyrenees: to the slopes near Montferrier in the Ariège – you can read all about it here – and to Scaramus, where I had my first experience of snow-shoeing.
Weather forecast. Cold, but bright and sunny. That sounded perfect for a walk in Wharfedale. Starting and finishing at the forbiddingly-named Grimwith Reservoir, and taking a fine circular route to and from Burnsall would give us extensive panoramas over the hills of the Yorkshire Dales.
Except that on the way there, an impenetrable curtain of fog descended. To walk? Or not to walk? My friend and I had both made the effort to get there. So we’d walk.
And for nearly an hour, this was our landscape. No hills, no dales, but just the occasional gate, or tussocky grass, or – sometimes – sheep.
Then – suddenly it seemed – this.
The sky lightened and brightened, and the countryside we’d come to see developed before our eyes like those Polaroid photos that once seemed so exciting.
Soon we were at Burnsall, our half-way mark. A hearty yomp up hill brought us to a bench, where we saw in turn black skies, grey skies, blue skies: and views, always with the village below us.
After lunch, a further climb, and then level walking back to where we’d begun our day. But this time we had the views we’d come to see, and at the end, the quiet tints of the reservoir.
Watching us watching them, on a quiet walk through the deer park at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal
Have you spotted the two albinos?
You can’t live near the Yorkshire Dales and not love a drystone wall, carving up the landscape into pasture-sized segments. But are they better photographed in black and white or colour? They are after all, fairly monochrome themselves, Only you can decide …
Near Grassington, Wharfedale
Near Hebden, Wharfedale
Enough of decisions. Here are a couple in good old-fashioned black and white.
This one’s for Monday Window. It’s not often you see a window above a dry stone wall. And this one’s not quite in the right place. The view could have been better framed. And a bit of double glazing wouldn’t come amiss.
And finally…
The featured photo shows part of Brimham Rocks, Nidderdale
Lockdown again. Forensic exploration of our own neighbourhood again, as we set off for daily exercise. Yet one way or another, I’ve posted dozens of shots of the area I call home, and I can’t expect others to delight in it as I do. The other day though I noticed, as I hadn’t since the car-free spring lockdown when birds were vying for territory and nesting, distant birdsong.
It made me think about the creatures who share our daily round. Not the elusive ones – the stoats, weasels, foxes, deer who decline to stick around as you get your camera out. The types like Basil and Brenda, as our neighbours call the over-sexed pigeons who stomp across their roof, noisily indulging their passion at 6.00 a.m.
The horse who moved in with the Jacob sheep in the next field at the beginning of lockdown when her stables closed for business. She’s still here. The hens next door, who sometimes deliver eggs for our breakfast.
The large flocks of sheep who are part of every farmer’s daily round in these parts – no cattle for us..
The heron who nicks fish from our landlord’s pond.
The mallards on the village pond, and the crows on the rooftops. The squirrels dashing across our path and up the nearest tree. The pheasants who are even more abundant this year, as lockdown’s put a stop to the shooting parties they were specifically bred for. Rabbits too. So many rabbits. Why haven’t I got any photos of them?
The featured photos shows our much-frequented path through Sleningford Hall at Easter time, with all the new lambs.
It’s lockdown again. Best not travel too far for our day out: we’ll whizz round North Yorkshire, and send a few postcards, old style, in black and white.
Annoyingly, I don’t seem able to label these photos, but there are clues in the tags. But – they’re all in North Yorkshire…
…except for one: here are godwits at Slimbridge:
… yesterday in fact, I woke up to this.
It’s the same window I showed you last Monday, but now November mist has descended. I went downstairs. This.
It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t particularly cold. What’s one of the Commandments of Lockdown? ‘Thou shalt exercise daily’. So I did. I took my camera, and explored the local lanes: familiar sights blotted out, as others loomed out from the general obscurity. At just 11 o’clock, I stopped, just for a while: it was Remembrance Day. I heard what a rarely notice as I walk – the constant undertow of birds murmuring and chittering on more distant shrubs and trees. It reminded me of John Lewis-Stempel’s book – Where Poppies Blow. This wonderful account examines the restorative role of nature to those soldiers confined to the trenches in the First World War. For just a fleeting instant, this was a moment I could share with them. Except I came home to a glowing wood-burning stove and a hot cup of coffee.
… when there’s one broken stile …
… several soggy pathways …
… and a very great deal of mud?
This is why.
This is the view from one of our windows on a sunny morning, just before I raise the blind. Only the silhouettes of the wisteria give a hint of what’s beyond. To see what I see after that, look at the header photo.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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