Category: North Yorkshire

A Solid Perspective on the Past

This really is a challenge. Photos demonstrating 3D. Showing the heft, the mass, the solidity of the main subject: putting it in the perspective of its surroundings.

I took myself to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. Here is an ancient Cistercian foundation, in ruins since the days when Henry VIII called for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Here are Georgian water gardens, developed by John and William Aislabie in the 18th century. And here I found my subjects.

Glance through this arch to see where the monks came, eight times a day, for worship.
Huby’s Tower can be glimpsed through the mighty weathered arches of the now roofless Abbey church.

Much of what you find in the gardens is more playful. This balustrade overlooking the lake, shows icicles. ‘It’s summer now’, is the message. ‘Enjoy yourselves. Winter will be along soon enough.’

This young pheasant has found the Banqueting House. Outside is a lawn cut into the shape of a coffin. The message is similar. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’*

And later, explore the woodlands of the High Ride and its ancient trees. Their roots are pretty solid.

2020 Photo Challenge #30

Square Perspectives

* from the Books of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah in the Bible.

A Nice Day Out .. or Six Months Inside

Ah, how idyllic … Bolton Castle in Wensleydale.  Perfect for a summer’s day out.

Not if you were Mary Queen of Scots though. She spent six months imprisoned here in 1568.  Although even that incarceration was relative.  She was attended by 30 of her household, which included  knights, servants, ladies-in-waiting, cooks, grooms, a hairdresser, an embroiderer, an apothecary, a physician and a surgeon.  The remaining 20 or so lodged in the nearby village of Castle Bolton.  She went hunting.  She had her hair done.  She learnt English, since up to this point she could speak only Scots, French and Latin.

Imprisonment.  It’s all relative.

Square Perspectives

Perspectives on a Field of Barley

It’s time for July Squares, for a month of Square posts on our perspective on … perspective, and hosted by the indefatigable Becky.

 

Four different perspectives on this barley growing in a field near me.  But there are others too:  those of  –

  • The farmer, for whom this barley represents a season’s work, and a chunk of his annual income.
  • His seed merchant, ditto.
  • The field mouse and other creatures, to whom this is home.
  • The ecologist, who may wonder why this field contains not a single poppy, not a single weed.
  • The rambler, who quite simply enjoys the view.

Click on  ‘Square Perspectives’, and you’ll find perspectives a-plenty this month.  Browse and enjoy!

Square Perspectives

The View from the Train Window

These days, weeks and weeks into Life-with-Covid 19, I crave a nice quiet dinner with people I know, tea parties with friends, or a chinwag in town over a good cup of coffee and a fresh-from-the-oven buttered scone.  And I can’t have any of them.

Instead, I’ll settle for memories of a tea party from a few years ago, when we met with good friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays.  No tea shop for us, but instead a jaunt on the Wensleydale Railway, a Heritage Railway which runs in normal times through the heart of the Yorkshire Dales .

As we rattled along, enjoying countryside views, smart serving staff plied up with elegant little sandwiches, properly fattening cakes, and the all-important scones served with jam and cream.  And tea, of course.  And prosecco.

It’s not often that afternoon tea with all the trimmings includes an ever-changing bucolic view through the window.

Read the whole story here.

Monday Window.

Quiet Moments

When all this is over, I’ll remember the quiet moments …

… the early evenings in the garden, as the birds chattered tunefully among themselves …

… the woodland walks, where I was soothed by the changing patterns as, day by day, green leaves unfolded above me, and the flowers of spring, then summer, came and went alongside my path.

And I’ll remember this walk too, from Monday this week, when I exchanged my bosky local landscape for the wider vistas near the North York Moors National Park, where a long slog up a long hill rewards with far-ranging views. And maybe the chance to take a photo requiring depth of field, for Jude’s current photo challenge.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #102: A Quiet Moment

 

Six Words? Twelve Words? All nonsense.

Fish – clutter – drain – banana – starling – umbrella – buttermilk – sky – walking boots – bibulous – carbuncle – brain.

Just look at that.  Twelve words. I have to weave those twelve random words into a single poem.

Our U3A writing group is one of the few things that’s continued throughout lockdown.  It’s a positive activity at a somewhat negative time.  But what CAN you do with a list like that?  This, it turns out.  I’m not too displeased.  And here too are a few photos to illustrate the day.

Colsterdale

Wanting to de-clutter

my brain, I drive to

Colsterdale.

Walking boots? – Check.

Map? – Check.

Sandwich? – Check.

Banana? – Check.

Umbrella?  Don’t be silly.

 

No starlings here, but

curlews, skylarks

crest the sky –

that cobalt sky, patched

with buttermilk clouds.

 

A chattering brook

drains into the reservoir

where fish silently dawdle

and spongy bibulous mosses

make soft mats beneath my feet.

 

Contented now, 

I drive back to town.

I pass that new carbuncle and see

a socially distanced queue 

snake round the recently-opened 

supermarket.

 

Jo’s Monday Walk

Six Word Saturday