Category: North Yorkshire

Life on the Top Floor

Yesterday you had a peek at our sitting room window, from the outside.  Come on in.  We’ll go upstairs, into the kitchen.  This is our view from the breakfast table.  And it’s lilac time – almost.  White, mauve and purple, all in bud, all on the cusp of bursting into flower for one glorious week.   Our Top Time of year for breakfast beauty. Aren’t we lucky?

 

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Becky: thank you.  This month has been fun.  I’m not a natural daily blogger, but it’s been a challenge I’ve enjoyed to find a daily response, almost entirely from photos taken specially for ‘Top Squares’, and  I’ve ‘met’ bloggers I wouldn’t otherwise have come across.  I can’t resist ending as I began: with a Top Sheep-and a lamb or two.

A Toadflax Top-knot

Look at the charming old bridge at West Tanfield.  Keep looking.  You’ll spot it eventually.  A close-up shot is not an option.

It’s been around since 1734.  JMW Turner sketched it in 1816.  Tour de France riders hurtled over it in 2014.  It’s a fine place to stand and look at a Proper English Village View.

But today, I had a surprise.  I saw a small clump of toadflax had chosen to grow on the very top, just where I was leaning over.  A fine addition, I thought.

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Top Spot on a Tip-top Pot

We were due to walk part of the coastal section of the Cleveland Way this week.  We looked forward to taking over from where we’d left off last year, and to having a windswept, scenic and invigorating walk along the cliffs edging the North Sea.  Covid-19 put a stop to that. So – you can either read here about last year’s walk, or – as we did – admire these herring gulls on their lofty look-out posts in Staithes.  Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to read about the postponed walk later this year.

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Six Word Saturday


Keep Right on to the Top of the Road

‘Look for converging lines’, instructs Jude.  They’re there to add depth and distance, so she wants to see what we can find as illustrations.  So I went to Cádiz, I went to Brussels, I went to Yorkshire – of course.  And finally I went to London.

Here we are on the road by the seafront in Cádiz. The road, our eyes are lead inexorably towards the Cathedral.
Now we’re in Brussels. I quite like it that the street’s more easily seen in the plate glass reflection. And that the lines on the window, and on the pavement are also working towards converging.
Since the Tour de France started in Yorkshire in 2014, dear old Buttertubs has been elevated to being called Côte de Buttertubs. You can cycle it yourself … or not. Look at this picture and decide.
Nothing can top your very first ever walk in the snow. This was William’s first chance, back when he was three.

2020 Photo Challenge #16

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Holidays with Horizontal Lines

I’ve  been staying close to home for most of my recent posts.  But today, I’m going to travel – only virtually, so no harm done.

I’m going to take you on a ship, to the seaside, and on sunny days out in Yorkshire: not for a holiday (though why not?) but in quest of horizontal lines, as requested by Jude in her Photography Challenge.

Let’s start in Cádiz.  Was it really only three months ago that we were there, enjoying street life, as Spaniards always do, or joining them on the beaches for sunsets such as this one?  It feels like another, impossible world.

Here are two views from the North Sea: one of wind farms near Rotterdam: one of a wonderfully impressive evening sky.  In each case, the horizontal line of the sea at the horizon adds to the drama of the scene.

More bucolic is this shot taken on Sutton Bank in Yorkshire at harvest time.

And here we are just up the road in Masham.  I like this straight line of barbed wire with sheep’s wool snaggled along its length.

But let’s finish off with a Top Square, of a cormorant atop the end of the pier at Whitby.  I like the way the bird’s striking silhouette is complemented by the rigid geometric shape of the pier.

Horizontal lines. Useful devices to peg a scene on, and to keep your camera straight.

2020 Photo Challenge#14

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Top Square

I picked up a copy of  our little-read community newspaper today ….

‘Because of the almost world-wide lockdown caused by Covid-19, Concours Top Squares, due to open in Topcliffe Village Hall between 1st and 30th April, will now be held in camera.

This now internationally acclaimed exhibition has for the last three years brought together arts practitioners from a range of backgrounds working in less conventional materials.  The only requirement is that entries must be entitled ‘Top Square’.

Locally, hopes for a top prize are pinned on a promising new Arts Collective working from Middle Park Farm, near North Stainley, and who call themselves ‘Windewe’. The prevailing wind and local sheep have worked in constructive partnership, winding and weaving wool round the wire fencing surrounding the sheep’s pastureland.  They’ve made dozens of such works, mainly confining themselves to using the sheep’s own wool, though some examples incorporate dried grasses, leaves and small twigs. Apart from those chosen for the exhibition, all other works by Windewe can be viewed from the Ripon Rowel path, and are on permanent display.’

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Sleningford Gazette, 8th April 2020.

For technical reasons beyond the Editor’s control, this article was omitted from the edition of 1st April.

 

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Simplicity

Life in our home has become simpler, pared back to basics.   All the things I cheerfully filled every day with – the volunteering; the classes and choir; the must-get-to-the-shops; the to-do list; even seeing friends – have all vanished.  Astonishingly, I don’t mind. The one thing that is a constant now is Daily Exercise, as prescribed by the Government: ‘People can leave their homes for exercise once a day’.  For Malcolm, it’s a bike ride.  For me, it’s a walk.

Denied trips out to the Dales and wild places, I’m exploring our home patch anew- every ginnel, every bridle way, every woodland and farmland path.  My Daily Exercise sometimes lasts an hour, more often two or three.  I rarely meet a soul.  It’s just me, the ground beneath my feet, the sights I observe, the landscape, the cloudscape, the satisfying rhythm of my feet as I pound my chosen path for the day.  Every day I choose a slightly different route.  Every day things change a little.  Buds, once tightly furled are now tender young leaves: new flowers burst into bloom; lambs grow stockier, more playful.  I have time to notice these things.

I value these hours.  Like everyone else, I want this horrible crisis under control.  I want to meet my family and friends again.  But when that time comes, I want to continue savouring quiet moments like the ones I’ve enjoyed so much over the last few weeks.

Primroses.
Celandines.
Marsh Marigolds.
Wood anenomes.
Violets. White ones are commoner round here, but for me, violets have to be -violet.

For me, these are early April’s Top Flowers, and my walks have given me the chance to enjoy them.  What have I left out?  Wild garlic isn’t flowering yet round here, nor the hedgerow plants.

This dramatic cloudscape evolved over the course of my walk, holding my attention.
A simple view through trees at the fields beyond.
Back in the village, a greylag goose guarded the village pond, hissing at me as I paused to admire narcissi, a magnolia, and beyond these, early cherry blossom.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #91: Simplicity

Square Tops #7

Round the Edge of the Village: It’s All About the Texture

Sunday’s walk, on a cold blustery afternoon, along a too-familiar path, could have been a non-event, a means to burn off a few calories and not much more.  Jude’s challenge this week brought me ideas though.  ‘Look for texture’, she said, ‘close in on your subject and capture the texture and not the context’.  Challenge accepted.

Here we are by the village pond.  Here’s Mrs. Mallard.  And here are her feathers.

And – a sure sign that spring has sprung – here’s a dandelion.

Off to the track through the fields now.  I trudge past the sheep, stolidly munching grass and hay, and spot a rusty old shed at the end of the pasture. Lichen on rust.  Perfect.

Well, you can’t wander through the woods without finding a fallen log.  And fallen logs mean knots, nooks and crannies, velvety moss.  I take a couple of shots.

Oh look.  Here’s a muddy bit:  and I haven’t got my decent boots on.  But oh, look again!  Here’s texture a-plenty. A goose-print; a – er – what – squirrel perhaps? print; a different bird print (offers, anyone?); and a dog-print.  And finally a cracked-mud print.  That was good value.

Any walk in our countryside produces any number of long-established oak trees.  So here is some bark – both shots from the same tree.

The last shot of all doesn’t follow the rules.  But here’s a farmer doing his Sunday afternoon ploughing.  Unturned earth, turned earth, and all being thoroughly investigated by a host of sleek white black-headed gulls.  If that isn’t a symphony in textural contrast, I don’t know what is.

And since this is a post for Jo’s Monday Walk too, I’ll just mention that there was tea and Drenched Lemon Cake waiting for me when I got home.

#2020 Photo Challenge 13: Texture.  ‘Get close to your subject and capture just the texture itself, without the context’.

Jo’s Monday Walk.