North Yorkshire – Page 25 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

A Backlit Virtual Tour for a Snapshot or Two

Let’s have a day out. Lockdown’s still somewhat in force, so let’s make it a Virtual Day Out. We’ve got homework to do: it’s time for Jude’s assignment:

This week's assignment - Use strong backlighting (i.e. shooting towards the light source, but do not look directly at the sun) to create a contre-jour image where the subject becomes a silhouette, OR shoot the light through flowers or leaves creating a transparent effect.

We’ll stay nearby at first: go to the local woods, and quite simply glance upwards.

Then we’ll whip over to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. There’s a group of hikers beginning their day out, but we haven’t got time to join them …

… because we’re off to London. William and I enjoy visiting the Bishop’s Palace at Eltham. Last time we went, the sky turned an extraordinary colour for a while, and I took this photo.

Back at his house in time for sunset, you can see his school from a bedroom window.

Off to Gateshead now. We’ll join a crowd of sightseers at the Baltic, looking over at the Tyne Bridge.

And we’re back home just in time to see another sunset.

2020 Photo Challenge #21

Who knows when or if I’ll be posting again? WordPress seems intent on our using block editor to prepare our posts, and currently, I’m flummoxed, and cross.

That Wind Last Week

Beaufort Scale 8. Fresh gale at 62-74 kph (39-46 mph).

Twigs and branches break off of trees.

22nd & 23rd May 2020.

That wind! It animates me – I feel alive, alert.

I need it to tug me, bend me. I want the battle. I’ll resist.

I step outside. The wind slaps at me, stops my breath.

It whistles and whines through the trees, lacerating leaves.

Branches bend and bow – some break.

It soughs and snatches at the swishing grass.

Swifts swoop, scud, soaring at its will.

I feel its power. I’m energised, excited, strong.

One More Walk in the Woods

Greensitt Batts

Heslett Wood

Coal Bank Wood

Piccadilly

Five Ponds Wood

Mickley Barrass

I walk in the woods daily.

Join me just one more time.

Light shafting downwards through the trees.

Loamy paths, wild garlic, bluebells, campion.

Silence: except for birdsong, purling streams.

The tang of sap, earth, flowers.

#Six Word Saturday

Jo’s Monday Walk

Walking Every Single Day During Lockdown

I’ve made discoveries on my doorstep:

Woodland

Farmland

River bank

Lakeside

Pasture

Wildlife

A new walk, every single day.

Six Word Saturday

A composite walk for Jo’s Monday Walk

I woke up this morning to realise it’s already May: though without the accompanying balmy weather. And I hadn’t yet done Jude’s April Photo Challenge. I wonder if she’ll notice if I squeeze it in today?

She wants us to explore curved lines. I’ve found this the most difficult of her challenges, so let’s see what I’ve come up with.

I’ve begun on one of my daily walks near the house: An oak tree providing a natural arching frame over a field of rape, horizontal as the horizon.

Let’s go on a virtual journey to the Yorkshire Dales where in normal times, we love to walk: streams, rolling hills, drystone walls, snaking ahead of us on our path.

Angram Reservoir, leading the eye to the viaduct at the back of the picture

A drystone wall near Grassington picks out our route.

More scenery on the moors above Grassington.

And at our nearby nature reserve, Nosterfield, brambles frame the local landscape in the autumn.

Lastly, let’s make a trip to Gateshead, and look at the Millennium Bridge framing the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

2020 Photo Challenge #17

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?

# Squaretops 30

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.

#Squaretops 28

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.

# Squaretops 25

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

#Squaretops 22

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

#Square Tops 11

Category: North Yorkshire