But there’s no need to take framing so literally. There are other ways of a picture inviting you in.
The Pennine Way, near Gargrave North Yorkshire.
Those fields of rape plot the path we may take over the hills.
Near Semer Water, North Yorkshire.
The Strid, near Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire.
While these two suggest the limitless landscape lying beyond the dry stone walls.
And these sheep, this cormorant, highlight the vastness beyond them, just as the tree below, utterly unframed, suggests the famous bleakness of the Top Withens moorland near Hawarth, home of the Brontë sisters
Sheep near Conistone, Grassington, North Yorkshire.
A cormorant on railings at the end of the pier, Whitby, North Yorkshire.
Let’s finish with typical Yorkshire weather. A view taken in the Crimple Valley one very dismal day in May.
You don’t have to go very far in Yorkshire to feel remote. You don’t even have to get beyond the reach of the man-made. Those adjacent reservoirs in Nidderdale for instance, Angram and Scar House, both built to supply the City of Bradford with fresh water: Angram in the 1890s, Scar House in the 1920s. They’re off the beaten track, isolated. You’d never guess that when they were being built construction workers had their families with them on site: a shop, a place of worship, a school, all built for their use.
Now the construction workers are long gone, and their community too. Only the odd foundation stone remains. The area feels remote, reached only after a long drive down a narrow B road and one belonging to Yorkshire Water. It’s home to a rich variety of wild life. Walkers love to tramp its walking routes, relishing the emptiness, the silence, the bleak beauty of this spot.
Walking by Angram Reservoir, Even the distant view of the dam doesn’t change the feeling of remoteness.
We’ve had Team London here this week: an engagingly exhausting three year old and his baby sister make great company, but we’ve had a tendency to disappear to our beds not long after they do, and be snoring sweetly by 10.00 o’clock at the latest. However, in among exploring York, farmyard life, a canal, and the Wild Woods at the bottom of the garden, we had a day at Harlow Carr, the RHS gardens in Harrogate.
It provided William with plenty of Things to Do Before he’s 11 3/4: roll down a hill; go barefoot; watch a bird and have fun with sticks for instance. He and Zoë were very happy.
But for us, despite their bright enthusiasm for all there was to see and do, it was a green oasis, a haven of peace. We were content, strolling along the quiet paths, or beside a stream, sharing our space with bees, butterfies and birds.
Overlooking the lake at the Himalayan Gardens, Grewelthorpe.
I couldn’t be doing with pink when I was younger. I thought it was an itsy-bitsy sort of colour, suitable to be worn by annoying little girls of the Violet Elizabeth Bott persuasion (You do know who I’m talking about here, don’t you? Violet Elizabeth was the lisping, spoiled creature who tormented Richmal Crompton’s delightfully grubby-kneed and accident-prone Just William, as popular now as when he was first created in 1922).
I declined to dress my young daughters in pink, or to wear it myself. I despised its sugar-sweet prettiness.
These days I’m rather less hardline. I even have a raspberry pink shirt.
All the same, I think pink is happiest in the garden. It’s here that flowers can celebrate the colour in all its variety, from the softest most delicate shades of baby pink through to vibrant, vivacious flamingo pink. Pastel pink. Shocking pink. And pinks that use flower names: cherry blossom; rose; fuschia; carnation; cyclamen; dogwood.
Here’s a picture gallery of May time flowers taken over the last few years. All of them are pink. And I like every single one.
Many of these pictures were taken in our garden; in our village; at Newby Hall; and at the Himalayan Gardens at Grewelthorpe. It’s my entry for today’s Ragtag Challenge: pink.
Herons seem to be a part of our lives. It’s a rare week when we don’t spot one flying languidly along the river, or waiting on an exposed rock for the next snack.
Wherever we travel, we can go heron spotting. We’ve seen them in Dordrecht in the Netherlands, Córdoba in southern Spain, l’Albufera near Valencia, and Busan in South Korea. Town and country: herons are there.
Fishing in the canal at Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
A heron at sunset on the Guadalquivir, Córdoba.
L’Albufera, Valencia
Flying along the river at Dongnae, Busan, South Korea.
We see them as we walk along the path towards West Tanfield, and spot them on the garden pond.
The other day after a stressful week, I needed a bit of space. Nosterfield Nature Reserve just up the road was the answer. I walked along the wetland paths watching water birds courting, feeding, simply being there, standing motionless or swimming peacefully. Quiet fields formed the backdrop.
Nosterfield Nature Reserve, spotted through a hide.
I went to the farthest hide. I became transfixed by the under-stated drama being played out between a heron and two or three egrets. They were fishing. All plodded gracefully in and out of what humans might see as each other’s personal space. They didn’t care or even seem to notice one another. They simply co-existed, fishing.
This is what first caught my eye….and then I zoomed in closer…..
This series of pictures might not seem that different one from another. They’re a record of a simple afternoon in the lives of a heron, three egrets ….. and me.
There are sheep at the bottom of the garden. Jacob sheep, three of them. And not so long ago, they gave birth to lambs – five between them. We didn’t see this domestic drama. They visit a neighbouring farm for ante-natal and delivery services. But a fortnight ago, they all returned home, and relished the fresh grass, newly lush after the winter.
Last week, the large and spectacular copper beech at one end of their field virtually overnight burst into leaf. Naked twigs produced swelling leaf buds, and then…. almost instantly, delicate pinky-crimson leaves, practically translucent. The Jacob sheep eyed them with interest. Grass is all very well, but …. young beech leaves? Oh yes! Well worth craning your neck for!
Yesterday afternoon, one of the ewes and her two lambs popped over to inspect me as I walked down the drive. They thought I might be John with a bucket of food (I had neither a beard nor a bucket, and it wasn’t the right time of day, but well, it was still worth a try). I was, as ever, a big disappointment. But it did remind the ewe that the copper beech was there beside me, its lowest branches just about reachable. She reached up. She selected bunches of young leaves, chewed them, ate them. Moved on a few yards and repeated the process. Again and again.
In a few days, those leaves will toughen up. Got to take your pleasures while you can. I hope her gourmandising didn’t give her a tummy ache.
We’re fond of our garden birds. Little by little, we’re getting to identify them. But their songs and calls? Not so much.
On Saturday though, we had an opportunity. Just along from here at Old Sleningford Farm, Linda Jenkinson whom we first met some five years ago on her bird watching course at Nosterfield, was exploring Bird Song. We knew we had to sign up.
A morning in the classroom. We learnt about blackbirds:
And chiffchaffs: think ‘chiffchiff’ rather than ‘chiffchaff’
and coal tits, and all the other kinds of garden tit.
We tackled about sixteen kinds of bird and their songs, listened, looked, did quizzes, and finished the morning feeling fairly sorted.
Then we had lunch. Home made frittata and bread, freshly gathered salad leaves, locally pressed apple juice, deliciously damp cake – that’s the sort of nourishment you get when you come to Old Sleningford Farm.
And afterwards it was The Great Outdoors. Well, I’m sorry birds, but you ought to get organised, form an orderly queue and sing, one by one. We wandered through woodland, along the river, explored the Forest Garden. And as we sauntered, ears cocked at the ready, willow warblers; marsh warblers; blackcaps; kingfishers all cacophonously introduced themselves, quite drowning out our carefully revised memories of bullfinch, chaffinch and the like. It was wonderful. We learnt, we listened, we enjoyed simply being in this peaceful place, shared only with the birds and other unseen wildlife. Thank you Linda. So glad to Start Birding with you!
Linda helps us get close and personal to the birds we’ve been learning about.
Older people like coach trips. Allegedly. They sit in a coach, gossip, have a nice cup of tea when they reach their destination, then they go home again.
On Thursday, fifteen people from Ripon U3A (Walkers’ Division) did exactly that. Except that in between the gossip in the coach and the nice cup of tea, they fitted in an eight and a half mile walk along a section of the Cleveland Way.
Staithes seen from the cliffs.
More herring gulls than people in Staithes.
The centre of the village.
Fishing boats in the harbour.
We started at Staithes, once a busy fishing port, now a picture-postcard-pretty holiday destination. It nestles at the foot of imposing cliffs, and our walk began with a good hard yomp to get from sea-level to cliff top. This was the first of several yomps up steep paths cut into the hillside at an unforgivingly steep gradient.
The first of several climbs – and not the hardest.
And what goes up must come down, as we discovered towards lunchtime at Runswick Bay, and later still at journey’s end in Sandsend.
Runswick Bay at low tide.
All this would have been arduous enough. But there was a stiff breeze. This developed, as the day wore on, into a searching wind: the sort that blows any attempt at conversation far out to sea, turns pockets inside out, and rips scarves from shoulders. A few forays past farms offered slight shelter.
Bales of hay cut out the wind.
Nobody rested here.
By the time we arrived in Sandsend, the wind was arguing with the sea too, which rose up, roaring and seething and hurling itself against the breakwaters.
Stormy seas at Sandsend.The view across to Sandsend and Whitby.
Did we complain? We did not. This was scenic walking at its best. Violets and primroses scattered our path, and striking barriers of yellow gorse imposed themselves between us and the cliff edge.
Violets and ….
…. primroses.
Eight and a half miles of this kind of treatment was just about enough though. We were good and ready for tea and home-made cake at Wits End Cafe, and continued our gossip in the coach on the way home.
What could be more quintessentially English than tea and cake? What could be more quintessentially English than fundraising with tea and cake?
Hire the village hall. Get the Good Ladies of the Parish to closet themselves in their kitchens, dig out their favourite recipes, don their aprons and get stuck into a couple of hours combining butter, flour, sugar and eggs with favoured additions such as chocolate (got to have a chocolate cake), lemon (got to have lemon drizzle cake), coffee, walnuts (got to have a coffee and walnut cake), dried fruit (it would probably be a criminal offence not to offer scones), and any other pièce de résistance that the accomplished home baker can offer.
And on the day itself, friends, family, passers-by, readers of the Parish magazine will all be tempted to drop in and cheerfully while away a half hour or so with a slice or two of cake, or even the makings of a light lunch, all in pleasant, light-hearted company. All talk of calories and healthy options is banned. This is waistline expansion in a very good cause.
On Saturday, we gallantly took ourselves over to Fewston Village Hall to support our sporty friends Barbara and Tim. The cause? Almscliffe Tennis and Bowling Club. Now what could be more English than bowls?
All the home bakers ready for action in the Village Hall.
… and overlooking the proceedings at Fewston Village Institute ……
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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