Category: North Yorkshire

Brimham Rocks: a Wild Place, Once the Haunt of Druids

I have posted several times about Brimham Rocks – mainly about its function as a challenging and wonderful playground for the grandchildren. The other day, however, I went on my own, to explore its history.

In Victorian times, it was believed that the Druids were reponsible for carving many of the fantastical shapes dominating the landscape.

They weren’t. Blame geology instead. About 320 million years ago, this corner of the planet was dominated by an immense river, splitting into many deltas spilling over the land here, often changing course. As it travelled, it deposited layers and layers of sand and grit which over the millenia formed layers of rock we now call millstone grit. The area was eroded by water, by wind sand-blasting the rocks, by earth movements: and by the Ice Age, when – more than 10, 000 years ago – slow-moving glaciers sculpted and moved the rocks.

It’s easy to see the layers of sediment here which formed the millstone grit.

Earthquakes, millenia ago liquefied the rock, forcing boiling water upwards through the layers that had been laid down. You can see that phenomenon here.

There’s one particular rock, known as The Idol (because the Druids must have carved it!) Just look:

Can you see how this inmmense rock , all 200 tons of it, is supported on the tiniest of pillars? It’s quite safe – for now.

And here’s an oak tree in direct competition with another rock. It continues to grow and thrive, somehow, with a rock that declines to split any further and give it extra growing room.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that Brimham Rocks is the wildest place I know, and therefore a suitable candidate for Egidio’s Wild Lens-Artists Challenge

Three – No Four – Vikings I Met Last Month

For this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Ritva has chosen to focus on portraits. Difficult. Because it IS difficult, and many of the few I do take are of family, whom I don’t usually feature on my blog. There are the images I secretly take whilst out and about, but few of those quite measure up as portraits so much as someone-doing-something-or-just-walking.

Then I remembered York Viking Festival, which I recently featured on one of my posts. So back we go, to a day when photography was not only permitted, but encouraged.

Tips on how to bump off your enemy, Viking style.

Tips on throwing a clay pot, Viking style.

Tips on working in wood, Viking style.

This last set is for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, because she invites us to take one photo, and crop it three different ways. So – two solo portraits, one two-handed portrait, all for the price of one shot of a Viking and his slave industriously working together.

Spring in Glorious Technicolor – or Muted Monochrome

Even though over the last few days the weather has reverted to winter chill with a vengeance, I think it’s definitely the week that Spring has Sprung. The daffodils have suddenly burst forth into golden glory. The grass is lusher. Dandelion and daisies crowd the verges. Spring announces itself in an explosion of colour, in contast to the muted browns and greys of winter with its dull skies and overabundance of mud.

So is there even any point in ‘doing’ spring in monochrome? I thought I’d find out, and chose four images where it’s not just spring flowers telling the story, because they’re complementing the buildings they grow near.

Perhaps these aren’t part of the story, because snowdrops show their faces from early January. But they’re white, so may not suffer so much in monochrome.
Primulas on a traffic island near York Minster.
Tulips overlooking Knaresborough Viaduct.

Part of my own difficulty is that I don’t enjoy tinkering with photos. What comes out of the camera either works, or it doesn’t, and then I’ll junk it. At most I’ll level the picture up, maybe lightly crop it, even – slightly – fiddle with brightness. So my translations into monochrome are crude at best. If I want monochrome – and I’m increasingly choosing it over colour – I’ll shoot in black and white. And perhaps follow up with a further version in colour. I admire those photographers who use editing tools with discretion, so what we see is the original shot – just enhanced in subtle ways. I’m less keen on dramatic editing. But in a diary that is already over-full, I guess I don’t feel like giving this particular skill the time it needs to learn to do it well.

I’ll finish with Fountains Abbey as it is now, its grounds carpeted in daffodils. Black and white as my featured photo, and – my much preferred version here – in the above-mentioned Glorious Technicolor.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

Just One Image

Early Morning in Sleningford

This isn’t – I hope – the best image that I’ll ever produce. Nor is it even one that tugs most at my heartstrings. It’s a bit of pure serendipity. Early one winter’s morning I was nipping out to get the paper, just as the sun was rising. Unusually, I had my phone with me. My bargain-basement-bottom-of-the-range smartphone. Well, here was a scene that demanded to be recorded. So I did. And I like it. It reminds me how lucky we are to live in this quiet spot, where scenes like this are part of our everyday.

A few weeks later, I joined our local photo club. And a few weeks after that, we were all invited to submit two photos to an annual event: the photographic exhibition held as part of Masham’s Sheep Fair. No subject specified – just two photos. The public are invited to cast three votes – first, second and third – for their favourites. And the winner gets the honour and glory: though not a lot else. Reader – I won. Even though we have some pretty good photographers who can be relied upon to deliver wonderful images of the natural world; landscapes; action shots; street images … you name it. But the Great Masham Public decided on this occasion that Early Morning in Sleningford was what they liked. Even more embarrassingly, I took second prize too.

For Ann-Christine’s Lens-Artists Challenge#336 Only One Picture

Hands Put to Work at the Viking Festival

We were in York with the grandchildren on Monday. Its annual Viking Festival has begun.

Norsemen from Scandinavia went looking for places to settle, often in England and Ireland from about CE 800 to CE 1000. Like the Romans before them, many settled in the fertile lands round York. We came to find out more. We looked at demonstrations of working with wool. We attended a Brassica Massacre, where no hapless human was harmed as a doughty ‘Viking’ explained the ways to win in hand-to-hand fighting, by killing a cabbage impaled on a spike. And we chatted to a ‘Viking’ potter, as he worked away in freezing conditions to throw a simple pot.

Later, we were chuffed to bits to discover that the same master who had enslaved a willing William for twenty minutes or so last year was back again. This time Zoë couldn’t wait to have a go, and The Boss thought that if she came from the same stock as her brother, he couldn’t turn her down. After she’d swept the floor (inadequately), he set her onto a spot of woodturning – with his help. Many hands make light work.

Then he set about making Zoë a wooden medallion to thank her – and enlisted her help again. He was a good-humoured and generous master.

We had an excellent time. But we were pleased to retreat afterwards in our cosy modern clothing to a cosy house, and the comforts of 21st century living.

The header photograph shows hand-to-hand fighting in York – last year.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness #28 Hands which is this week hosted by Stupidity Hole.

A Seasonal Bench

Jude, of Travel Words fame, is encouraging us to post pictures of benches on Sundays. To celebrate being back home, and while it’s still winter, I’m going for a snowy view from the window I’m currently staring through. It’s not snowing today. Just bitterly cold. I’d ventured out one crisp February (yes, February!) day to snap the featured photo.

By the way. We are going to be entirely internet-free most of this coming week. I doubt if I’ll be able to read , post, or anything else internet-related during that time.

(Nearly) Silent Sunday

Look what I spotted while strolling through the village yesterday. And us int’ Frozzen North an’ all.

Silent Sunday.

PS. I’m aware that on mobile phones (certainly Android ones anyway) the featured photo never displays to readers. Is there a way of fixing this? Either as a poster, who would prefer their photo to be visible, or as a reader of the posts of others? I’ve tried to research this, with no success.

Rushing Round Two Nature Reserves

Our local Nature Reserves tend to be chilly in December. Especially when, as today, the wind is making its presence felt. Best to rush round the bulrushes and hurry home for a mug of hot chocolate. Sunny days, though, are available, for a gentler amble. My header photo is from Nosterfield on a sunny day. A wintry trip to Staveley was distinctly nippy,

For Debbie’s One Word Sunday: Rush

Where Words Fail, Music Speaks

Where words fail, music speaks: so said Hans Christian Anderson. And when Leanne invited me to host Monochrome Madness for One Week Only, I thought Music might be a good theme. We bloggers come from all over the world. Though many of us, in many nations, have English as our first language, there are dozens of different ones in the WordPress melting pot. But we can all enjoy music together, whether singing, playing instruments, or dancing, Or all of the above at once. Let’s do it.

My header image was taken at the neighbourhood Festa Major in Gràcia, Barcelona. It’s out of focus, and I don’t care. It captures I think the verve and enjoyment of those performing drummers.

Here are some dancers in neighbourhood festivals: in Catalonia; and in England – Morris Men.

Instrument players now. The drummer accompanying the Morris dancers; drummers celebrating Chusak in South Korea, and brass players marching in London in those heady optimistic days when some of us still thought Brexit might not happen.

Of course some instrumentalists out in the street are trying to earn a living. Here are buskers in Ripon and Bath.

And a harpist playing at a friend’s wedding in the grounds of the ruined Abbey at Jervaulx ….

Here are singers in Seville, relying simply on the beauty of their voices; and a singer-instrumentalist, heavily dependent on a supply of electricity to produce a sound.

Of course, first you have to have your instrument. Here’s a music shop in Málaga.

This thrush is a musician from the natural world. He commandeers a high branch here, spring after spring, and simply sings his heart out from early morning to early evening, almost without stopping. I wish you could hear him.

And while we’re in the Great Outdoors, is there anything more musical than a tinkling and plashing stream, tumbling tunefully over rocks?

Please do join in with your own musical offerings. And link back both to this post, and to Leanne’s site too, here.