Walk along any street, anywhere, and it won’t be long before you come across a message. Maybe light-hearted, like this one spotted in Liverpool …
… maybe political. You can’t go far in Catalonia, Spain without coming across messages and slogans demanding independence. These shots were all taken in Berga, where the mood of virtually the entire population there was not in doubt.
The next shots were all taken when thousands of us took to the streets, again and again, in 2018 and 2019 voicing our misgivings about the prospect of Brexit. It gives us no satisfaction whatever to see that our fears were entirely justified.
In India, I saw messages that were more like public service announcements ..
And in Edinburgh, in the National Museum of Scotland, this …
Inuksuk, by Peter Irniq, 1998, uses a traditional technique used by the Inuit to convey messages about good fishing grounds etc.
Let’s end though, as we began, with a message, this time in Thessaloniki, simply intended to bring good cheer …
It’s been a busy week, and I’ve a feeling I shan’t be blogging again before Christmas, but I just had to have a go at posting a few photos for Ann-Christine’s Lens-Artists Challenge this week : Perfect Patterns. I’m going to let the images speak for themselves this time. We’ll have two galleries: man-made patterns, every one of them from Spain …
And now the natural world, not one of them from Spain, or indeed from outside the UK:
Click on any image to get its label: and only a label this time: no stories, no history, no nothing. Sorry!
The featured image is a ceiling in the Palau de la Musica, Barcelona.
Google photos has a happy habit of reminding me of what I was up to this day one year, two years, three years (and so on) ago. Today it pointed out that in 2020, just after the worst of Lockdown was over, we escaped briefly to Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. And there we discovered Mossyard Bay.
Let’s take a virtual trip: there’s not a fairground ride, amusement arcade or kiss-me-quick hat in sight. There’s not even a chippie. Just us, the rocky shore, and the sea, advancing or retreating with the tide. Happy memories, translated into monochrome.
For Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome #106, and as suggested by Sarah, of Travel with Me fame. Bren herself takes us to the Nidd Gorge, my back yard when I lived in Harrogate: while Sarah, for her post, is in her favourite city, Paris.
This week, Ann-Christine is urging us, in Lens-Artists Challenge #214 to indulge ourselves and our readers with Favourite Finds in our collections of photos. Well. Where to start? What to choose? I’ve settled on those things that we sometimes notice as we glance up above, or find ourselves gazing at, such as drainpipes or old walls in city streets: we’ll see everything from … well, let’s have a look …
Click on the image to discover where to find it.
The featured image is from the Millennium Clock in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
Every culture throughout the world has its myths about how the earth, and everything that inhabits the earth, came into being. Here in the UK, historically part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we’re most familiar with the creation story told in The Book of Genesis.
Day 1 – God created light and separated the light from the darkness, calling light ‘day’ and darkness ‘night’. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Day 2 – God created an expanse of sky to separate the waters. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.
Kirkudbrightshire
Day 3 – God created the dry ground and gathered the waters, calling the dry ground ‘land’, and the gathered waters ‘seas’. Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Near Monachil, GranadaBardenas Reales, NavarraAngram, near Pateley BridgeL’Albufera, near Valencia
On day three, God also created plant life. Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Day 4 – God created the sun, moon, and the stars to give light to the earth and to govern and separate the day and the night. These would also serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years. Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.
Near Grinton, North Yorkshire
Sleningford, North Yorkshire
Day 5 – God created every living creature of the seas and every winged bird, blessing them to multiply and fill the waters and the sky with life. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven… Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Day 6 – God created man and woman in his own image. He gave them every creature and the whole earth to rule over, care for, and cultivate. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Which is perhaps where it all started to go wrong …
Along the River Thames in London
Haeundae, Busan, South Korea.
This week, for Lens-Artist Challenge #192, Amy invites us to tell Earth’s Story. So I have, with the help of the Old Testament.
PS. Thanks to your ‘likes’ on this recent post, I’ve been able to donate £28.00 on your behalf to World Central Kitchens, as they feed the dispossessed fleeing from war in Ukraine and other humanitarian catastrophes.
Dumfries and Galloway is good at pre- and early history. I took you to Cairn Holy a few days ago. And apparently their long tradition of standing stones lives on. I had a walk along the beach at Mossyard Bay, and this is what I found – standing stones, no higher than a school ruler, erected – oh, as late as September 2020.
This one is for this week’s photo challenge: something less ordinary beside the sea. The same shot, just above it, has been squared off for Kinda Square.
Two tombs, jagged and skeletal, lie at the top of a narrow country road in Dumfries and Galloway. Cairn Holy 1 and Cairn Holy 2. They’re two of akind: the final resting places of notable people living some 5000 years ago. Might one of them have been the tomb of the legendary King Galdus? Probably not, but we shall never know.
What’s astonishing though is the wealth that these tombs once contained. Particularly amazing is a jadeite axe. This mineral is not found locally, but comes from the Alps, 1500 km away. Imagine having the wealth and power in Neolithic times to import such an exotic artefact!
These tombs didn’t originally have the standing-stone appearance they now have. The stones originally totally covering them have been plundered for building over the centuries. But standing stark against the landscape they announce themselves as being yet another sign of the ancient history which is still so visible in this part of Scotland.
This composite image of my walk was automatically generated by Google. I think it’s grasped the sweep of this landscape quite well.
A sortie to find some carved Pictish stones on what might once have been a royal fort, followed by a climb to visit a local landmark, the obelisk to the Reverend Samuel Rutherford seemed like a plan for a late afternoon last week. It was only a three and a half mile walk after all.
What I hadn’t taken into account was that this is rough, undulating landscape, and entirely beautiful. It demands we take the time to stand and stare. So I did.
Trusty’s Hill proved to be a chance for a first viewing of the Rutherford Monument, as well as an opportunity to peer at Pictish carvings. This site was the site of an ancient fire so fierce that the stone there vitrified. The hill might, round about 600 AD, have been a citadel. It was certainly a fine vantage point from which to view what could once have been the lost Scottish kingdom of Rheged.
The view from Trusty’s Hill
Pictish symbols…
… and more, clearly visible at the top of the hill.
Onwards to the Rutherford Monument, built by grateful parishioners to honour the memory of a priest who, though an academic, a thinker and a teacher, cared for his flock in practical as well as spiritual ways and who was constantly at odds with the establishment to the extent that he was awaiting being tried for treason at his death. These days, there’s a Millennium Cairn, detailing all the ministers of Anwoth and Girthon since 1560 , and a trig point on two adjacent hills. All three provide splendid views to the Fleet estuary far below and the hills beyond.
This composite image of my walk was automatically generated by Google. I think it’s grasped the sweep of this landscape quite well.
Looking towards the hills…
Looking towards the Fleet Firth…
The clouds became quite dramatic.
Another view of the Firth
Looking down from the Monument.
… and up to the Monument.
Another view from the Cairn.
And a view from the Trig point.
Looking down from the Trig point.
Then it was down, down through a wooded trail to reach Anwoth Church, now roofless and ruined, before coming back to Gatehouse of Fleet along a quiet county track.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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