We were just walking back to my daughter’s house in Spain yesterday evening, with a richly dramatic sunset before us, when I noticed it reflected behind this car, in its rear window.
Category: Spain
Postcards from Arenys de Mar
Here I am in Spain on Granny Duty. Today, I’m not needed till 5.00, when I collect Anaïs from nursery. So I took myself off to Arenys de Mar, just up the coast from here. Once upon a time, it was an important ship-building town, and remnants still exist in the form of repairing and restyling yachts and other craft. And it’s still a fishing town, so off I went to the fishing port, where I had long since missed the daily fish auction. Oddly, this starts high and the bidding goes lower till it sticks. I can’t quite get my head round that.
The boats here are small family-run craft. Industrial fishing it ain’t. So fishermen were out and about doing running repairs to their boats, and sitting down checking their nets and mending them. It all seemed time-honored and traditional.
Who knew that fishing nets could all look so different?
Next time I go, I’ll be in time for the auction. Maybe.
Symmetry in Spain
This week, Sofia asks us to consider Symmetry for the Lens Artists Challenge. I’m sick of rain and storms and gales here in the UK, so I think I’ll whisk you off to Spain, where even in winter you can depend on at least some sunny skies.
As the featured photo shows, we arrive at Barcelona Airport and head straight for the Metro. But we’ll stay here only long enough to go to my very favourite place there, the Hospital de Sant Pau.
We’ll just nip up the coast to Canet de Mar and the Lluís Domènech i Montaner House-Museum. I promised a whole post about this, and this reminds me I have yet to write it. Soon …
Then we’ll head for Valencia, and visit the old – La Lonja, the Silk Exchange; the Puente del Mar crossing a park that was once a river, the Turia – and the new: La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias.
Perhaps Alicante next? A stroll along the seafront?
Then Córdoba. We have to head for its ancient church, once a mosque, la Mezquita.
And let’s stay down south, and go to Granada, and the Alhambra The selfie-seeker wouldn’t shift, so she’s immortalised here.
Then Cádiz
And that’s all we have time for. We’ll go home the long way round, on board ship,
Thanks Sofia. I need this break. But it’s still raining outside …
It’s a Sign …
This week, for the Lens-Artist Challenge, Johnbo bids us to seek out signs. My header photo was taken several years ago, but seems even more prescient now that it was then.
Let’s stay with the somewhat political, some more serious than others. Do click on each image to see it full size and read the explanatory caption.
Warning notices, some more serious than others. There’s even one from the Lockdown era. Remember that?
And a miscellany to finish off with: a tribute on our local buses after the death of Queen Elizabeth II; a light-hearted invitation to a coffee shop in Liverpool and a less than inviting hotel name in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.
Spider alert!
Denzil, in this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, asks us to hunt for spiders and their webs – something that it’s easy to do at this time of year in Britain. Only yesterday, a huge specimen was standing guard over the shoe-rack. But by the time I’d got my camera, he’d vanished. These then, are all archive photos, and unidentified. Helpful suggestions welcomed.
The first one is from India. Perhaps I J Khanewala can help? And the second is also not from England, but from La Rioja in Spain.
The third is from Masham Parish Church, and it’s dead. Is it even a spider?
For the rest, I offer a gallery of webs, mainly taken on misty moisty mornings, or in fog, lending them a mysterious and often ethereal quality.
These were taken in Dumfries and Galloway, in Cairnsmore of Fleet National Nature Reserve. As is the header photo.
The next group come from just down the road, near Sleningford Hall.
And lastly, we return to India, where a tunnel spider has made his complex lure.
Recharging and Renewal
What do you need to do to recharge your batteries? That’s the question posed by Egidio, in this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. And my answer is the same as his: I need to get out, to surround myself with the natural world.
Living in France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the mountains grounded me in many ways. The sheer scale of them put me in my place – in a good way: reminding me how little my own concerns counted in the great scheme of things. Here’s a quiet scene from a lakeside high up the slopes not too far from our house.
Or these, from le Cap du Carmil …
There, lakes provided the solace that being near water often provides. Back in the UK, it’s the sea.
For the everyday recharge, it’s greenery, plain and simple. Local woodlands.
…or just a little bit more distant – Coverdale.
There’s just one place I need to mention though: one I’ve talked about before, more than once. A special afternoon and evening in l’Albufera, just beyond Valencia, where there is nothing but the lagoon, the sky, and wildlife … and peace. That’s my featured photo, and my best recharge ever.
Further Adventures of Major General Algernon Gove
Poor Algernon (if I may be so familiar). I abandoned my Major General last month as he planned further destinations in a trip to invigorate him in his old age. He’s my stooge as I attempt to complete Paula’s Pick a Word Challenge. The five words Paula offers us are intended to be a stimulus to us to choose five appropriate photos: I decided a bit of verbal silliness would add a little extra difficulty. Not ‘alf. These are Paula’s chosen words: distinctive; floating; fortified; playful and saddle. Make something of that, Major General!
In case you’re not familiar with him, this is how his saga began …
A retired Major General from Hove with the moniker Algernon Gove said ‘Before life unravels I must finish my travels.’ And forthwith he made plans to rove.
But it gets worse …
His next plan was to go pony-trekking. He booked something in Wales without checking. It might be quite a chore ? He could get saddle-sore? Oh dear no - there’s a plan that needs wrecking. Our old chap nursed a long-term ambition to explore sites with years of tradition. A castle, he voted, fortified, or deep-moated. He’d find one - he'd make that his mission. Perhaps all his plans were restrictive? He should aim now for something distinctive. Something playful and fun. ‘Cos when all’s said and done to enjoy life should just be instinctive. He knew he’d no taste for long trips that took him o’er oceans in ships. But he’d go in a boat floating nowhere remote - while enjoying some fresh fish and chips.
You can have a playful time on London’s South Bank, and at the London Eye. But it’s more distinctive to discover pastures new – at the evening fair in Gdansk, perhaps.
WP is being very irritating today. It won’t let me centre some of my photos, or alternatively to align all my shots to the left, whatever I try, and however loudly I shout at my laptop. So I have to admit defeat.
A Work in Progress
That’s this post, really. We’ve been away all week, discovering Shropshire with friends who’ve moved there. Getting to know this county and its landscapes, its industrial history, its towns and villages is a work in progress for us. But it’s left me only with time to throw together a quick response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists Challenge: Work in Progress.
We’re all Works in Progress – all our lives. But children especially so. Fierce concentration here, and enjoyment too …
Slightly older children can hold their own with adults when it comes to demonstrating proficiency – in this case sheep-handling at Masham Sheep Fair.
Over in the city, street art out-numbers sheep. Here are two works in progress: the first in Valencia, Spain, the second near Brick Lane, London.
And finally, two shots from India that I remember well: the house opposite my hotel in Puducherry, whose construction was a work-in-progress from about six, till late… it’s up there as my featured photo … and a metalworker hard at work producing figures inspired by the nearby temple at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.
A Simple Holiday
It’s summer – well, here in Europe it is anyway – and our thoughts turn to holidays. So when Philo of Philosophy through Photography fame threw down the challenge to celebrate Simplicity for Lens-Artists Challenge #257, I thought I’d leaf through my holiday albums and see what I could find.
Let’s go to the beach first, in Alnmouth Northumberland.
And then back to Yorkshire, to Wharfedale, where water coursing down the limestone slopes has formed this dramatically undulating landscape.
Let’s stay in Yorkshire, for harvest time at Sutton Bank.
Still, we can’t stay in England forever. Let’s catch a ferry across the North Sea.
We’ll nip across to Valencia, to l’Albufera: send a postcard as the header photo, before going south to Cádiz …
… and all the way over to Greece …
… before coming back to England ..
…where poppies blow …
… and the fog descends…
Holiday well and truly over, I think.
Keep your distance: cactus alert!
This week, Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #18 invites us to look at cacti. Well, apart from this one, taken in Kew Gardens, London, I have nothing to offer from England.
In Spain however, they are two a penny. Here are two from ordinary back gardens in daughter Emily’s home town near Barcelona.
And here, more spectacularly, are a few taken in Jardín Botánico Histórico – La Concepción, Málaga. That’s where the header photo comes from too.
They’re striking things of course, cacti. But I tend to keep a very respectful distance from them. I’m quite relieved to have as the backdrop to my walks cowparsley, daisies and dandelions.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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