This week, for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Ritva asks us to Pick A Colour.
I ruminated on red, pondered about purple, almost opted for orange, nearly yielded to yellow, gleaned several greens, prevaricated over pink, but in the end, went for ….
Well, obviously you have to have sky … even if day is long past and evening’s getting on for being midnight blue …
And water’s a must too. Nothing idyllic here. Just industrial sprawl near Rotterdam.
And let’s keep up our less-than-picturesque watery scenes, on the River Thames….
… before nipping off to the fishing town of Arenys de Mar in Catalonia. That’s better. Mended nets hung out to dry.
Let’s stay in Catalonia, but head to Barcelona and some street art …
We’ve got ourselves about a bit. Maybe we need another car wash. That’s where we began, and it’s shown in the featured photo.
I thought of Brian on Sunday. Here’s why. Brian is the blogger charged with introducing this week’s theme for Monochrome Madness. And he’s chosen ‘On the Roof’.
I was with the family in Borough Market on Sunday. And we were having fun as we picnicked, at the expense of this poor gull try to land – time after time after time – on the roof of one of the sales kiosks.
Every time his feet touched down, he slithered and skittered, unable to find any purchase, until at the bottom, he more or less tumbled off … again. He persisted and persisted until, finally…
Here are some more herring gulls, all in either Whitby or Staithes: the seaside in fact. Perhaps they feel more at home and comfortable.
Here are birds who are definitely at home on a roof. Storks. A roof’s the perfect place for nest-building and raising a family. Let’s go to Tudela in Spain.
We could go to North Macedonia now, and stay in a hotel crowded with peacocks. One even had to escape to the roof for a bit of peace.
Back home for some more domestic shots: a crow on a nearby chimney pot, and a robin on the roof of a nearby bird house (does that count? I think so.)
We’ll finish off with a shot to complement the featured photo. Here’s a line of pigeons on some ridge tiles. They echo the ones which begin the post: a host of ceramic cockatoos (?) decorating the roof of a house in Busan, South Korea.
We’re back in England after our three weeks with the Spanish branch of the family. Identikit weather, in Spain, travelling back through France and here in the UK. Wet. Rather cold.
As my last two photos of the month show. Here we are driving through France …
That’s a shot from my phone. My camera tells a similar story. Our last afternoon in France was in Caen, where it was largely … raining. As the sun set, the rain went briefly away, so here’s sundown over a street busy with its late-in-the-day market.
Some of you have been following my adventures in Spain and France throughout January. Here is Positively the Last Memory. This is a shot taken aboard MV Armorique as she set out from Saint-Malo for Portsmouth in driving rain and winds of getting on for 50 mph. I can’t imagine how it was that this miserable matelot survived intact. But she did. Perhaps because at midnight, the wind suddenly dropped.
And actually, did I ever post my first shot of the holiday, waiting in line at Folkestone to get to France via the Channel Tunnel?
Rain then too. Luckily, the rain did the opposite of what the English children’s rhyme demands, and stayed resolutely away from Spain the whole time we were there.
Here in the UK, we know a lot about clouds. And at this time of year, we know a lot about grey clouds. Looking out of the window just now yields an unending vista of smoky grey, darkening over Mickley way to gunmetal and slate. No cotton-wool puffs of cumulus for us.
So let me whisk you to a day in June, when the plane transporting me from Barcelona to Leeds offered me a constantly changing cloudscape below me, with tantalising glimpses of beaches, landscapes and the Pyrenees, the Atlantic coast, and then crowded old England. The featured photo shows us just leaving Barcelona – hardly a cloud in the sky. And then …
Mist rather than cloud, to start with.The foothills of the PyreneesWell, who can tell?Cresting the Pyrennean peaksOver the French coast now…Here too.Still FranceNearly homeEven more nearly home.
Although generally a big fan of monochrome, on a grey day like this, I’m not sure I like these clouds and vistas in black and white. My memory of that summer day was of clear bright and optimistic colours. But needs must. This is for Monochrome Madness, and hosted this week by Brian, of Bushboy’s World.
Ask someone in the Western world about the Four Elements, and they might talk to you about Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Ask someone familiar with a Chinese cosmology and Wu Xing, and they would protest that there are five: adding Wood and Metal, and discounting Air. Sofia asks us to look at the five Chinese elements for her Lens-Artists Challenge. This is a big ask. I’ve seen wonderful posts from those who’ve contributed already, as well as Sofia’s own post illustrating elements as seen in the natural world. I’ve decided to focus on those elements as pressed into the service of man.
Let’s start with Air: through which fly aeroplanes (Metal) over the Earth beneath.
Aeroplane trails spotted over Welsh pastureland
And where would our washing lines be without air coursing through our clothes hanging out to dry?
A French washing line. It could be anywhere though.
Or flags, flapping in the breeze?
Outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Water next. Essential in every branch of life, here’s a (Metal) ship ploughing through it.
The North Sea. Plenty of Air there too.Fish at Cosmo Caixa Science Museum, Barcelona.
Fire. Trickier, this one. Here’s a blacksmith doing his Metalwork at Tees Valley Pumping Station. This Pumping Station is now consigned to history and the odd Open Day. But in the Victorian era, it existed to provide clean drinking Water to the people of Darlington.
Traditional blacksmith.
And here is a collection of Metal artefacts and objects we saw when we visited.
Earth next. Without which … no forests, no crops, no bricks no … normal life at all.
Seed planting time. Free lunch for black-headed gulls.Winter fields
Then there’s wood. One of our oldest building materials. Still the material of choice for window frames, for furniture. Even sometimes for cutlery!
And there we have it. A whistle top tour of the Elements, Western or Chinese style. I think my header photo, by the way, shows a bit of everything. Except perhaps fire. Do visit Sofia’s post, which will lead you in turn to other terrific responses to this challenge.
My flight home from Barcelona the other day was remarkable for two reasons. For one, I had a window seat; and for two, the earth below was visible almost every mile of the way. Here’s the story of a journey.
A small port just south of Barcelona.Arid fields.The foothills of the Pyrenees.The Pyrenees, still snow-capped in places.Rural France.We hugged the coast throughout almost all the French part of our flight.Reaching England …… and cloud cover.Manchester almost in sight.
Oh, and here’s an eleventh photo, from terra firma: alongside the (static) travelator at Manchester Airport.
It’s not the best photo ever, but I love it. Evening. A busy street in Thessaloniki. A woman enjoys some time out by dragging a chair out – not onto the pavement, but into the road itself. Well, why not? Streets were for people long before they were used by cars.
Our journey to Spain begins. Four and a half hours to cross London yesterday – ’nuff said. But today, a calm crossing from Dover to Calais, with (relatively) almost nobody else on board. And beneath us … only sea.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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