Wild-ish Walking in Wensleydale

The red tops blazed next week’s news: ‘A September Scorcher! 30º!’

Anyone living north of Watford Gap, or west of Slough knew better than to believe it, because only south-east England counts if you’re a London-based hack. We Yorkshire types needed to read the small print to discover that northerners could merely expect pleasant warmth, a gentle breeze and no rain whatsoever. Which was fine for a Sunday walk in Wensleydale.

On the way over there, it rained. Getting ready for the walk, it rained. The wind snatched urgently at our waterproofs and blew our hair in our eyes. Mist rose from the valley bottom. Grey cloud descended and thickened.

We didn’t mind. The rain soon stopped: it was warm, and those grey skies made for moody, atmospheric scenery. But our friend Gillian, who’d planned the walk, doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘stroll’ and had us battling boggy paths, and huffing up rough pastureland on semi-vertical hillsides. We took it in good part.

But what rewards. We had the constant backdrop of the Wensleydale hills. Semerwater glittered at us from a distance: but close up, insistent waves rushed constantly towards our toes.

Semerwater.

I don’t know who these two bikers are. But they enjoyed the view too.

We had a march along a Roman road. And at the end, blue skies, sunshine, and a relaxing cup of tea on the village green at Bainbridge.

The Roman Road.

This week’s photo challenge is to make use of empty, unoccupied space in our pictures : to make it part of the story. As I walked yesterday, I tried to use negative space: in this case, mainly the sky.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #114 – Negative Space

And another walk for Jo …

Jo’s Monday Walk

Howardian Hills

We’ve just come back from a weekend in the Howardian Hills – that slice of Yorkshire that includes Castle Howard, where that iconic TV series Brideshead Revisited was filmed in the 1980s.

For farmers, it’s a wealthy little corner of the county, with fertile fields offering a steady income in return for careful husbandry. Well-constructed farm gates at the end of tidy tracks are handsomely buttressed by smart stone gate posts. Crops stand to attention and weeds show their faces only at field margins. Agricultural labourers are no longer tenants in those postcard-perfect villages.

Trees neatly marching across a hill crest.

Our late August break was not accompanied by late summer weather. Although it didn’t rain, skies remained sulky and black. Wind bustled and gusted fiercely against our faces. The temperature hovered at 11 degrees all weekend. Perfect for this week’s Photo Challenge, for which brightly luminous blue skies contrasting with the golden hues of harvest simply Would Not Do.

This month's final assignment - Experiment with using two or three Complementary colours. Try to make one or two colours the focus of the image, and use the other colour to enhance the overall image.

I’ve taken images from fields, from distant vistas, and from the one abandoned ruined grange we came across, where farm animals still grazed in the grassy yard. I’ve played around with colour contrast: aiming to make my results what my eyes thought they saw, rather than what my camera knew it saw.

This is what my eyes, not the camera saw.

I liked the only splash of colour here: those orange beaks.

2020 Photo Challenge #35

A Bleak Walk is Just Perfect

I love bleak. Typically rolling English countryside is lovely. And you can’t beat a verdant Daleside vista, criss-crossed with dry stone walls dividing its pastureland, its river along the valley floor edged with trees. But here in Yorkshire, every now and then, I have to have my fix of bleak.

And one way to do this is to go over to Angram and Scar House reservoirs, both constructed in Nidderdale during the inter-war years last century, to provide water for the citizens of Bradford. Here are slopes, sculpted by long-gone streams and the often savage weather. These hillsides are covered in thin, tussocky grass – and not much else. Few trees. Few buildings – the odd hunting lodge or barn. But there are sheep, and birdlife too. One of our memories of walking here was once seeing a small meadow pipit struggling to feed ‘her’ baby, a cuckoo fledgling three times her size.

My friend Sandra and I went there this week. The day was perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. Briskly breezy. And as we arrived , the reservoir was as blue as we’ve ever seen it, almost cobalt in its intensity. We planned to walk our way round both reservoirs.

Which way though? Clockwise? Anti-clockwise? Sandra counselled clockwise, and Sandra won. That way, we’d get a slightly boring bit of track over and done with. We’d get the wind-in-our-faces over and done with. And most importantly, we’d get the squishier, less managed paths of Angram Reservoir over and done with.

It’s rained a lot lately, so walking round Angram involves some wet pathways. Not muddy, just paddleable. Juncus grass lining the route offered the odd springboard to drier grassy ground. But with water to right of us, bald barren hillside to left of us , the route is easy to see. And each reservoir terminates in a stout dam, each worthy of walk in its own right, and in Angram’s case, with water tumbling to its sister reservoir below.

Scar House Dam.

Angram Dam

Finally we left our wet pathways behind, and joined the springier drier turf pathways of Scar House Reservoir where sheep kept us company.

But even though we knew from the car park that we weren’t alone, we felt that this particular expanse of hillside, sky and water was ours and only ours for the six and a half mile walk in the middle of nowhere.

Jo’s Monday Walk

Six Word Saturday

A Greener Shade of Green …

Coverdale in early summer.

Nidderdale from Middlesmoor.

Woodland on the Cleveland Way

An early morning on the Ripon Rowel walk.

Drumlins near Gargrave, Airedale.

Near Coniston, Wharfedale.

… or a bluer shade of blue …

… or a whiter shade of pale …

… or simply hoping to look exactly like the surrounding grasses.

That’s Jude’s Photo Challenge this week:

This week's assignment - Find a monochromatic scene consisting of varying shades of a single colour.

2020 Photo Challenge #22

All of these shots were taken under a Yorkshire sun.

Lens-Artists Challenge #109: Under the Sun

In Search of a Druid or a Trout – Revisited

It’s re-post a Golden Oldie from France time.

August 27th, 2012

In search of a druid – or a trout

Mont d’Olmes: local playground for skiers. You wouldn’t travel any great distance to spend a holiday here, but for locals, it’s the ideal winter sports spot. It’s a wonderful area for walkers too. We’ve only just begun to discover the wealth of footpaths, mainly across truly ‘sauvage’ slopes, with views downwards to Montségur, Roquefixade, and northwards almost, it seems, as far as Toulouse.

It’s alright waxing lyrical though. For many people living in the area many years past, and until the early years of the 20^th century, these slopes were the places where they came for long hours each day, working both on the surface and by crawling through narrow airless tunnels, mining talc.

Le lac de Moulzonne glimpsed through the trees at 8.00 a.m.

The trucks that used to transport the talc from the mines.

The old mine workings. Can you spot several tunnel entrances?

Talc? Yes, that stuff you sprinkle on babies’ bottoms. That stuff those Olympic gymnasts plunge their hands into before taking to an overhead bar. That stuff that apparently still has many industrial uses, notably in the ceramics industry and for plastics paints and coatings. This soft soapstone was found here on Mont d’Olmes and is still mined in nearby Luzenac. Here though, all that is left are the gashes in the mountainside where the workings once were, and a few ancient trucks once used to transport the material down to civilisation.

Come and take the path we took last Sunday. We walked in more or less a straight line, up and down hill after hill, as the path became increasingly rocky and impassable.

Our path onwards and upwards.

So many paths! But you’ll never meet a soul.

Apparently this plant is carniverous, feeding on passing insect life.

Early morning mist burning off in the sun.

Our reward was the occasional handful of raspberries or bilberries, then a lunchtime picnic by l’étang des Druides. No, sorry, l’étang des Truites. Whatever. Nobody seems to know which name is correct. Some say the person making the first map of the area misheard and wrote ‘truite’ – trout – instead of ‘druide’. We saw no trout. We definitely saw no druids. But we had a jolly nice picnic. And I paddled.

Our first sight of L’étang des truites or druides.

Our picnic spot.

Told you I paddled!

More of the picnic spot.

And then I ruined a perfectly good day, in which morning chill and mist had given over to hot sunshine, by falling flat against the rocky path, cutting open my face and chipping three teeth. I hope the druids weren’t lining me up for some kind of sacrifice.

Our homeward path.

Lavelanet, then Laroque lie far below us.

People often hang these thistles on their doors to bring good luck. Maybe if we had too I wouldn’t have had my little accident.

August 2020, PS. Don’t worry. I’m fine. The chipped bits, which were only small, have smoothed down nicely.

Jo’s Monday Walk

It’s Worth Going Walking Quite Early …

…. getting up and out at 6.00!

Six Word Saturday

Jo’s Monday Walk

The Bird at the Window

A June walk near Richmond in Yorkshire. Not this June as it happens, but it’s a walk I remember well.

This was the countryside we strolled through.

The banks of the River Swale.

Richmond Caste in the distance.

Swaledale meadowland.

And this was the abbey we found near the end: Easby Abbey, ruined since shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, and as atmospheric as ruins generally are.

Easby Abbey.

.. and the still-standing parish church.

The site includes the not-at-all-ruined parish church which is still very much in use. When we popped in, we didn’t expect to find a poor swallow, struggling to get out. Church members were trying to help him, but he was still vying with stained glass angels as we left. Poor swallow.

A feathered bird meets a feathered angel at the church window.

Birder friends: can you help please? I realise this may not be a swallow, but it doesn’t seem to be a swift or house martin either. Thoughts?

Monday Window

Six Words? Twelve Words? All nonsense.

Fish – clutter – drain – banana – starling – umbrella – buttermilk – sky – walking boots – bibulous – carbuncle – brain.

Just look at that. Twelve words. I have to weave those twelve random words into a single poem.

Our U3A writing group is one of the few things that’s continued throughout lockdown. It’s a positive activity at a somewhat negative time. But what CAN you do with a list like that? This, it turns out. I’m not too displeased. And here too are a few photos to illustrate the day.