From Pyrenees to Pennines

Looking up the street …

A dog whose owner had parked up near the station looked us up and down through the open car window, then changed his mind, and looked up the street instead.

Sun getting up? Or sunset? The Answer

Well, you were game for a bit of a bet yesterday, and both sunrise and sunset got pretty much equal scores. Shall we go for a walk and see who’s right? Click on any image to see it full size and to get rid of the caption.

I took my puzzle picture, now shown in a different format as my feature photo, shortly after I’d left the lake. But this wasn’t overlooking another lake. It was yet another flooded field. Time? One minute past four. Sunset: the first moments. So I was up to no good, offering you sun down instead of sun up on a challenge featuring All Things Up,

Jo’s Monday Walk

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Question. Sun getting up? Or sunset?

Six Word Saturday

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Zest up your day with toast and marmalade!

It’s that time of year when the house is permeated by the bitter, bright, clean and honeysweet smell of marmalade-in-the-making, as a pan of carefully cut up peels, juice and sugar bubble away enticingly in the kitchen to make this year’s supply of Seville Orange Marmalade. Is anything more guaranteed to wake you up and start your day with a zing than a couple of slices of toast and home-made marmalade?

I first wrote about it here, on this day in 2011. I wrote about it often. But our most memorable marmalade year was two years ago, when I wrote about it again, on almost this day.

Up above your head, in many a Spanish street, are oranges, glowing orbs of colour that brighten the cityscape. And two years ago we were in Valencia, home of the orange. Finding windfalls abandoned in the Turia Gardens, we gathered them and brought them home. What could be better than marmalade made, by you, from oranges you’ve harvested yourselves?

Flashback Friday

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It turns out that my first marmalade post was written on 21st January. Today is the 22nd. I hope this isn’t a hanging offence, in the world of Flashback Friday.

Upstanding craftsmen …

… work high up on the highest spires of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The squares show one of these craftsmen doing his work, almost at the very top. The featured photo gives some idea of how Gaudí’s as yet unfinished cathedral towers high above the city.

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Up here, I’m the King of the Castle

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Oi! There’s a duck up top!

When we lived in France, the route of the Tour de France twice passed our house. Before the cyclists whizz past, there’s the publicity caravan, an unending stream of advertisers tossing out toys and trinkets to the expectant crowds waiting for the cyclists to pass. Here’s one ….

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A duplicitous view …

… of the V&A Museum, in London …

… because the image above is upside down.

This is what I really saw. Its reflection in the lake at the front of the building. But I up-ended it.

Up tails all!

All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows

These are not the best pictures of shelducks that you’ll ever see, but there’s a limit to what zooming can do. I’ll turn to Wikimedia Commons to help me out.

Common Shelduck: Wikimedia Commons, I CBurnett

Bird Weekly Photo Challenge

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Puppets from a hidden Cádiz corner

To cheer you up on a cold and snowy Saturday (rain later), here are puppets, all from the 1970s and 80s, from one of Cádiz’s best-kept secrets: El Museo del Titere – The Puppet Museum.