Yesterday you had a peek at our sitting room window, from the outside. Come on in. We’ll go upstairs, into the kitchen. This is our view from the breakfast table. And it’s lilac time – almost. White, mauve and purple, all in bud, all on the cusp of bursting into flower for one glorious week. Our Top Time of year for breakfast beauty. Aren’t we lucky?
Becky: thank you. This month has been fun. I’m not a natural daily blogger, but it’s been a challenge I’ve enjoyed to find a daily response, almost entirely from photos taken specially for ‘Top Squares’, and I’ve ‘met’ bloggers I wouldn’t otherwise have come across. I can’t resist ending as I began: with a Top Sheep-and a lamb or two.
Look at the charming old bridge at West Tanfield. Keep looking. You’ll spot it eventually. A close-up shot is not an option.
It’s been around since 1734. JMW Turner sketched it in 1816. Tour de France riders hurtled over it in 2014. It’s a fine place to stand and look at a Proper English Village View.
But today, I had a surprise. I saw a small clump of toadflax had chosen to grow on the very top, just where I was leaning over. A fine addition, I thought.
I’ve just been checking on Google, and I seem to be able to get away with describing most shades of blue as ‘topaz’. So here I am, during a lunchtime walk last week, glancing through the treetops at a topaz sky.
Shadow puppetry by happenstance? Perhaps I’ve taken leave of my senses, but on a walk the other day, looking at the shadows cast across my path, all I could see in my mind’s eye was that scene in Little Red Riding Hood where she comes upon the wolf in Grandma’s bed. ‘What big ears you have, Grandmama.’
I thought it was Top Topiary anyway, even if no garden shears were involved.
We were due to walk part of the coastal section of the Cleveland Way this week. We looked forward to taking over from where we’d left off last year, and to having a windswept, scenic and invigorating walk along the cliffs edging the North Sea. Covid-19 put a stop to that. So – you can either read here about last year’s walk, or – as we did – admire these herring gulls on their lofty look-out posts in Staithes. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to read about the postponed walk later this year.
This tree was so keen to be included in Top Squares that it’s gone to the trouble of growing itself a topknot. I think it deserves its fifteen minutes of fame.
‘Look for converging lines’, instructs Jude. They’re there to add depth and distance, so she wants to see what we can find as illustrations. So I went to Cádiz, I went to Brussels, I went to Yorkshire – of course. And finally I went to London.
Here we are on the road by the seafront in Cádiz. The road, our eyes are lead inexorably towards the Cathedral.Now we’re in Brussels. I quite like it that the street’s more easily seen in the plate glass reflection. And that the lines on the window, and on the pavement are also working towards converging.Since the Tour de France started in Yorkshire in 2014, dear old Buttertubs has been elevated to being called Côte de Buttertubs. You can cycle it yourself … or not. Look at this picture and decide.Nothing can top your very first ever walk in the snow. This was William’s first chance, back when he was three.
About once a month, I re-blog a post from our years in France. Hunting for a Top Theme for Becky, I came upon this one.
April 19th, 2010
Terre Rouge – Ciel Bleu
Whenever we think we’re beginning to know the areas near home quite well, something comes along to surprise us.
Take Couiza, for instance, a town in the Aude that has been the centre point for quite a few of our walks. It can offer, within easy reach of the town, a typical Audois landscape which is almost Tuscan, with rolling hills, vineyards and cypresses. Or craggy, scrubby garrigue, almost Spanish looking. Or there’s le Domaine de l’Eau Salée, where the streams are pink with salt washed from the earth, and have been exploited by man for centuries.
Yesterday, however, we went with le Rando del’Aubo to Terre Rouge, an area near Couiza which astonished us with the rich red colour of the earth which dominated the landscape.
It supports a rich variety of plant life which is just springing into flower: Tiny daffodils, less than 3 inches high, bright yellow potentilla, grape hyacinths. Bluish grasses bind the dry and sometimes sandy earth, and the air is rich with the strong scent of various wild thymes and lavender.
This red earth is all-encompassing. And then suddenly, it stops. And we’re back again among more pallid yellowish soils, enjoying views of the distant Pyrenees, and the mountain which dominates this part of the world, Bugarach.
Bugarach. The dominant mountain top around these parts.
The walk was on the hottest day of the year so far, with clear, vivid blue sky. We shed jumpers, long trousers, and our pasty winter skin turned the colour of that red earth. There was a wide shallow stream at the village where our walk began and ended, and a few of us enjoyed a paddle. I greatly contributed to the end-of-day bonhomie by toppling in…….
Taken just before I toppled in. Nobody was unkind enough to take a snap of me all bedraggled.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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