I thought I couldn’t let January end without a final entry for Becky’s Squares: January Light. So here we are at the car wash.
Frankly, though, I’m not really in the mood. Not the day that the UK leaves the EU. I’m looking forward to this evening though, when North Yorkshire for Europe is holding two parties, one in York, and one in Harrogate, where we’ll be. The group’s invited EU nationals who’ve made their home in Yorkshire, so we can say ‘Thank EU 4 being here‘. We’ve already been mentioned on the Today programme, and …. well, we’ll just have to see.
… because it’s Seville orange season, and time to make next Christmas’s supply of Seville Orange Gin, that perfect winter warmer after a day walking in the bright frosty air.
Stage One: gin, sugar, cardamom seeds.
Stage Two: thinly peeled orange zest.
Stage Three: shake today, and daily for quite a while. Stage Four is not illustrated, and involves drinking it.
PS. Several of you have asked for a recipe. There are any number on the internet, but they are all similar to this one from The Cottage Smallholder. I saw a different recipe that suggested cardamom, so I have used this instead of cloves. And I only used 150 g. sugar. Also. Three years? Not a chance. We’ll be drinking ours at Christmas.
We had to go to Middlesbrough for an appointment the other day, so we thought we’d stay and explore.
Middlesbrough is what’s known as a ‘post-industrial town’. Once, its steel and other heavy industry and its port brought wealth (to some), employment, and attendant grime and looming industrial architecture. Now, it’s reliant on newer technologies, engineering and the presence of the university developed in the 1990s from the older Polytechnic.
But its landscape is still an industrial one, as is that of the surrounding towns: Billingham, Stockton, Redcar. Could it be true that the RSPB had developed a Nature Reserve here, on its outskirts?
It could. RSPB Saltholme. Though it was hard to believe, as we navigated along roads edged by towering chimneys, great metal hangars, clattering unseen machinery.
But in the end, there it was, among the industrial flatlands – wetlands actually, punctuated by shallow lakes and pools. We’d arrived.
Light-providing pylons stride purposefully across the landscape behind the reserve.
But the birds had left. How silly of us not to remember. At our local nature reserve, Nosterfield, the birds regularly knock off at lunchtime, only reappearing towards dusk. Who knows where they go?
Sunlight plays across the bird-free water. There’s the Tees Transporter Bridge dominating the skyline.
Never mind. We enjoyed a peaceful walk. We got a moment of drama when flocks of birds DID appear, swirling and swooping above the lake. It was quite likely that they were taking evasive action from a resident peregrine falcon hunting for a meal. Drama over, they disappeared once more.
A peregrine-inspired panic?
We enjoyed our time in this peaceful oasis. We explored trails that ended in well-equipped hides.
Sky-light, lake-light from the hides.
We studied noticeboards with information about what better-informed visitors had spotted that very day. We passed fields with the inevitable large numbers of greylag geese. And towards the end, we were rewarded with just a few sightings: some shelducks feeding; a shoveler or two; a few swans and a very distant heron.
Greylag geese.
Helpful signage.
Helpful what-we-have-spotted board. We did not contribute.
Shelducks feeding.
Shoveler grooming.
Reedbeds.
But we enjoyed our afternoon. A near-empty wetland, with its unusual backdrop of an industrial past and present, and the never-out-of-sight Tees Transporter Bridge made for a fine afternoon’s walking … and there was even a café.
Winter’s not all bad. The day begins well for us. Winter light. If we push breakfast just a little bit later than usual – just before 8 o’clock say – we can watch the sun rise, and the sky lighten and brighten in Neapolitan ice-cream colours as we sit near the kitchen window and chomp through our cereal.
Go outside in the daylight, and we can enjoy the snowdrops, and watch green shoots thrusting through the soil.
The trees are handsome, statuesque as they thrust their naked branches skyward.
Long shadows reach across the fields in the thin, clear January light.
And back in the house … there’s still some Christmas cake left in the tin.
This is my last post about Spain for a while, and it includes images from previous visits too. Browsing through my collection, I see that windows feature – a lot.
Views through, of, and reflected from windows; views through spaces that serve as windows; and finally, views of things outside windows (washing lines!) that have me imagining the lives lived behind them . You’ll see all of these here – mainly, but not exclusively from Barcelona.
But let’s start in Granada, at the Alhambra. This young woman was impossible to get out of shot, as she had to take a selfie from every angle. In the end, I decided to put her centre stage.
A real view from a real window: our go-to tourist attraction in Barcelona: the Modernista Hospital de Sant Pau.
I’m a sucker for reflecting windows. This high-end grocery store in Barcelona offered those reflections in bright light, as well as showing the goods on offer inside (this one’s for you, Becky)
More windows where it’s the reflections providing the views.
Barcelona.
Maritime Barcelona
Patient horses and their carriages wait by a public toilet window in Plaza de España, Seville.
And now it’s time for those washing lines.
Barcelona.
View from Casa Vicens, Barcelona.
A window, a balcony, washing: Vic.
Two contrasting views through not-a-window: in a garden in the Jewish quarter, Córdoba: and at El Clot-Aragó station, Barcelona.
Finally – this isn’t a view through a window at all. But who could resist viewing this window in Barcelona?
… spotted on a walk through our village yesterday.
Snowdrops – first spotted on January 1st.These daffodils by the village pond are always extra-early – even though it’s North Yorkshire.Aconites bravely push up through the gravel.
Back home in chilly England, I’ve been going through my photos. All 485 of them. I rather want to go back to the days when you had a Kodak Box Brownie, and one, maybe two films of twelve or sixteen shots to get you through the holiday: and when you had to wait more than a week for the chemist (the chemist!) to develop them. I’ve spent all day chucking photos out, re-living special moments , and wondering which snaps may get an airing on this blog.
But this shot asked for its moment in the limelight. We were at a height, up at the top of the tower of Cádiz Cathedral. A parakeet was wheeling in the bright sky. And it spotted Jesus. Well, I think it’s Jesus. And it chose to alight. I think he deserves a spot in January Light.
This isn’t a great photo. But it’s cleverer than you think. Here is the all-but-full moon, framed by the empty circle at the top of this artificial Christmas tree (universal, apparently, in civic displays throughout Spain) in the centre of Málaga.
We’re here for our last night. Tomorrow, we return to England for the last time as EU citizens. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Bright, slight, light – maybe a Bit of a Fright. A puppet from Cádiz. You wanted culture? Wait till I get home and can access all my camera photos. For now, enjoy this little charmer from the Museo del Titere , a delightful little museum all about puppets at the edge of the old town.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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