Last week, I showed you a rather characterful shuttered window I’d spotted in a French village. Many of you really liked it, so I’m showing it again in my featured photo, but in colour this time, Which version do you prefer?
While we’re about it, here are a few more shots from Siran, most of which include the odd window, or has-been window.
This is a window designed in honour of a vet – James Herriott. He (under his real name of James Alfred Wight) made his name by writing a whole series of books about being a young vet in Darrowby (actually Thirsk) visiting farms and their animals hither and yon in the Yorkshire Dales from the 1930s onwards. If you don’t know his books, you may know one of the TV series going out under the name of All Creatures Great and Small: 1978 & 2020, as apparently they’re doing the rounds the world over.
Well, there’s a museum in Thirsk as well – World of James Herriott – occupying the house he and his family lived and worked in all those years ago. And it has a window celebrating the landscape that formed the backdrop to his work. Here it is as the featured photo. And here is a bit of a collage of the backdrop to the working week of any Yorkshire vet, then and now. Except I haven’t got a picture of the White Horse at Kilburn featured in the window. About 170 years ago, it was cut into the landscape to emulate the chalk hill figures of southern England, and Herriott, like all the rest of us, would see it often as he drove round and about the area.
If you’re in the area and want a good family-friendly destination, the museum is highly recommended. You’ll come away with all the older family members saying ‘I remember those’, as they peer at tea-cosies, mangles and a thoroughly ancient car (Gumdrop, anyone?), bemused by the vetinary equipment, and entertained by the quizzes and activities in the children’s gallery. You too can insert your arm into a cow’s rear end to deliver a reluctant calf.
And for a bit of context, here’s a view from a window in the museum.
A day in Dijon provided a visual feast of windows – on the houses of the once-rich and powerful, churches, palaces , the Palais de Justice….
For Ludwig’s Monday Window.
I am going to set you a puzzle today. I’m showing a few teaser photos of somewhere that deserves a post of its own, but now’s not the time: that new baby, that newly-three toddler are both more important. So – what can you tell me about it? Do you know – or can you guess, what kind of building this is, who designed it, or where it is? I’ll give brief answers in a couple of days in the comments. The full story will have to wait.
For Ludwig’s Monday Window.
I first took you to Caldes d’Estrac back in November, when I showed you a very fine door. Now I want to show you a very fine window, from the same corner of town.
This is by way of being a preview to my next post, when I’ll be telling you why you should consider putting this little town on your visiting list if you have time during a break in Barcelona. To be continued …
For Ludwig’s Monday Window, after a very long time-out.
Knaresborough is a characterful town just along the road from us. And one of its characterful features is that around any corner, you may find a house with a deceptive window or doorway. These are not real windows and doors, though they’re painted to look authentic enough. They’re trompe-l’œils. One day, I’ll produce a town trail of all of them. For now, here’s a taster from our visit on Saturday.
For Ludwig’s Monday Window….
And Marsha’s Photographing Public Art Challenge …
… doesn’t look quite so ordinary when viewed in its reflection in the Airstream trailer which multi-tasks as kitchen, serving hatch and till.
And here’s a view as I walked past – for Past Squares …
And just to be really cheeky, as there’s not a pane of glass in sight, I’m including it in Monday Window, as it really is a different window on that lunch time pit-stop.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #169: The Ordinary
Photos taken at Paradise Food, Daleside Nurseries, Killinghall
In a past Monday Window, I showcased this winter sunrise, as spotted reflected on one of our windows. It’s too pretty not to share with Past Squares even though squaring it has made it small – but almost perfectly formed.
Window Mark Two for Becky’s Past Squares
This shopping malarkey’s getting tiring, so this week, I’ll just slot in a few shots that didn’t make it into the previous two posts. Like the header shot, for instance. Who knew that facials, waxing, nails and massage were a prerequisite for returning to school?
The Yorkshire lass in me thoroughly approves of this window, spotted in Leeds.
And this image from Barcelona of a rather up-market grocer, Queviures, with the reflections of the street behind remains a favourite too.
My last one may not be a shop at all – I can’t remember. It comes from a more optimistic time, when we still believed that marching in London in our thousands, and community action might help to save us from the disaster which is Brexit.
When Sheree read my post about window shopping last week, where I’d included a stop-off in Harrogate, she was disappointed I hadn’t included the windows of tea shop and bakery extraordinaire, Betty’s. I was in Harrogate again last week, and realised I had to put this right. But the sun was so high, and the light so bright that my camera got clearer views of Parliament Street behind than of the window display. Never mind. Two for the price of one.
My favourite display was in the Oxfam second hand bookshop. Here’s what the signage says:
‘How bad are books? The carbon footprint of reading. A year of driving (average 1600 miles) – 4000 books. Veggie burger – 1/3 book. Cheese burger 3.2 books. Fly to New York and back – 1800 books. 1 pair of men’s jeans – 19 books. It takes 1kg of CO2 to make a book. A second hand book is almost zero carbon.’
I can’t comment on the scientific observations, but I hope it’s true: I’d sooner have a book than a burger, any day. And I liked the reflections in the window too.
I think I’ll leave it at that – or no, let’s just look at this antique shop, where dogs are apparently welcome. Why the bear?
Farewell Harrogate, for the time being. Back soon.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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