Monochrome Madness – Page 5 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Tea and Coffee Cups I Have Known

Monochrome Madness this week has us hunting down everyday objects. I thought it might be fun to showcase some of the teacups and coffee cups I have met round and about. I’ll start off with my feature photo. Once, in Granada, at a bar with a friend, we found our different choices meant that we were served our coffee in the manner of the Three Bears -Baby Bear, Mummy Bear, and Daddy Bear.

Poland next, and our breakfast in Gdansk. Sir William gets himself about, all over Europe. But not as far as I know, in the UK.

Granddaughter-in-Spain is too young for coffee. Hot chocolate is her tipple of choice. With predictable results.

After a busy morning of child care, let’s go for something more elegant. A good olden-days afternoon tea, courtesy of the Wensleydale Railway. Trundle in a leisurely fashion through the North Yorkshire countryside whilst enjoying tea elegantly served with dainty scones and cakes on a tiered cake stand. Earl Grey or Darjeeling, Madam?

If fine china is your thing, you should visit the National Museum of Korea in Seoul. Here you can find delicate tableware like this – extraordinarily from the 12th Century – getting on for 1000 years ago …

And if museums are your thing, you should visit the much more homely Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge. Here you’ll find tableware from local churches. Yes, almost every church used to have their very own tea and dinner services for those all-important social gatherings.

Another display, this time from the annual Marmalade Festival near Penrith.

Finally, that newly-so-British tradition of the Scarecrow Festival. This one’s from last year’s village fete at Kirkby Malzeard, our village-next-door.

So, Sarah of Travels with Me, who’s prompted this week’s challenge for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness: here’s a slice of life from those so-important moments of down-time. No high class photos here. Quite simply high-class memories.

A Townie’s Jaunt to the Countryside

You live in a town – maybe even a big city. And on a nice Sunday afternoon, you fancy a ride out to the country to see what you can see. What do you want to find?

Maybe a barn, or even better barns, dotted round the pastureland.

In Yorkshire, or ‘up north’ at any rate, a drystone wall wouldn’t go amiss.

You have to see a flock of sheep, a few cows. A gaggle of geese too maybe?

And a farmer at work – yes, even on a Sunday …

And a rusting old tractor in a tumbledown barn?

And you need to drive along ‘the rolling English road‘, made, according to GK Chesterton, by ‘the rolling English drunkard‘.

And to make your day complete, just before you head back to town and all mod cons, you’d quite like to have to grind to a halt on the road because…

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness: Outside the city and into the country.

Textured Monochrome

This week for the Lens-Artist Challenge, John invites us to focus on the tools we consider when taking photographs: Shape, Form, Texture, and Light.

Sarah of Travel with Me fame (You don’t follow her? Why not?) decided to focus on texture alone in her role as Guest Presenter for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness . I’ve decided to follow her excellent example.

I often like to use monochrome to ‘describe’ texture. It seems to highlight shape, form and – er- yes, texture to advantage, with no colour to distract the eye.

In fact my featured photo of nearby Brimham Rocks is changed very little by the use of monochrome. The sky was a bright azure blue that day, with whiteish clouds. Realistically, grey is so much more authentic this year.

Let’s stay with the natural world, and go to Mossyard Bay in Dumfries and Galloway, to inspect the rocks there, and a sheltered pool as the tide goes out.

… and a pool receding as the tide recedes

We’ll stay by the sea, but in Arenys de Mar in Spain this time. A rusting chain, a decaying lump of concrete in the fishing port.

A tired chain in an even more exhausted lump of concrete, Arenys de Mar

More man-made creations, battered by wind and weather. A has-been saint awaits repair in the stone mason’s yard at Rheims Cathedral.

And here’s a characterful shuttered window that’s lived a long life in a village in the Hérault, France.

An English country garden, complete with bee.

… an icy puddle …

And let’s leave you with that most Yorkshire of animals, a sheep: happy to show off a magnificent fleece, magnificent horns.