Decent weather was forecast for the first time in three weeks and lo, it delivered. I had to get out and expand my horizons somewhat, and the Lake District is a fine place to expand them. This is the view from Low Fell, one of A. Wainwrights Western Fells. The lake is Crummock Water, the two big hills Whiteside to the left, and Grasmoor.
With seven of the last eight shots, including this one, being taken in Hebden Bridge, and with a distinct lack of people in them, you can deduce that on the whole I have been indoors writing. It’s gone well, but it doesn’t make for very exciting photography. I am reduced today to a shot of the lights for the roadworks outside our house, which I’m sure drivers will be happy to hear had no sign of human presence today either. Only the lights were putting the hours in.
“And now we’re going live to the 2019 Blue Pig Race on the Hebden Water….”
“Yes Alan, the race is certainly reaching a climax this year, good water conditions but let’s remember what these competitors have to go through each year… a fearsome twenty-foot drop at the start and there are always casualties there… then the rapids…. look at the grim determination on the face of number 4!!….”
Despite the lack of encouraging conditions, some of the foliage is giving it a go. It can’t be easy under the monsoon, probably our equivalent of crawling out from under the duvet at 6.30am in February. Hence the ragged look of this bloom.
Despite four HB pix in a row I have in fact spent most of the week in Manchester, but — to repeat a frequently-made recent point — it’s not been very exciting. Nor was today, but at least there was plenty of tea and coffee.
It’s not been the most exciting of weeks and local flowers and walls are about the limit of my ambitions for a time. Summer colours perhaps, but no summer weather: the monsoon remains clamped overhead with few signs of it shifting just yet.
Another of Hebden Bridge’s resident birds makes a reappearance on the blog — 8/11/15 was the same Muscovy duck, for instance. Not that it looks very happy about it today. Perhaps it’s just glum about the gloomy weather, the same as the rest of us.
A few minutes after she left the house this morning, Clare felt moved to phone me and say: “If you want a photo of the day come and get one of the yarnbombing done on the sundial”…. So you see, I do occasionally listen to her. And a very fine yarnbombing it is.
It’s always good when one of the local heron population is posing in the morning on an otherwise photographically inert day.
Who knows for sure whether this is the same specific bird I’ve pictured before but (allowing for the foreshortening effect of me having taken today’s shot from about 30 feet above the heron’s head) the markings certainly look indistinguishable from those of our old friend Humph, as seen on 25/5/16 for example. How long do herons live, I wonder?
After two new countries (new to the blog, at least) and several new locations over the last week and a half, the pendulum swings, and the next three weeks see me mainly at home. I can’t promise excitement but I will do my best, better than today I hope, anyway. As you can see I’m pondering a change of style. (Actually the shoes were being bought for Joe.) And more place-related trivia — the first ever weekend of the blog where both Saturday and Sunday shots were taken in Manchester.
