Beyond a darkened bedroom, this was the first view seen on opening the curtains to greet February 2021, the waning moon on its way down above the hillside, tinged red by the rising sun. It’d be nice if the rest of February were as pleasant as this morning was, although I already know that won’t be the case.
January 2021 hasn’t featured a football match, a visit to a pub or a night away from home — and I sincerely doubt February 2021 is going to differ in any of these ways. But I have done my damnedest to have it feature some healthy exercise. This gets no less healthy if one travels more than five miles from home — in fact, for those who live in urban areas, the opposite may be true. This fact seems to elude those who find it blithely OK that the government has removed freedom of movement within our own country.
For more pictures from today’s bout of exercise along with the usual accompanying self-reflection, see my County Tops blog.
From back to front: the big monument on Stoodley Pike; Heptonstall church; and the war memorial near Pecket Well, built in obvious mimicry of its bigger brother in the background. Nineteen and a half years I have lived here and until this week, had never been to this spot. Yet as with many days recently, there was a need for some leg-stretching: the guy walking his dog surely concurs.
Pecket Well is one of the little settlements up on the hilltops above town. Architecturally, it probably hasn’t changed much in a while. Though if that fire was not kept under control it might have lost a barn yesterday.
It’s Joe, and his generation, that I feel sorriest for right now. He turns 18 in a few weeks yet is spending this time locked in a room with, or rather without, everyone else. At least he’s still prepared to get out into the landscape now and again: here, on Brown Wardle Hill, above Whitworth in Lancashire.
Of course, this is not a model, it is a real landscape above the (awkwardly-named) town of Penistone, in South Yorkshire. But though there area actually two large turbines to the right, it sure looks to me like one is the shadow of the other, cast on the backcloth of a diorama built in a shoe box, or something. And the patchwork of frost and field, the general graininess of the picture…. seems fake to me. Perhaps there is a model railway below, just out of shot.
This ersatz life continues. Walking is about the only entertainment available — at least, the only one that should be depicted on here. The monument on Stoodley Pike has featured several times on this blog (follow the tag); the houses are the northern end of Heptonstall; and last week’s snow has all gone, for now.
Hibernation continues. And it’s cold out there. Although a beautiful day today, in many ways. But I imagine few people in Britain are going to remember January 2021 at all, in the long run.
The white stuff hasn’t featured properly in my life since I was last in Tromsø in April 2018, and there is presently none of it in Hebden Bridge. But it took only a short walk up into the hills to be faced by scenes like this. Contacts in Tromsø also suggest that at the moment, they have none at all, while Spain and Portugal suffer under the worst winter in living memory. This is one of those shots that honestly is not monochrome, though you wouldn’t know it.
2021 has limped into existence, and whatever else it brings, it will see the 10th anniversary of this blog (on 26th August). I make no predictions for the year, but I have made some resolutions, mainly that I will continue to live my life in the way that I need to in order to sustain my physical and mental health, whatever obstacles are placed in the way. That’s what it’s about isn’t it? Health? So we are being told, anyway.
This is the Strid, near Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire; one of the north of England’s natural wonders although the reason for this is not immediately apparent on this shot. The river is the Wharfe, and it’s fairly sizeable at this point, where it flows through a band of limestone. Above and below this gorge it is over 10 metres wide. So how does it squeeze itself through this defile, so narrow one could almost cross it with a stride — hence the name? The answer lies below: concealed by the water is a fearful chasm, undercut with potholes and very deep. Fall in here and I wouldn’t fancy your chances.
Being 42 