Graystones is the modest peak to centre right, Wythop Moss the substantial swamp below. The fringe of trees is the top end of Darling How plantation, which extends down into the unseen valley over the far side of the ridge. And yes, I took the day off, well, most of it anyway, to go on a walk. But I’m working Sunday, so these things balance out, before you call the employment police (probably the Tories are considering such a step).
The weekend’s tour of noted tourist spots in West Wales continues. But sometimes one just has to admit one is a tourist. Devil’s Bridge was first named for the lowest of these three structures, built in the 11th century, and named for the Devil because people simply did not believe that the precipitous gorge that it spans could have been tamed by human hand alone. Anyway, just think what it must have meant for an 11th-century peasant to trust their lives to this new-fangled engineering stuff. The middle bridge was built in 1753, and the current, topmost one in 1901.
Portmeirion was built by Clough Williams-Ellis over a fifty-year period as a demonstration of his theories about landscape and architecture. It should be visited by anyone with an interest in the Italianate and the exquisite configuration of the….
Oh, sod that. We all know why Portmeirion is cool. It’s because it’s THE VILLAGE, from The Prisoner, the best TV series ever made. And because this is a hotel, private ground, it hasn’t since become defiled by McDonalds’ or Starbucks or just disappoint slightly because of the fact that this location you see carefully pieced together on screen isn’t like that in reality. But at Portmeirion, everything that brought Patrick McGoohan et al to the place, seeing it as the perfect setting for his vision, is still there. There’s number 6’s cottage in the background of this shot! There’s the bandstand where they play in the episode “Hammer into Anvil”! I am in geek heaven!!
No weather warnings have been issued and it seems to have stopped raining…. but recent events suggest that we should at least be wary when the river reaches this level. It’s not just about heavy rainfall, either. We should also blame the government — flooding isn’t caused by heavy rain, but by shitty decisions about land use, some of them stretching back centuries. Ah well, seeing as we’ve reached the ‘let’s cross our fingers and hope’ stage of flood prevention, let’s just do that.
Possibly these are markers for waterworks up in Hardcastle Crags, as this is where Hebden Bridge’s water comes from in the end.
Or possibly these are the abandoned prototypes of tiles in the short-lived “double-letter” version of Scrabble, left here to rot when it was proven nobody could actually think of an English word that had “…PV…” in it. (I’ve been trying.)
I feel I’ve recently been in a bit of a low point on this blog, creativity-wise. And I’m also spending most of the time at the moment sat at home. Tried to make an effort with this one, and bearing in mind that all this is being done on cheap and standard gear, this is probably as good an effort at this shot as I could manage. Let’s see the flare as a deliberate creative shot, but it’s a shame the sun ends up blurred. The high valley walls mean it disappears at least an hour before the scheduled sunset time; waiting for the moment of its transition gave me something to do this afternoon that wasn’t work, at least. The contrail and birds were freebies.
After the weather conditions depicted on the last couple of days, getting gradually closer to home, I guess it’s no real surprise that today saw snow on the ground in Hebden Bridge. I like this shot because it’s essentially monochrome, except for that stripe of red in the corner — a plastic barrier put up to stop people falling off the upper path and down into the water race here. Not far off this picture here, but not the same, which is why sometimes you can get away with doing multiple shots of the same place.
I remain grateful for the fact that I have a job flexible enough to allow me to bring my weekend forward a day and get out on a walk on a Friday. However, I wasn’t out basking in the sunshine or anything. This was a severe-weather walk, as rough as anything I’ve ever done, as evidenced by the spindrift seen here. Heron Pike sits between the lakes of Grasmere, Rydal Water and (pictured) Windermere. More photos from this walk on my other blog when I get round to it, but that’ll be tomorrow now.
Up until this morning 2015’s had been an entirely agreeable Christmas filled with friends and family old and new, much good cheer and sociability, etc. etc.
This morning things took a definite turn for the worse in the patch of England that lies, more or less, between Manchester, Leeds and Lancaster. Huge amounts of rain have turned much of this region into what you see here. We were scheduled to drive from my sister’s in Sabden to Clare’s parents in Morecambe this morning, and made it, despite some very damp moments on the road and views over scenes such as this. But we were among the luckier ones. Hebden Bridge and the whole Calder Valley, from Walsden down to Mytholmroyd, was today under over a metre (3.3 feet) of water, leading to terrifying scenes like this one, in Mytholmroyd. I do not even want to think about the impact this is going to have on my home town. In 2012 after the last (twin) floods hit several much-loved establishments were closed for months, and today’s floods were far worse. As this photo shows, the shops on the main street were deluged this morning.
The village of Whalley, which has appeared once before on this blog and was hit by flooding a couple of weeks ago, was also devastated again today. The shot I choose to epitomise this very shitty day is one taken as we tried to negotiate our way from Sabden past Whalley, on the A59 road which bypasses the village, and crosses the River Calder at this point (note: this is not the Calder that runs through Hebden Bridge, but the Lancashire river of the same name; in the first version of this post I misidentified it). As you can see the river has become a literal lake, and many houses in Whalley were evacuated today as a result. Nor do I think the sheep pictured here (lower left) have a great deal longer to live. As far as I know no human lives have been lost in the region today, but it is a frankly terrible situation, that at the moment I do not wish to dwell on very much.
It is all very well to blame capricious nature for this crap, but there are also decisions — to do with land use, water management, pollution — that have been deliberately made over the last couple of centuries of human existence and which are exacerbating natural weather events like this. Today the consequences of these decisions really hit home. I am sure you will see more of this over the next few days, but we have to get home first.
The view from my room this morning. That’s the Bristol Channel over there. Not the most exciting photo I know, but at least it captures a mood.
