Norway remains third in the ranks of most-depicted country on this blog, behind only England and Australia, but it’s a while since I’ve been there — four years and ten months in fact (26/4/2018 was its last appearance). I should rectify this. In the meantime, it seems as if Norway is willing to come to Hebden Bridge: why this flag was planted in the square amongst the usual Sunday crowd of visitors, I do not know, but there it is.
Life at the moment is having its uneventful spells, and this is the middle of one of them. But at least the immediate locality continues to provide sufficient photo opportunities.
After an acutely stressful journey home last night I had no desire to get on a train today, so picked up my usual entertainments as close to home as is possible. The Yorkshire Amateur League game on the park got some passing attention from others, but no one stuck around for very long — as you can doubtless tell, it was a damp experience. Even I gave up after an hour or so and went somewhere warmer and drier (namely, the pub).
With a less-than-functional camera at the moment (I have not mentioned on here the St Helena Tarmac Incident), and a week at home mostly spent sat on my arse somewhere or other, reading/marking/reading, it’s felt an effort lately to get interesting pictures. This one’s alright I guess, but it’s a very familiar scene.
Pleasant weather today, which was probably a good thing bearing in mind my need to reacclimatise. The Hebden Water was spilling rather gently over its weir near the centre of town. This is the usual heron-spotting location, but there were none here today.
From leaving Gareth’s place in St Helena on Saturday morning, to arriving back in Hebden Bridge at about 3.30pm on Sunday afternoon, was a 28-hour journey. Had the pilot of the third aircraft felt like it, I could have been dropped off three hours earlier: but I probably wouldn’t have survived that experience. Nevertheless, here we are, directly over home, with my house just about visible to the bottom right of this image. Centre bottom is Heptonstall and up the valley curves to Midgehole and the woods of Hardcastle Crags. I don’t know whether we were actually at 15,000 feet here, but it’s a reasonable guess — if it looks lower, I did use a certain amount of zoom.
No more flights for a while now: there’s work to do at home. Well, at least until I go away again.
No apologies for returning to a theme touched on yesterday — this is the better shot. This was the view I saw on opening the curtains in the bedroom this morning. As it’s the last time I will do that at home until at least February 6th, this will keep me going for a while. The rising sun tinges the higher woodland on the Heptonstall hillside.
A dash into Manchester and back failed to trouble the camera, so let’s go with this one, there haven’t been many early morning shots for a while: it’s no longer a time of the day I engage with much, particularly in the winter. You’d think that some four weeks after the solstice the sun might deign to start putting in an appearance before 8am, but no, not in this valley anyway.
Second consecutive shot taken at the outdoor market, but hey. The guy on the DVD and CD stall takes a casual attitude towards his merchandise. One can either rule the world by wearing the shoes… or, presumably, get hints by watching the various Marvel movies which all seem to be based around much the same theme.
God, more of this crud. 2023 has not so far had vintage weather. But in a week’s time, I will be in the Southern Hemisphere, and whatever else goes on there, I’m damn sure the weather will be a lot warmer, and a lot lighter.
Being 42 