Back home for the rest of the year. This photo has the same subject matter as the one posted a year ago today; the Hebden Water, which joins the River Calder just below this point. The building is the new extension to our Town Hall, opened in 2012.
Thanks to the valley wall to the south of the town, Hebden Bridge gets an earlier sunset each day than the planet’s axial tilt otherwise decrees; and today is the earliest of all.
Another beautiful morning in a long run of good weather (proving the idiotic newspapers wrong with their predictions of a dire early winter). The bridge carries Mayroyd Lane over the river Calder, near the railway station. Another oft-passed scene, but it has managed not to appear thus far on the blog.
Offered up purely for the cute vote….
This Muscovy duck now lives permanently by the canal in the centre of town, opposite the Railway pub. (The wood beneath it on this photo is the gate of the dry dock.) It has been here for nearly two years now, and this is its third appearance on the blog, making it the first animal to definitively appear on here three times (as many times as my mother-in-law, I note…). According to Avian Web, the species is native to South America but is spreading through North America. It is certainly not native to the UK, or even Europe. Either it got blown a long way from home or — more likely — it is an escaped pet. It seems to have found for itself an amenable spot to retire to, either way.
Wind is the hardest form of weather to capture on camera: this is my best effort at encapsulating what was, really, a very windy day, at least between dawn and about 2pm. The bins couldn’t hack it, they’re all down for the duration.
Neither of the last two days’ photos have much claim to be in focus, so I hope this one is better. The Mill extension continues to rise, and at some point, hey, we might even get the turf roof they’ve promised. Or perhaps they’ve forgotten. I mean, it’s so in character as it stands at the moment.
Don’t expect a great deal of excitement on this blog for a while. This will remain one of the most home-bound periods to be documented on here, for some weeks to come yet. And on days when I am just working at home, with flat, dull light outside, it’s time to start trying things with colour and form.
It’s St. Andrew’s Day, but this is St. George’s bridge over the Hebden Water, built by the Victorians. The ‘mist’ is in fact dust, caused by someone attacking what seemed like most of a monument with an angle grinder, but I wasn’t complaining.
It is actually easy to get this shot, if one is up before dawn and walking along Commercial Street in HB. However, it is chosen today to epitomise the fact that I do still have early mornings now and again. The sabbatical largely cured me of this affliction, but not entirely. This is the earliest shot since Abu Dhabi airport on 27th May, and the sixth-earliest ever on the blog.
Being 42 