It could be sharper and it ain’t gonna win any wildlife photography contests, but I’m glad this baby was fishing in the river this morning when I went shopping down in the town, because otherwise I was home all day working and there was nothing to see…. But herons are always good for a shot. Handsome creatures. That neck-spring-and-dagger-beak combination must be a fish’s worst nightmare.
Broke the drive back from Aberystwyth at this cafe in Llangollen, north-east Wales. Clare and Joe ponder the meaning of the universe or possibly just a very good few days.
The reason I am in Wales is to do a talk at the University of Aberystwyth, which I did tonight. Beforehand I had a tour of this facility. Aberystwyth is well out in the sticks — for its size (which is not large), the most isolated town in Britain — and thus has a focus on rural and agricultural research rather than, say, heavy engineering. But that doesn’t mean high technology is just something other people do. This is a near-fully automated robot greenhouse, full of computer imaging equipment and automated water dispensing pipes. And you thought growing your food was just a matter of getting the weather right…
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!!
Sometimes you don’t even realise you’ve got the shot until it’s been sitting on your camera all day then you upload it. This was just a general scene but once I saw how glorious her hair was she became its obvious subject. Had to crop it down a lot, hence its loss of sharpness and increased grain — but that’s then helped by going monochrome.
Still occasionally to be seen on small, provincial British railways. This monster bombed through Hebden Bridge station slightly in advance of the 8:05 to Manchester, headed for unknown places.
I know we were here less than a week ago, with the dragon, but he’s moved on, and this was the best picture I got today to celebrate a strange atmospheric condition in Manchester this morning; an odd blue cast to the light, a weird dryness in the air and a burning yellow ball above, giving nostalgic reminders of times long past. It was very pleasant. I like here how the Corn Exchange is reflected in the glass.
Most of 2016 so far has been two things — firstly, lacking in any light (so few sunny days…), and second, very housebound, which this picture in its way is intended to represent. However, the latter limitation, at least, is about to change, with it being quite feasible that over the next four weeks only three pictures will have to be taken in Hebden Bridge. The weather…. well, I can be less sure about that.
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.
Being 42 