Didn’t even take a photo today until after the sun went down, which at this time of year is pretty early, and it’s going to get earlier yet. The evening was a very damp one, and hopefully this shot of the canal towpath reflects that (pun not intended).
The weather was forecast to deteriorate today but it seemed alright to me. A very busy week comes to a close with a very pleasant evening.
An uneventful day, but at least the canal in Hebden Bridge usually comes up with some kind of animated scene, particularly at the moment when the summer tourist traffic is coming through. This family seemed proficient enough at working the lock. I wonder if the kid realises that two hundred years ago, all things being equal, he’d have been doing that full-time.
Canal Street in Manchester is best known for being the street in the midst of the Gay Village; but it does actually still have a canal beside it. This is probably the first time I have seen a working boat on it. If you barge it for long enough, by the way, in a generally northerly direction, this is also the canal that goes through Hebden Bridge, as seen many times on this blog in the past.
This doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s kind of impressive. The dry dock at Hebden Bridge marina is fully functional, and as you can see, well placed for a half-decent pub.
So here we are. It would have been nice to get a shot of something highly significant, or a brilliant capture, to mark day 1,000 of this blog, but while a family of Canada geese is maybe not something one would expect to see in Manchester city centre, like this blog’s previous 999 pictures it’s just a scene from a life.
I don’t go out of the way to get these, anything you see on this blog is just something I have passed in the course of my day. And that’s why I’m still doing it — it’s the same impulse that has kept me writing a personal diary for thirty years, it’s the recording that is the point. Thank you for making it to day 1,000 with me — as far as I can predict, I will be back tomorrow.
As it is a nice round number, I have also updated the ‘Best of the Rest‘ and Stats pages.
First Hebden Bridge picture in 11 days, on a very pleasant April evening. Did I mention I’m now off work until after Easter? Fine by me.
A reasonable proportion of the population of Hebden Bridge live on the water, specifically, the Rochdale Canal. These private moorings spread along the canal for a few hundred yards in the direction of Mytholmroyd (to where I was walking this morning, dodging the muddy puddles on the towpath).
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.
You have seen this scene before on the blog (like here, for example), but despite my desire to avoid repetition, it’s a frequently passed view and hard to resist it sometimes. Look to the east as you pass over the canal bridge near Hebden Bridge railway station — you’ll see it.
Being 42 