Once more I was in the work cocoon — specifically, the email cocoon — all day, only emerging as the skies looked like this. Another day, then, where there was not much to photograph, but at least it’s the weekend.
The Cardiff Bay barrage was built in the 1990s, at huge expense, specifically to get rid of what were perceived as unattractive mudflats, and thus prepare the land for colonisation by the Great God Commerce: which seems to have subsequently taken place. It’s not an unattractive piece of engineering, I guess. Out there is the island of Flat Holm, which still counts as Wales, so this isn’t another shot that depicts the land of more than one country. (There have been three of these: two with England and Wales (both around the Dee Estuary), and one with England and France.)
This statement will seem disagreeable to some but I actually quite like wind farms. The ones above the upper Calder Valley, as seen here from the Long Causeway road that links Hebden Bridge and Burnley across the moors, are not unattractive.
Football matches are finishing later and later, now this whole ‘add on every second that players spend rolling around on the floor’ thing has kicked in. Rochdale v Chesterfield is still going on behind me at this point, even at 10pm, but I had to leave before the end to catch the train. Anyway, all of this is irrelevant to what I think is quite a pleasing shot of the moon riding on its little cloud.
As seen from the Walthamstow Travelodge, looking south. Yes, I’m in London again. I like London. There are things to do here.
This is the kind of photo that only really works if I’ve got the pitch truly horizontal; I think I have. There wasn’t much else to this venue apart from this view taken as I was leaving, but it sums it up reasonably well.
Back on November 4th 2020 I stood under the south end of the Humber Bridge — the right-hand end as this picture shows it — and took this shot. It was a day of considerably nicer weather than today, despite this being August. Anyway, this gigantic construction can join the Forth Bridge and Tay Bridge as great bridges to have appeared twice. I believe that this one is so long that the two stanchions are slightly out of parallel with each other, to allow for the curvature of the Earth, and I wonder whether you might even be able to see that on this shot, though probably that’s my imagination.
After 19 different places in 23 days, London becomes the first location to make it on two days in a row since the beginning of July. This was actually the first photo I took today. While intending that my wanderings around parts of the East End of London would lead to some good photo opportunities — cobbled streets, urchins picking whelks out from mudbanks on the Thames, that kind of thing — most of it looks like this these days.
Let’s permit Scotland to offer up its combination of mountain and seascape one more time before we have to head home. The Beauly Firth is the far end of the Moray Firth; this shot is looking inland, to the Highlands beyond. And yes, somewhere over there it is raining.
This summed up the weather today: some fine spells but the next bout of rain was never very far away. It also sums up the fact that I was at home and am going to remain here for much of the next eight weeks, so get used to photos of Hebden Bridge.
