A Wainwright walk: the last of my summer holiday. (See my other blog for the technicalities.) A struggle with pre-holiday-weekend traffic that I should have anticipated, and a long journey for what was a couple of hours of light exercise. But the views from the summit of Faulds Brow were very fine. Here, the direction is north-west, the city in the background, Carlisle.
The 2020-21 academic year has been buggered about with, and broken, and (for me) unusually extended — but as of this afternoon, at about 3pm, it is OVER. I am on holiday. Could say ‘feels good’. The reality — more like this.
Could not decide between two photos which both epitomised this uneventful and almost totally energy-free day. But the other one was some knitting project of C’s (we age, we age….) that would have taken too much explanation. The flaked-out dog — and its tether to an unseen owner — these are clearer illustrations.
“I don’t know who you are, but play with me anyway! Look, I have the Thing ready!”
Sunday afternoon — in a pub beer garden once again. Well, it’s still a novelty, and the sun is still shining.
The last time anyone other than myself or Joe was depicted on the blog was 4th January, the afternoon before Bojo the Clown put us all under house arrest again. Since then, portrait opportunities have been very rare. This can almost be considered a crowd by recent standards. Though even the dog now takes its lead from us and remains apart. Who’s going to actually start to rebuild the bridges? It won’t just happen.
The reason I came to Bath was to bag another of my County Top walks (see my other blog), the morbidly-named Hanging Hill. That was duly collected a few miles after taking this shot, from the ascent of Penn Hill, a slope of mud with a decent view of the city. During this climb I passed this dog walker, and his companion who seemed for some time to have decided that he was ditching his owner in favour of this new and more interesting person. You can’t just tell them you prefer cats, can you?
Friday market, Hebden Bridge. Things for sale: boots, bags, boxes…. and this dog perhaps? Or maybe it was just selling off a few of its spare possessions. There was no human in sight.
Now the pubs have reopened, dogs are once again obliged to spend their Sundays wondering why their owners are not letting them just clamber over everyone else in the beer garden. This one has given up on it all, and decided just to keep a close eye on the piece of litter: before it dozed off, anyway.
Marley is the latest candidate for ‘honorary pub dog’ at the Railway, and here takes a brief rest while eyeing up the humans, making his strategic decisions as to which might be amenable to the offering of treats and affection.
Reggie and Annie are as true a couple as I have ever met. Somewhat out of focus though it is, I like this photo because it demonstrates that fact.
Being 42 