The annual outcrop of Canada goslings is usually good for a pic, and so it proves again in 2023. This was one of a family of four — six if you count the watchful parents — who at the moment seem to have set up home on the canalside marina.
I got out of the house, though as you can see, it isn’t getting any warmer. Winter 21-22 was nothing to speak of in the UK, but the 22-23 version has some bite.
Hardly a great photo technically, and converted to black and white as much to conceal deficiencies as any other reason. But it does suggest that when there is a boat in the Canal Street lock in Manchester city centre, this is often the most interesting thing to see on the walk into work. It’s nice that this old transport system is still used: not everything useful has to be hyper-efficient.
It’s always nice to see Canal Street, in the centre of Manchester, actively live up to its name. Lock open, rather than lockdown. Perhaps I could have stood a bit to the left and made this a more symmetrical shot, but never mind. The guy at the gate has busted the photographer.
Yes, I would rather the box was not there. But one can’t have everything. Otherwise this rain/sun combination did catch my eye as I came home early from work — very early, but then again, it is Friday.
It’s nice to be reminded that the canal that runs through the very centre of Manchester still operates properly, a couple of hundred years after it was first built; and as ever, shots like these also remind me that this is the same canal, the Rochdale Canal, as runs through Hebden Bridge. So this boat could have been chugging through my home town a week or so ago. I imagine a few things about this scene have changed since the 1820s, however.
One of those highly uneventful days when even everyday scenes are hard to come by. Still, the sun shone, and on such a day, drifting along the canal has a certain appeal, whether you’re human and have to use artificial contraptions to do so, or a goose, who can just use what nature provides.
The first four-in-a-row for Hebden Bridge since June — the 14th to the 17th June, in fact. Yes, I record these things. I did get a bit further away from home today than on the last two days.
Here, I like the way the red and blue theme is repeated both on the barges and the reflections of the windows in the water. The ducks are a bonus, really.
A number of Hebden Bridge’s residents live on canal barges like these and I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to do so on a permanent basis. I’ve been on a couple of the boats and they are cosy, but I definitely don’t think it’s suited for anyone that has a really serious hoarding habit, which probably rules out me and (more especially) the wife. A sunny day today, but chilly, hence the stove bring run here at full operation.
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.
Being 42 