This shot is taken a few hundred yards down the canal from the one captured on Friday, and as is very clear, there’s been a considerable thaw in the meantime. But there remain remnants of ice on the water, sublimating these tendrils into the far warmer air.
Six shots in a row in Hebden Bridge, and eight of the last nine. There’ll be variety tomorrow though.
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.
Let’s get on with another year, shall we? Three fowl (I assume, one duck, two geese) drifting by serenely on the Rochdale Canal is not any metaphor for life that I can think of, but it is a way of representing a peaceful (birth)day.
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.
More of a mood piece than anything else: a pleasant, springlike, Easter Saturday spent (in part) ambling along the Rochdale Canal at Smithy Bridge. Here, we are about half way between Hebden Bridge and Manchester; keep going long enough and the entire canal may get documented on here eventually.
Sometimes in my more romantic fantasies of downsizing I wonder what it would be like to live on one of the barges on the Rochdale Canal — but these thoughts never last all that long before I think of the music and movie collections. If I really wanted to do it I’d probably already be doing it. The immediate neighbours would be Canada geese, too.
Have I yet done 2021’s duckling/gosling pic? No? Well, here you are then. These balls of fluff can get up to a decent speed in the water, you have to give them that.
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.
Amongst its other functions, this blog serves to record the weather patterns, and neither of the last two winters (2018/19, 19/20) have seen any real snow. The last truly white period, at least where I have been, was in March 2018. Today wasn’t a frozen apocalypse, but it did mean that 2021 has already seen more snow in Hebden Bridge — or, here, Mytholmroyd, just down the road — than the last two calendar years combined. I’m not objecting. It does provide good photography material.
Misty weather discouraged a walk up anywhere high, but a nine-mile stroll along the Rochdale Canal to Todmorden and back at least stretched the legs today. While not really visible on this shot, this boat did have the remnants of a ‘For Sale’ sign painted on the side; I guess by now it’s probably quite a bargain, if you’re prepared to do the salvage work.
Being 42 