‘Pioneer Village’ really is the name of this district, with the building on which the letters are sat being the Toronto Subway station of that name. But I doubt the pioneers, of whatever nation, who first explored the regions north of Lake Ontario quite anticipated their village would end up looking like this. Decent sunset, though.
A sign of divine intervention above Lake Ontario this afternoon? Well, more likely explained by the fact that over there lies Billy Bishop Airport, Toronto’s downtown terminal for domestic flights. Something to look at, either way.
Another depressing day of rain. I’m glad I’m off out of here on Thursday, yet it looks like I am going to miss out on spring entirely, as it certainly hasn’t started here yet. At least my penultimate evening at home was clear: good enough to see Jupiter, anyway, which pops into the shot to the right of the mill tower. But it seems it won’t last.
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.
Rainbows are, technically, optical illusions, but they are illusions that the camera also sees. This one was definitely touching earth somewhere around the Old Lees Road/Hurst Road area of Hebden Bridge this afternoon. The geese wouldn’t have seen it though; they were flying in the opposite direction.
OK, it’s another beach (after Monday), but Scotland is a country that does very good beaches — they’re just not very warm. This becomes the northernmost picture so far taken in the UK, a position it will retain until I finally make it to Shetland or Orkney. It will probably forever remain the northernmost picture taken on the mainland of Great Britain, at around 58º 36′ N.
A bit of a cheap shot perhaps, but when one spends most of the day on a motorway, there aren’t always many opportunities. This does give a reasonable impression of the weather conditions in which the drive was done. Abington has become a ‘service station of choice’, purely because of timing: by the time we reach there, somewhere in the wilds of South Lanarkshire, there always seems to be the need for a drink, or lunch, or a pee. Sometimes all three.
Off it goes across the Irish Sea, from Heysham, the sea wall of which I was stood on as I took this shot. The Isle of Man has not yet featured on this blog although I am due a visit at some point, to bag its County Top. Maybe next year… there is still time in my life, I feel.
Had things turned out differently I might have been in the Balkans today, but even though they did not, I am not bothered by this — which would not have been the case ten years ago. I guess I am more attuned to the enjoyment that can be had from the local area these days. Yes, even Rochdale railway station — like the rest of the region, bathed in cold but magnificent weather.
Today I, and around 250 other people, walked from Arnside to Grange-over-Sands — an easy, flat walk of about 5.5 miles. The complication is that between these two places lies the northern reach of Morecambe Bay, the largest expanse of intertidal land in Great Britain. But in that also lay the fun of the day — the chance to (safely) get a couple of miles away from permanently dry land, into a space that is neither one thing nor the other, a limbo state between land and sea — with a healthy dose of sky, too.
I deliberately cranked up the contrast on this shot because I like the way that all the people look like dashes of paint descending from a horizon that is insubstantial but definitely there. As if we are trapped within a sheet of glass, aware of the heavens above us but unable to reach them.
Being 42 