According to my diary today was the ‘first day of autumn’, but although it was rather windy, summer seems to still be with us for now. I liked this tree for its two-pronged appearance, like a couple of arms reaching out over the path, in the woods near Mytholmroyd.
Time for a forage….. No, I’m not telling you exactly where this stash is. Somewhere in Hebden Bridge. I will say no more.
No, I won’t do it. I won’t stay cowering at home, plugged into the Matrix and denied the world outside. My physical and mental health — the things we’re supposed to care about, right? — these are too important. And most of the woods and parks that I am frequenting are pretty busy with other people, suggesting that these souls, at least, have taken the same decision. It is not for the gaggle of failed journalists and lobbyists for the tobacco industry who got themselves elected about a year ago to tell us what is healthy and what is not.
Who doesn’t love the colours in autumn, a last hurrah before the greyness of winter. I like the remaining green on this shot and the sinuous branch, with its two duck-heads.
Not pictured on this shot: vast numbers of people. The woods of Hardcastle Crags were heaving today. Because, if you take away other normal weekend entertainments, people will do what they must in order to stay physically and mentally healthy, which is to get out of the house to wherever is available. Thus, congregating closer together than they would otherwise have done, and defeating the object of this latest stupid, mindless, arbitrary attempt at social control.
Another day celebrating green-ness, for there is not a great deal else to see at the moment. At least the sun is back out.
Day 10 of house arrest. Amongst the various ways in which this virus is causing trauma to the human world is the added strain it is putting on our communications infrastructure. WordPress seems to presently allow me to upload photos at around noon each day, but at no other times. And lower-resolution pictures are the only ones getting up there. Right now, it’s the way it is.
But at least there is no need to go out panic buying salad leaves at the moment. I have found the wild garlic motherlode a few hundred yards from home. All edible and delicious.
My last full day here: my journey home starts tomorrow. Finally, a chance to get out into the Indonesian landscape (at least, photographically) with a trip to Candi Gedong Songo, or “Nine Temples Park”, a very beautiful slice of woodland way up in the hills. Although whoever named the place wasn’t very good at counting, as we followed the paths faithfully yet definitely only found five temples. Nevertheless they were very attractive, Hindu shrines from way back.
When I was growing up in Sussex there were many of these ‘sunken lanes’ around the place and I guess I never really gave them much thought. But seeing a track like this, embedded between two earthen banks, is a sign that the way is of great antiquity. Their sunken nature is not natural, it is the result of erosion, taking place as people and livestock use the track over hundreds and, probably, thousands of years, over and over.
While on a walk in the South Downs today (bagging a County Top), I turned a corner and was suddenly confronted by this most magnificent example. Actually I’m surprised the shot ended up with so much light in it, because to my eyes this was a dark, enclosed tunnel through the landscape, exactly the kind of place where you can picture Frodo and his mates hiding from the Black Rider early on in Lord of the Rings. It’s called Tennyson’s Lane in tribute to the poet who had a house nearby, and in 1905 Arthur Paterson wrote the following about it, words that are still true today:
Trees meet overhead, copsewood surrounds it, and later, it is hedged by high sandy banks thickly overgrown with plant and scrub; squirrels and rabbits, and all other small woodland creatures, disport themselves over it. It twists and turns, and to the stranger appears to lead nowhere in particular.
Two milestones today. First, this is Clare’s 100th appearance on the blog: thus, an (easily enough calculated) average of once every 29.22 days, or over once per month. Well, I did marry the woman — and it seems to have been a good move.
Second; 8 x 365 = 2,920, plus two more for Feb 29th 2012 and 2016. Thus, 2,922 days marks the end of my eighth full year of doing this blog. Tomorrow is my birthday. I started the blog on my 42nd birthday…. so you do the maths.
As well as a profusion of fruit this year does seem to have produced larger-than-usual amounts of fungi. I don’t know what species is this butter-coloured toadstool, but I liked the way one of them had turned up its edges and thus allowed a little pool of water to gather at the top, that then glinted in what sunlight had managed to push through the trees above. Like a little bird-bath in a garden. The fairies gather…
