Coppice pond patterns

It can be hard to find attractive photos when we seem to be having so many dull and drizzly days. I ventured up to the Bingley St Ives estate but was uninspired until I started taking pictures of the ripples on the water in the Coppice Pond. Even then, I felt they needed a little artistry.

Canine capers

A couple at my church have started hosting 'a leisurely stroll', once a month, up at the nearby St Ives estate. They have a dog to walk regularly, so they had the idea to invite other people along (with or without dogs) to stroll, chat and generally enjoy the scenery and company. I thought that was a lovely idea, so I joined them this month.

Most of the time, I personally quite like walking alone (though I'm careful where I go). Some people really enjoy an occasional walk but find walking alone daunting, and not everyone has the level of fitness needed to join a rambling group. This 'leisurely stroll' idea neatly fills the gap.

The only one that wasn't 'strolling' was Maisie the dog, a young Labrador/Spaniel cross, who simply bounced around in perpetual motion and must have done at least ten times the mileage that we did! She got particularly excited chasing butterflies among the heather, which is in full bloom now. (Note to self: must plan a walk over Haworth way to make the most of it. The intense purple only lasts a month or so.)

The St Ives estate was looking good in the summer sunshine. It's a huge area of grassland, woodland, lake and moor, with a golf course meandering through the middle. The circular perimeter walk is probably a good six miles in total, and the section we did was about three miles.

I had a slightly ulterior motive...
I have never had a dog. I didn't grow up with one and, though I don't actively dislike them, I am fairly neutral around them. I'm slightly put off by houses that have a distinctly 'doggy' smell - plus I can't bear the thought of having to carry a poo bag on every single walk! My daughter, however, has always harboured a wish for a dog and now she and her family have decided to take the plunge. They are getting a Cockapoo puppy (Spaniel/Poodle cross) in September - so I'm going to have to get used to having a granddog around. Taking the walk with Maisie at least allowed me to observe from a slight distance and get a little more accustomed to doggy company.

Spring notes for Easter Day

Photographs from a walk around the St Ives Estate above Bingley, on a fine, warm spring day. There are plenty of signs of spring, though everything goes at its own pace.

Primroses in the hedgerows:

 Trees bursting into leaf (this one's a beech, I think):

whilst the oaks are slower to respond to the warm sun:

I'm always glad that our northern hemisphere's spring coincides with the Easter festival. 

There's tangible evidence of Christ's resurrection power all around. 

HAPPY EASTER! 

Mist and trees

A dull and misty day and an attractive stand of young trees. It seemed to want to be photographed and I think a black and white conversion with a fairly light touch suits it quite well. I'd have been happier without the encroaching branches top right but I couldn't easily find a viewpoint that excluded them. Walking with a non-photographer friend, there was a limit to how long I could 'faff about' choosing my spot!

Unremarkable scenes

I've been inspired in the past year by a photographer called Lizzie Shepherd, who is based in Yorkshire. She exhibited at 'Art in the Pen' in Skipton last summer and I've been to a couple of talks and presentations she has given, including one at the camera club I belong to. I find her work intriguing. She is technically superb and compositionally precise but, along with the detail, there is often a soft, almost ephemeral, quality to her images that I really like. I find the mixture of precision and gentleness to be very beguiling. She often photographs the kinds of scenes that I find myself intuitively drawn to. Some of her work is very subtle, what she herself calls 'unremarkable scenes' - but the more I look at them, the more I see. My own work is nowhere near her league (nor is my equipment!) but nevertheless she inspires me.

The photo above is what I'd call an unremarkable scene. It was taken on a walk round Bingley St Ives estate on a really dull, dreary and misty day. (Not the kind of mist that enlivens a scene!) I'd passed this way many times before but never really noticed the spiral sculpture. Something about the light that day drew attention to it. For some reason that I am struggling to grasp, I really like this photo: the subtle colours, the way the spiral is counterbalanced by the little fir tree on the left, the tilt of the sculpture echoed by the tilt of that birch trunk, the horizontal branches that bring your eye round... Not everybody's cup of tea, I know, but I like it.

Disease in the forest

All the work they did in clearing rhododendrons (see my post HERE) last winter, up at Bingley St Ives, appears to have had little effect. The fungal disease (Phytophthora Ramorum) must have spread to the conifers. Now there is a massive programme of felling trees. The main car park is closed, all but for a small section, to allow access; machinery and diggers are up in the woods.

Frozen

In the recent spell of bitterly cold weather, the Coppice Pond at Bingley St Ives froze right over. There were a couple of patches of clear water at the edges, where trees and vegetation had trapped some slightly warmer air. The ducks congregated on those but the swans were slipping and sliding on the ice and looking fairly bemused.

I'd had a long and chilly walk so it was wonderful to find the little café on the estate was open. A hot, sweet latte fortified me enough for the return leg home.

A dusting of snow

Whilst much of the country - Wales, the Midlands and the South West - had a huge dumping of snow last weekend, Yorkshire escaped with a light dusting. I was somewhat disappointed. More had been forecast and I didn't have to go anywhere, so I was hoping for the chance of a walk and some snow photos. It's been several years since we had any decent coverage. Saltaire, in the valley, had barely a few flakes but it has been below freezing ever since so the ice hasn't really melted. In the end, I took a walk up Altar Lane in Bingley, which goes high enough for the scene to look passably Christmassy.

Tangle

A tangle of rhododendron stems looked like a sculpture... or serpents... or dancers, to me. There's something 'other worldly' about them.

A walk in the woods

A walk in the woods, around the Bingley St Ives estate. Signs of autumn are very visible.

Ducks

I didn't take many photos at the Coppice Pond this time, as it was such a dull day with very low light. The lake, rather attractive in brighter conditions (see here), can look very bleak in poor weather. Even the ducks seemed a bit dejected, hanging around the edge in little groups. 

My friend introduced me to this hidden pathway, where a channel 'ducks' under an unusual old footbridge and then a sturdier bridge behind it that carries the estate driveway. I can only assume that at one time the channel was a water course. The Coppice Pond was a feeder lake for a fulling mill that stood to the east of the water. 

Burning a pest

Another day, a different friend, another good (five mile) circular walk up the hill to Bingley St Ives, around the Coppice Pond and back. On the way we saw woodsmen (woodspeople?) burning rhododendrons. A notice said that this was Phytophthora Ramorum control, containment action ordered by DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I don't know anything about it, other than what I can find on good old Google. It says Phytophthora Ramorum is a fungal disease that affects trees: oaks in North America but conifers like larch are more usually affected here. It is spread by spores and infected trees have to be felled. Rhododendrons are apparently being cleared since they can be affected too. They are an attractive but also invasive pest in our woodlands and action has been taken for many years to try and limit their spread, but this fungal pathogen must have increased the urgency for defensive action. This area of England is high risk for the disease and the work that we observed at St Ives was in a grove of conifers.

Look up...

... and be transported.

Scarface

'What you lookin' at?'

The rather alarming face of a chainsaw sculpture, one of several scattered around the woods on the Bingley St Ives estate.

Evening light

Evening light on the Coppice Pond at Bingley St Ives. A swan doing the usual thing, swimming rapidly away from my camera... Not perfectly positioned therefore - but never mind.

Coppice Pond green

That weather when you set off for work early, in a thick coat, boots and gloves - and it's chilly. But when you set off for home in the late afternoon, everyone out there is in shorts and flip-flops...

There were just a couple of days like that recently, before it reverted to much colder temperatures generally (and even snow, as I mentioned yesterday!). The warm evenings seemed too good to miss, so one day when I arrived home I hopped straight in the car and drove up to the nearby Bingley St Ives estate. I took a walk through the woods and around the Coppice Pond and sloughed off that 'office feeling' in the fresh air and late afternoon sunshine. It's a lovely walk and the fresh greens are amazing, although I'm not sure all that growth in the lake is healthy.

Faded forest

I desperately need to go out with my camera and get some photos. I'm running out of 'stock'. It's always a tricky time of year, when the evenings are dark by the time I get home and the weather often not conducive to walks and photography. I have been experimenting with a few processing effects on some images. I quite liked this faded forest, though it didn't really turn out the way I was trying to make it look.

Pylon power

Mostly I try to avoid photographing the poles and wires that adorn our landscapes, preferring to paint a more idyllic scene. Sometimes you can't avoid them - and just occasionally they seem worthy of a starring role for themselves.

Advice from a tree

Advice from a tree:

Stand tall and proud

Think long term

Embrace with joy the changing seasons

Remember your roots

Drink plenty of water

Be content with your natural beauty

Be flexible

Enjoy the view

Taken from a poem by Ilan Shamir

Bingley's leafy avenues

The Bingley St Ives estate is on a hill and from some points along the perimeter paths there are good views of the surrounding valleys. Here, we are looking over towards the 'posher' residential parts of Bingley: substantial houses built along leafy avenues. The centre of this little town is further to the right. Up on the hillside you can just see several big buildings peeping over the trees. These were once the halls of residence for a teacher training college. The college closed a long time ago and the halls are now converted into luxurious apartments.