Shout for joy

I know Saltaire so well and yet I still find myself stopping in my tracks sometimes, as I notice something 'new'. On this occasion it was suddenly seeing the vibrant yellow leaves of a tree, standing out above the rooftops of the village. The tree must always be there but its bright autumn colour on an otherwise dull day made it stand out like a shout of joy.

A little exploration revealed the tree to be one of the few remaining tall trees in the village centre, tucked away in the garden of the old school building, now part of Shipley college.

With eyes to see

From the beauty of my two favourite trees, stubbornly clinging on to a tracery of bronzed foliage, to the frost-etched leaves that had fallen onto a bench alongside the canal...

to an escaped garden daisy, eager to catch the weak rays of an autumn morning sun. Our world - troubled and threatened though it may be - is still full of riches, for those that have eyes to see,

On the edge

What with my cataract surgery and the endless rain, I've stayed close to home for most of November. Thankfully this area has not suffered floods, though further south around Doncaster the flooding has been catastrophic. After a while, my need just to get out and breathe the fresh air got the better of me so I ventured up to the top of Shipley Glen for a walk along the edge. Muddy and damp it may have been but I enjoyed it. The trees still held a little autumn colour. Some on the hillside are tall enough nowadays to block the view but every now and again a vista opens up and you can see across to the other side of the Aire valley.

More gold

Autumn seemed to start a little early but slowly this year. Then, as the nights got colder, we did see some wonderful colour develop. One of the best places locally to enjoy the varied hues is along the stretch of canal that goes through Hirst Wood. It's a pleasant circular walk of a mere three miles to go out from Saltaire along the canal towpath and return through the ancient woodland itself. Again, these are just phone snaps, but I think they still show how lovely it all looked. With the benefit of cataract surgery (and really appreciating the privilege of having it done on the NHS, so skilfully and with so little fuss) I am looking around me with a renewed sense of awe and gratitude for the glorious world we live in.

All is pure gold

So... I hope you enjoyed my holiday photos - and here I am back again, posting 'live' and with photos I've taken over the past couple of weeks. Much of November has been spent taking care of my eye after the cataract surgery. Endless amounts of eye drops to apply! It was all extremely easy and painless though. I was amazed that the surgery itself only took about 15 minutes and was quite fascinating, watching a kaleidoscope of lights and colours as my old lens was swapped out for a new one. Once the anaesthetic wore off and my pupil returned to a normal size, I found I could see perfectly well with my existing glasses. There are various warnings against driving and a plethora of other things: no dusting or hoovering (yay!); no lifting; no swimming; no makeup or creams on face; careful hair washing; no rubbing your eyes; try to avoid coughing and sneezing! Everything does look sharper and brighter, especially if I close the other eye (which in comparison now makes everything look rather yellowed). The best bit is that lights at night, which were very glaring, now look much more bearable, so that will make driving after dark a great deal safer. In January, I've to go through the whole procedure again with my other eye so it will be weeks yet before it all settles down enough to get my eyes tested to see if I really need glasses, and if so whether I need a new prescription.

Shortly after the op, I gave in to a head cold that has been nudging at me for ages. I didn't want to sneeze in the middle of the delicate surgery (!) and I'd managed to keep it at bay beforehand with a mix of vitamins, echinacea and antiseptic gargles. It never got fully scared off, so I decided to let it overtake me and snuggled up with a few good books and the TV for a few days, sniffling and dozing. Every now and again, I think, one just needs to stop and rest so that's what I've been doing. I feel much better now.

I left my camera behind on the short walks I've done, just using my phone to take photos. One day I wandered in the grounds of Saltaire's URC church, alongside the canal. There are some wonderful, mature beech trees there so the ground was literally a carpet of gold. Adjacent to the churchyard, the buildings that make up the old stable block (see above), which are just cottages really, look from this angle rather like a grand mansion. Sir Titus Salt certainly had a bold vision for his village, and we still reap the benefit more than a century and a half later.

Puppy in the woods

I had a day over at my daughter's house, looking after my grandchildren - and (rather scarily!) my new grand-dog - as the girls were off school for half-term and their parents were both working. When my daughter got home, we took the puppy, Cookie, for a walk in the woods. That's a very new experience for me, as I've never had a dog, ever. They are training him and taking him to puppy classes, so he's beginning to learn how to behave. He is allowed off the lead a little now, though cautiously, as he's still a bit unpredictable. He responds quite well to his 'mum' and 'dad', though less well to me. I suppose he isn't used to my voice and I'm not used to him so I guess my anxiety is discernable. The woods around their house are beautiful and the view from their front windows, over the Calder valley, is currently stunning with all the autumn golds.

It's not often I get a photo of me these days. My daughter takes the credit for these two, taken on her phone and used with her permission.

Just with my phone

I finally treated myself to a new phone, after having a scare when my old one refused to charge up for a while. The renewed battery life alone has made it worth the expense! It has a much better camera than the old phone too, so I decided I'd leave my Fuji behind when I went for a walk recently and just use the phone. It's pretty good. Though some of the images don't look quite pin sharp to me, it renders colours well. It has a wider angle lens than my usual Fuji lens, so big views like the one above, of Roberts Park from the footbridge, are easier to take. There is lots to experiment with; I expect I'll get the hang of it eventually. 

It was a glorious autumn day. After several days of continual rain, the river was very full and the weirs were dramatic. 

Tree colour has come on a lot in the last week or so too. It all looked beautiful along the promenade, around the bandstand.

Up the reds

I paid another visit to the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr, to see what they look like as autumn gathers pace. Disappointingly, the sun never really broke through the cloud cover whilst I was there. The views were, however, enlivened by some bright red shrubs dotted about. It's surprising how much the colour red adds impact to photos. I read somewhere that a high percentage of photos that win competitions have a pop of red in them. I don't think these are competition winning standard but we can enjoy them anyway.

Skipton Castle Woods

My camera club had our last outing of the season, meeting up in Skipton to explore the woods behind Skipton Castle. As I've mentioned before in other posts, the Springs Branch of the Leeds-Liverpool canal passes behind the castle (see left) for about half a mile. It was built for the Earl of Thanet in 1773 to transport limestone from his quarry, which was brought by tram through the woods and dropped down chutes into canal barges. The busy industrial history of this area is long gone and it's now a peaceful oasis behind the town of Skipton. The waterfall is nothing more exciting than a large drainage ditch that pours into Eller Beck, alongside the canal. After all the rain we've had, there was a lot of water.                                     

Up until recently, the Springs Branch canal was still navigable and a small boat conducted tours up here from the marina in central Skipton. A huge rockfall from underneath the castle has now blocked the canal, and it doesn't look as though it could be reopened without a lot of expense. Rather worrying too, is that the fall was below the foundations of Skipton Castle on the crag above. Nasty! 

The 9' high willow sculpture The Huntress looks even better against the autumn leaves than it did in March when I last walked here. A little further along, Eller Beck falls away in a ravine and the ground was covered in fallen leaves. Autumn seems to be hastening on.

Fungi

Fungus isn't something I've taken a lot of notice of in the past, unless I saw those traditional 'fairy' toadstools, the white-spotted red fly agarics. I've been reading recently how the ecosystem of a wood works, and how trees are linked by microscopic fungal networks, dubbed the 'wood wide web'. It's rather magical, so I decided to be more observant as I walked through Hirst Woods, to see how many fungi I could spot. At first I couldn't see any, but I gradually became more attuned and started to notice them, on dead wood and on living trees too. I didn't see any of the red ones, but there were quite a few different types. It's even harder for a novice to identify them than spot them though... I've tried googling different things but it's hard to be sure whether they are the same. I don't place any degree of trust in my ID-ing! There's one called 'hairy curtain crust' which looks similar to the one in the top photo. Don't they have wonderful names?

Those above are similar but not, I think, the same as those below. The top ones were tiny, the colour of shiny little bread buns and I'm not sure what they were - possibly sulphur tufts? The ones below, slightly bigger, are possibly Glistening inkcaps, as they appear to have a bit of a powdery coating.

Those below, similar shape, different colour... Might be angel's bonnet?

I thought immediately that the fungus below looked like a horse's hoof - and that, I think, is what it is called. A funny-looking thing...

The last one is another bracket fungus, possibly turkey tail.

It seems, in order to make a more positive identification, I would have to be much more careful to note the type of wood the fungus is growing on, the underside, the stem... all sorts of characteristics. I didn't touch any of them! I would not be sure which are poisonous and I certainly don't want to die from a walk in the woods. It did make me think I might join an organised 'fungus foray' though. There is a lot of secret life in those woods...

Suddenly autumn

Back home after my holiday and it seems to be taking me a while to 'get going' again. In the meantime, autumn has suddenly arrived. So far, the tones are subdued but we had a colder night last night and a few frosts might just boost the colours. I thought I'd better have a walk, just to see how things looked. It was peaceful as always along the canal, with a lone fisherman and a few dog walkers. I caught up with those ladies and their dogs as they stopped beside the lock. I was amused, as one of them - indicating the rather large and heavy looking black bags they were carrying - assured me they were bags of conkers and not dog poo! I'd not even thought about it.

The colour in Hirst Wood was muted, apart from a few sprays of beech leaves that often seem especially vibrant.

The enchanted wood

Mostly I think nature does a grand job without any enhancement. Just occasionally I feel like experimenting a bit and this is a multi-layered image. I combined a spray of autumn leaves and a texture, overlaid on the woodland image below (which by itself is rather boring really).  The result (above) has, for me, a more mystical and enchanted feel than the original. I appreciate such images aren't everyone's cup of tea but it's fun trying something new. 

I've been reluctant to say farewell to autumn, but I have to accept that it's over for another year and winter is getting well-established! 

Over my dead body

My habitual local walks are mostly in the valley bottom along the canal and river, or on the north side up towards Baildon Moor. There are two main roads between me and the south side of the valley. Once those are negotiated, however, there are some equally pleasant walks to be had. Some of the area is known as Northcliffe Park: land that was gifted in 1920 by Henry Norman Rae MP to be used as a public park 'in perpetuity' by the people of Shipley. It has gardens, allotments, a plateau of open grassland and a steep-sided wooded valley - varied terrain that makes it rewarding to explore.

My favourite bits are the long tree-lined walk (above) and the path down into and through the woods. That end of the park adjoins a golf course. Golfers cross the ravine on the metal bridge in the picture below.

The news that Northcliffe Park is on a list of potential sites for a new crematorium has caused considerable consternation locally. There have been petitions, demonstrations and many people being very vocal, saying that the park was specifically gifted for recreation and a crematorium would breach that pledge.
"A new crematorium? ... Over my dead body!"

Judy Woods

I have some friends who live at the other side of the city, in south Bradford. We had long planned to visit their local beauty spot of Judy Woods, so despite it being a damp, dull and rather misty day we went for a walk. It's a large area of ancient woodland (in fact several different areas of woodland) now surrounded by the city suburbs. Its present tranquillity gives little hint of its history as a coal and ironstone mining area in the 18th and 19th century. Careful exploration reveals the remains of bell pits and waggon trackways, as well as packhorse routes that crisscross the area. The nearby Low Moor Ironworks, founded in the 1780s (and now closed), produced high quality iron. They manufactured cannons that were used in the Battle of Waterloo (as well as the two now in Saltaire's Roberts Park - see HERE) and later their iron was used for rail locomotive wheels.

The woods have been known by many names. Their present title of Judy Woods refers to a lady called Judy North, whose husband ran a 'pleasure garden' in part of the woods in the 1850s and 60s. She sold 'sweetmeats' including parkin pigs (a kind of gingerbread biscuit), sticks of spice and ginger beer, for the refreshment of their customers. There is an interesting history of Judy Woods HERE,  on the Friends of Judy Woods website.



























We had a peaceful ramble, only slightly disturbed by the 'giant squid monster' we passed part way round!

Autumn trees

Autumn is not my favourite season. I prefer late Spring, bluebell time, when everywhere seems full of new life and promise, with the colours soft, fresh and clean. But Autumn sometimes wins photographically. The richness of the russet leaves and the zing of the golden ones can lift my spirits, even as the evenings draw in and the air grows chill. 

In both these images, I liked the way the tree trunks contrasted with the leaves.

A sudden burst of energy

I was booked in for a health MOT at my gym, unreasonably early one morning. (Though perhaps timely given that one can't have breakfast beforehand). The sun was shining, the rush hour was in full swing and, with a sudden burst of energy, I decided I'd walk the two miles there and two miles back again, reasoning that walking might be as quick as driving in the morning traffic. Going, I took the shortest route along the canal and riverbank. Coming back, at a more leisurely pace, I walked up the Coach Road, so called, I guess, because it was the route carriages would have taken to get to all the mansions that the Victorian Salt family members built in the area: The Knoll, Ferniehurst and Milner Field. I don't often walk that way but it is worth it for the magnificent view you get of the huge bulk of Salts Mill. It looked a lot better in the sunshine than on that fateful day when the river (hidden in that line of trees) flooded. (See HERE).

Perfect autumn days

Some days are just so perfect that I have to go out for a walk, even when I didn't intend to. This was the scene along the canal bank, just beyond the church, on a very cold but beautifully sunny day - and then I walked through Hirst Woods, where the beech trees were glowing. Just a three mile amble, on a very familiar route, but I enjoyed every second of it.