Mermaid watch

In the evenings, the light on the Teifi estuary is often very beautiful, making the white yachts glow. The wooden mermaid sculpture apparently commemorates an old legend - the Peregrine Legend.  A local fishermen, Peregrine, captured a mermaid in his catch of herring.  In order to gain her release, she promised him that whenever a storm was coming, she would warn him. He set out with other boats on 30 September 1789, but on the way out to sea the mermaid appeared and warned him of an approaching storm. He turned back with his boat and crew but the other fishermen laughed and refused to heed the warning.  The local church records that 27 local fishermen lost their lives that night in a freak storm.

This is the first photo I've tweaked slightly in Lightroom (a jpeg; I haven't tried RAW yet).  It was able to bring back more detail in the highlights on the boats than Photoshop did, though I'm far from expert with it yet.  It looks promising though...

Petrified

Beside Mother Shipton's Cave is Knaresborough's famous Dropping Well, 'England's oldest visitor attraction', which has been drawing curious crowds since 1630.  A fine example of what is known as a petrifying well, its ability to turn objects into stone was at one time thought to be the result of magic or witchcraft.  Now we know that it is a geological phenomenon.  Water seeps from an underground lake through limestone rock along aquifers, picking up mineral deposits along the way.  It rises to the surface in a spring which cascades down the rock face, leaving behind the mineral deposits, which form new layers of stone.  (It's the same process that produces stalagmites and stalactites in underground caves, but it is rarer that this happens above ground). Anything left in the water's path becomes coated with stone, and so for hundreds of years people have hung objects under the flow.  Teddy bears, hats and shoes can be seen and many celebrities have donated items to be 'petrified' - some can be viewed in the museum nearby.  Apparently it takes 3-5 months for a small teddy bear to turn to stone.  Nowadays the rock face is scrubbed regularly to try and prevent the mineral deposits becoming too heavy and breaking the rock.

Mother Shipton

Mother Shipton (born Ursula Southeil) was England's most famous soothsayer and prophetess. She lived some 500 years ago during the reigns of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I.  She was said to have been born in a cave by the River Nidd in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, during a violent thunderstorm.  Reputed to be very ugly (the archetypal hag or crone) she nevertheless married Toby Shipton, a carpenter.  The first book of her prophecies did not appear until 80 years after her death, and most of what is written is believed to have been invented after she died. Neverthless, the legends about her probably have some basis in truth.  She is said to have prophesised the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and Samuel Pepys's Diary records that she forewarned of the Great Fire of London (1666).

The cave and well associated with her are now preserved within an area of parkland, which was landscaped in the 18th century.  There is an attractive walk by the riverside, through an avenue of ancient beech trees.