All roads lead to the Mill

This is a phone shot, as that's all I had with me when I wanted to capture a glorious burst of clear blue skies and sunshine that snuck in among a run of dank, dreary days. I was walking down towards Salts Mill, an edifice that you really can't miss, with that huge chimney soaring skywards. There's a fairly steep hill up to the main (Bradford) road and the view from up there is pretty good, looking north across the valley towards Baildon and Hope Hill. I normally try to exclude from my photos the apartment blocks and other boring things that surround our lovely World Heritage Site but I guess sometimes I should show the unvarnished truth. At least they are not high-rise blocks.

Wedding day

I was just going down to Roberts Park one day when a bridal couple happened to be posing for photos. I was cheeky enough to ask if I could take one too! They did tell me their names but then said: 'You'll never be able to remember that!'... and I can't! What with my poor hearing and the unfamiliar (to me) Asian names, I didn't really stand a chance - so my sincere apologies to them. They made a beautiful couple. The bride's outfit and jewellery were absolutely stunning, she looked gorgeous.There are often weddings in Saltaire's Victoria Hall and I assume they had just walked down from there to the park, for a greener background to their photos. Wishing them many happy years of marriage - and thanks for the photo.

Sculptural forms

A couple more from RHS Harlow Carr: I spotted this little bird, just landed on a spade handle - or perhaps just about to take flight. Either way, it effectively caught the characteristics of a robin or a tit, even though it was crafted from metal. The winter flowering heather around it had a pretty purple haze.

The pot and plant below caught my eye too; not a sculpture but nevertheless sculptural. I think the plant was actually on its way to decaying and all the colour was bleached from its leaves, but it shone silver in the sunshine and I liked the way it looked.

PS: A friend who has a plant nursery tells me this plant is a Senecio 'Angel wings' and is meant to be that colour. Oops. I should have known Harlow Carr don't do dead plants! I like it even more now.

Looking up

Even in winter there is some beauty to find in the varied shrubs and trees around RHS Harlow Carr's gardens. I really like the corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana 'Contorta'), with its zany twisting branches and abundant catkins.

This witch hazel (Hamamelis) had amazingly bright orange flowers, exploding like little fireworks along its branches.

I'm not too sure what the pink blossom below is (a viburnum, maybe?) but it looked fabulous against a clear blue sky.

Winter classics

I was pleased to see a few early flowering snowdrops at RHS Harlow Carr. They were large and robust, and attractively offset by the red dogwood stems.

Hellebores have many variations but these are my favourites, so prettily shaded: pink tinged on the outside with lemon and white open blooms.

These little winter flowering cyclamens provided a vibrant splash of magenta. 

The burning bush

Here, as promised, are some of the photos I took at RHS Harlow Carr on NY Day. I was in search of colour and the most obvious contenders were the winter borders. There are vibrant stems of dogwood in reds, oranges and yellows, beautifully offset with textural evergreens and soft grasses. 

You can capture standard shots, as above, or abstracts like below. Either way, you can't miss those reds! 

All aboard

Here's another photo taken when I was experimenting with my new camera on its first outing. It has a happy knack of making colours look really zingy, and this old boat made a good subject. The artwork, of colourful waves and sea creatures, was done by pupils at Saltaire Primary School and the boat has been planted up as a flower trough by the Hirstwood Regeneration Group. It sits beside the canal at Hirst Lock.

Fog on the Aire

Christmas Eve turned out to be a beautiful day: clear and cold, with a heavy frost. It was the first day I could get out with my new camera, having sussed out at least the basics of its operating system. What a treat it was, enjoying the cold, crisp air and experimenting with the new gear. I struggled to figure out the focusing system, so some of the photos didn't turn out all that well. This one was one of the better ones, showing the mist rising on the surface of the river as the sun rose and warmed things up.

That church again

A morning outing is always best for seeing Saltaire's historic church in a decent light. Later on, the sun comes round behind the church so its facade is in shadow. I usually stand nearer to take photos, to avoid all the clutter of the noticeboards, but I'm thinking I should perhaps sometimes show a wider context in some of my local photos. Victoria Road, where the church sits, is a dead-end so the area in front of the church acts as a turning circle, rather bumpy with the stone setts that originally made up all of the village's main streets. I had to move out of the way of at least three turning cars when I was trying to get this picture, even though it was quite early!

Then I got into conversation with a couple of other (not local) photographers, and when I mentioned I was taking pictures for my blog, one said: 'Oh, Salt and Light? I was looking at that this morning.' !
Fame at last!!

[By the way, did anyone watch the Agatha Christie drama 'The ABC Murders' over Christmas? It was mostly filmed in Yorkshire and partly in Saltaire. Albert Terrace became 'Andover'... a bit of an insult, I thought, for such an obviously northern mill village to be shifted so far south to Hampshire! I even spotted Salts Mill chimney in one shot. The scenes in Embsay were, I think, shot at the real Embsay station, not far from here. It's a heritage line and has retained its original fittings. Bradford City Hall, apparently, became 'Scotland Yard'.  I'm not sure that I enjoyed the series. Too grisly for my taste. ]

Riding into 2019

I find myself feeling more than usually positive as I settle into the new year. I'm not sure why that is... I think it must just be me getting older and much more appreciative of the small things that make up daily life. I'm blessed, so far, with good health and reasonable fitness. Being retired is a joy, offering time to indulge in all the things I like best (amongst them: walking, exploring, photography, reading, spending time with friends and family). True that the current political situation in the UK and elsewhere concerns me, and it's hard to see where it's leading, but even with that, as I write, there is sufficient vagueness to hope that it might actually all turn out for the better eventually. The horse hasn't yet bolted and the stable door is not yet closed...

It took me long enough to discover that there is not much that a walk and tuning into nature cannot ameliorate to some extent. Also long enough to figure out what I need to eat and how I need to exercise to feel good (though I don't always do it!) But now I know myself much better than I ever did and I can take care of myself pretty well. I also know life is fragile and everything can change in a moment, so I never take things for granted - but the best antidote to worry is being present in the present.

I nearly always go for a walk on New Year's Day. (I don't drink, so I am always clear-headed.) Usually I just amble around locally but this year I decided I'd go to RHS Harlow Carr Gardens near Harrogate, in search of some colour and signs of new life. There was plenty and I'll share some photos when I've processed them. For today, this bicycle-riding hare seems the perfect illustration for my mood.

Seven and four

Children seem to be 'about three or four' for a very long time and then, when they start school full-time, they suddenly grow up quite a lot. My older granddaughter is just seven and has become taller, willowy and more markedly introverted, although still very sociable. She is getting more proficient at reading and writing and loves nothing better than sitting cosily with a book (preferably still with plenty of pictures) or having Lego spread all around and making detailed creations. 

My younger granddaughter, now four, is still very physical, bouncing around. She has a wonderful way of launching herself at you for a hug. She's very loving and remarkably empathic for a small child. Here, she was only pretending to be asleep, cosily wrapped in her new mermaid-tail blanket and cuddling a new soft toy that she identified to me as a 'mer-cat', a wondrous creation with a cat's face and a mermaid's tail. Mermaids, unicorns, ponies, puppies and kittens are everywhere in her world, and she always has some small soft toy in her hand. 

My heart is full; they are both so beautiful and I am so lucky to be blessed with them. These photos were taken on Christmas Day, in a rare moment of quiet (and with my new camera, yay!)  

New Year, new camera

This is my Christmas present to myself! (Not only for this year but for at least the next ten Christmasses - haha.) As I recounted a couple of weeks ago, I had a fall and managed to trash my Nikon DSLR. Ouch. I've healed from my bruises, thankfully. The verdict on the camera and lens was that it could be repaired but, of course, at some cost.

Well, it so happened that a friend of mine was just at that time selling his Fuji X-T2 camera body, a beautiful camera that I'd long thought would be nice to have. It's a mirrorless system, so it is quite a lot lighter than a DSLR, and it's much more up-to-date and full of features compared to my rather old and basic Nikon. So, after some heart-searching, I bought it! Bought an 18-135mm lens to go with it and have spent many happy hours reading the hefty manual and trying to get to grips with the controls and functions. It's quite a lot different from my old camera in the way it is set up. It will take me a while to become fully 'at one' with it. Hopefully, you won't notice too much of a reduction in the quality of my images while I learn how to use it. Ultimately, maybe, you'll actually notice an improvement. I think images should be sharper. So, here goes...

I hope you treated yourself, one way or another, over Christmas. Now the New Year is here though, I'm rather looking forward to 'getting back to normal'.

All that remains is for me to wish you a very happy New Year and a healthy, happy and peaceful 2019 - a year that hopefully will see a calming down of all the political turmoil and us all being kinder to one another and to our planet.

Zoom

There are few advantages to having temporarily to revert to a camera I last used seven years ago, though it did and still does take mostly quite reasonable photos, now I've remembered how to operate it. One of its plus points, however, is the very long zoom range it has, effectively from 28-504mm - though it is a 'digital zoom' rather than an optical zoom. (That means the camera enlarges the photo and trims the edges electronically, which results in a loss of quality over the same image taken with an optical zoom lens.)

It does mean I could 'zoom' across the fields from the riverbank and take a closer view of one of the the lodges that guarded the gates to Milner Field, the now demolished grand mansion that was built for Titus Salt Jnr. The lodge is still used as a residence, though it's rather isolated at the end of the Coach Road, set amongst woods and fields. It shares the same sort of solid, heavy architecture that characterised the Victorian Gothic mansion.

Sunday stroll

Another gentle Sunday stroll along the canal past Hirst Wood. I just love it. It's all so peaceful, even though it's barely a mile out of Saltaire village and really not as rural as it looks. Even on the dullest of days, there seems to be a lot of subtle colour in the natural scenery this winter. All rather lovely.

Bin alley ballet

Saltaire's neat terraces all have service alleys running between them. The houses each have small backyards, many still containing the stone outhouse in which their private lavatory was sited (though many of the outhouses have been reduced in height now). These sanitary arrangements were a major innovation in Victorian Britain, and I think I'm correct in saying that they were WCs (water closets) with proper drainage, so the 'night soil' men didn't have to roam the alleys at night collecting waste, as they did in other places that had only earth closets.

Nowadays, our bathrooms are inside. The back alleys are crowded with wheelie bins, since most of the yards don't really have room for the green general waste and grey recyclable waste bins that we are required to have. In my imagination, the bins all come alive at night and perform a wondrous ballet in the alley.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that was an urban fox running up the alley in my photo. In fact it was a rather large ginger cat.

Advent windows 8

Saltaire Living Advent Calendar 2018

Oh, this window was tricky to photograph, being right up on the third floor of the Salts Hospital apartments. It was worth persevering, however, as it's a very artistic offering: a beautiful hare, silhouetted against a huge yellow moon, and gazing at the Star of Bethlehem. Its creator explains that the hare was sculpted by her former partner, who died tragically in a car accident last year aged only 32. The window honours her memories of him.

Advent windows 7

Saltaire Living Advent Calendar 2018

Another window with a traditional religious theme: the Magi and their camel following a heavenly host of stars. Quite a simple window but it's the simple ones that are most effective, I think.

'The star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him.' Matthew 2: 9-11

Advent windows 6

Saltaire Living Advent Calendar 2018

It's nice when local businesses join in with the advent windows. This is the Louise Perry Bridal shop, on Caroline Street. Its theme is The Nutcracker, a traditional Christmas story often performed as a ballet with a wonderful Tchaikovsky score. My daughter and I went to see a live screening by the Royal Ballet from Covent Garden last year, which was brilliant. I love watching ballet but actual performances are often prohibitively expensive, so a cinema screening is better value for money and you can still feel as though you're watching the real thing.

Blessings at Christmas

May the blessing of JOY abide within you; 

May the blessing of PEACE rest upon you;

May the blessing of LOVE flow out through you;

May all the blessings of the Lord be yours 

at Christmas and in the New Year.

Happy Christmas to all who celebrate the festival, and warmest wishes to those who don't. 

Thanks for another year of friendship and sharing. 

(The crib scene is my own, crafted from olive wood by Christian Palestinians.)

Advent windows 5

Saltaire Living Advent Calendar 2018

The window at 7 William Henry Street is a very artistic offering, one of my favourites, featuring a lighthouse beaming out light and love, above a sea teeming with life. Hope in the Dark... I'm sure most of us need some of that in these troubled times.