A pop-up garden

As I walked past the allotments belonging to Shipley College's horticultural department, my eye was drawn to multi-coloured bunting strung between the pea sticks. That's not usually there, nor are the large, brightly coloured signs. I'm not sure what was happening but it looked like there was a special display - for an open day maybe. Because the plots are used by students for practice and learning, the gardens change all the time. It's the garden equivalent of a flash mob! One day there'll be a lawn being laid, then that will be ripped up and some raised beds constructed and planted. There are some fruit trees and a few other trees, planted a few years ago, that seem more or less permanent, but everything else changes quite often. 

Spring springing

Someone has planted a few daffodils under a tree on the hillside above Saltaire. Stopping to take a photo gave me chance to catch my breath! It's a steep climb up to the main road. The church tower in the distance is St Paul's parish church in Shipley. 

Brimham Rocks #3

Just a few more images from Brimham Rocks... The outcrop above is right beside the visitors' centre and refreshment area. The balanced stack in the middle is called the Eagle, though from this angle it doesn't look much like an eagle to me. 

The tree below has been photographed a million times!  It's a favourite haunt of the birds too. 

Personally, I liked the one below the best. It was much further out, on the perimeter walk, and so it is less well known. I loved the way the tree rises from the sinuous cleft in the rock, searching for the light and its freedom. Seen in winter, before it is obscured in leaves, the serpentine shape is pronounced. 

Brimham Rocks #2

The amazing rock formations at Brimham are thought to have been formed 325 million years ago. That's 100 million years before the first dinosaurs walked the earth! (There was a time when they were assumed to have been carved by druids.) They are made of millstone grit, a coarse grainy sandstone that was deposited by immense rivers, before being exposed and weathered by glaciers, water and wind.  

Over the years many of them have acquired names, though it's often hard to see exactly which rock is referred to. Those above, I think, include the Anvil and the Porpoise Head. I know the one below, miraculously balanced on a tiny point, is the Idol Stone. A similar balanced stone was pushed over and smashed by vandals a few years ago... so these will not last forever, whether eroded by weather or by mindless idiots! 

This one is called The Dancing Bear - maybe you can see its head and snout. 

Not sure of the name of these but, from one angle, they looked to be having a smooch. You can imagine all sorts into the shapes - I see a dog's head there on the right. 

Maybe a dinosaur's head? 

Somewhere in this region is one known as the Druid's Writing Desk. I thought it may be this one below, which certainly had a flat surface. Looking at photos online since I've come home, however, I don't think I'm correct. It's interesting how the rocks appear from different angles. Looking one way you can immediately see the 'character' and from another direction it looks like... well... just a rock!  

It is a fascinating place to wander. Children love it, plenty of scope for climbing. I have a photo of my granddaughters sitting in a hole in a rock where I have a similar photo of their mother, my daughter, sitting when she was little. Happily for families ( and my camera club outing!) there is a small refreshment kiosk and toilets in the centre of the site, so chance for a rest and an ice cream when needed. 

Brimham Rocks

The Coldstones Cut camera club outing will be combined with a visit to Brimham Rocks, a locally famous outcrop of fantastically shaped rocks, weathered by wind and water for millions of years. The site is an SSSI and is now managed by the National Trust. It gets overrun with visitors in the school holidays and at weekends but on a cold, damp afternoon in February there were only a handful of people there. It is criss-crossed by marked trails and I chose to explore the Woodland Walk, which takes you past a lovely pond, then around the perimeter of the site, giving good views over Nidderdale, and then through the rocky area back to the car park. 

Many of the rock formations have been given names over the years and I'll show a few tomorrow. 

The sculptor and the glassblower

In Pateley Bridge, the Victorian workhouse and its outbuildings have been transformed into a series of units and studios for artists. Not many of them were open when I looked round but I met the sculptor, Joseph Hayton. He trained as a stone mason at York College and has owned his own business since 2012, producing award winning pieces in stone and bronze, many of them figurative. 

Andrew Sanders and Joseph Wallace were working in the glass makers' studio. They met at college and set up studio together, producing a range of beautiful, handmade, decorative pieces: vases, bowls, bottles, glasses and paperweights. There's something about coloured glass that really pleases me so I bought a little turquoise scent bottle to add to my collection.  

This is the old Workhouse building where some of the studios are. It also holds a museum of local life that looked interesting. It's only open at weekends, so I will have to go back, perhaps in the summer when there is more going on. 

Pateley Bridge

   

Pateley Bridge is a small, (former) market town in Nidderdale, spreading up the hill from the bridge over the River Nidd. Its oldest buildings, on the High Street, date from the 1600s. There is a charming little row of cottages and shops... though it can't be a conservation area or surely they'd never allow bright orange paintwork? 

At the top of this block sits 'the oldest sweetshop in England' (in fact, in the world; it holds the Guinness world record), which has been trading continuously since 1827. It still sells traditional sweets, boiled in copper pans: Yorkshire Mixture, pear drops, sherbert lemons, liquorice. It was only with some will power that I resisted going in the shop.  Makes my mouth water to think of it, as well as reminding me that my great grandfather used to run a Post Office that sold sweets. His daughter, my great aunt, took it over after he died. After she'd retired, she used to take me there to buy sweets - 'rhubarb and custard' were a favourite, and midget gems and wine gums too. 

Opposite the shop there is the old George and Dragon Inn, which became a brewery and is now a club. It has a date stone of 1664. The red plaque on the wall was one of a series around the town that told you a little about the buildings' histories.  (The black tube thing you can also see is a device for holding a small Christmas tree for the town's festive celebrations - just in case you were wondering.) 

I'm not sure what the little building above was. It was tacked on to the side of a larger house. It just struck me as being quite attractive. 

Pateley Bridge was a thriving place during the 19th century, with linen/flax mills, lead mining and quarrying in the surrounding area. It now depends heavily on tourism and has quite a creative, artistic vibe. 

The imposing Victorian building on King Street that looks like a church (below) is actually a primary school, St Cuthbert's.  The parish church, St Mary's is even higher up the hill and appeared to be having some remedial work done to the roof and tower, as it was shrouded in scaffolding.  

Toft Gate Barn

Camera club outings, such as the one I'm planning to The Coldstones Cut, are always better if there's a decent café in the vicinity, so I was happy to discover Toft Gate Barn, which has a very nice café and a small farm shop. I called in to try it out... I had eaten the cake and drunk my coffee before I thought of taking a photo! I was warmed by a roaring wood burner but hopefully that won't be needed in the summer, when the outing takes place. There is a garden area with outdoor seating and lovely views over Nidderdale, so that should work well for our group. 

Toft Gate Lime Kiln

Planning for our camera club's summer outings programme, my recent visit to The Coldstones Cut (HERE) sparked ideas, so I went back to properly research the area. Adjacent to the artwork and the modern quarry is a small limestone quarry and kiln, Toft Gate, that was operative in the late 19th century. It is now ruined but you can still see broadly what it would have been like and there's an informative display board.  

Large blocks of limestone would have been cut from the quarry by the hewers. The stone-breakers, often children, would have broken these up into smaller pieces to be fed into the top of the furnace. Around the base, skilled lime burners would have packed coal into the eight fireboxes. The furnace was capped and the fire was lit. It heated the stone to above 800°C, driving out carbon dioxide, ventilated through a long flue, to produce quicklime, which collected within the vaulted chamber under the furnace. This was then raked out into a pit and mixed with water to make 'slaked lime' ready to be transported by cart to the cities. It was used in mortar and limewash for building, and for agricultural purposes too.  

The above photo is looking from one of the fire pit cavities into the furnace and down to where the quicklime settled. The photo below shows the inside of the flue that travels uphill to a squat chimney (see final photo) that would have released the gases from the furnace. 

It must have been a hard life working in these places but similar kilns existed all over the limestone area of Yorkshire. Demand for lime products was huge, as the Industrial Revolution sparked the building of mills, factories and housing for the workers. My own house was built in 1901 with lime mortar. Over the years it basically hardens back into limestone and, if you ever need to drill into the walls, it's a grey, gritty, crumbly substance.  

Ordinary scenes

After a few weeks of being out and about exploring quite a lot, a spell closer to home means I am running out of 'exciting' photos. Still, there is value in documenting the ordinary local scenes, I suppose. On the way back from the shops in Shipley, I took a detour through Crowgill Park. I rarely walk through there; there's not a lot to see apart from a bowling green and the war memorial, though there was a nice little patch of purple crocuses.

The parish church of St Paul's looks huge from this angle. It sits in a fairly large graveyard and makes a nice green oasis in this part of town. 

I have passed the church's main gates many times and never before noticed this carved figure on one of the gateposts. I suppose it might be St Paul himself - who knows? He has a beard to rival Sir Titus Salt, that much is clear. 

 

Textile details

Every time I visit the Industrial Museum, I find I'm drawn to the details of the machinery in the textile mill displays - metal, wood and yarn, so intricate and precisely crafted, with beautiful patina and colour. At one time the names of the pieces and their use and care must have been etched in people's minds. The terminology starts to disappear along with the skills and machinery but to me there's something timelessly beautiful about it all. 

Five... freezing!

Dependably beautiful, even on a freezing cold day with intermittent sleet showers... Bingley's famous Five Rise Locks lift the Leeds-Liverpool Canal almost 60 feet. They are the steepest staircase locks, on the longest canal, in the UK. There was no boat traffic and few people around when I walked that way. It's rarely so quiet! I was out for a walk with a very good friend of mine, and we were so busy chatting that I took hardly any photos. Never mind, this will suffice.

Minimalism

The theme for my online photo group for November was 'Minimalism'.  It was a good excuse to play around with some ideas and try some mono and high key effects, not my usual style. 

White on white is hard to do! …

This one is all about light and shadow: