All that jazz

We've had some unbelievably hot days recently - and it's barely summer yet. I had my younger granddaughter over for the day and we wandered down to Roberts Park for an ice cream. 'Guiseley Jazz' were playing in the bandstand, and a few folk got up to dance to the infectious rhythm. It was heartwarming to see the older couple teaching the younger girls some of the moves. It all felt very relaxed and lovely - and the ice creams were good too. We even found a place to sit in the shade and the slight breeze made it feel bearable. Neither of us are sun/hot weather lovers. 

We paid a visit to Baba Jaga's hut, and I found she knew the legend quite well. She's bright as a button and quick on the uptake about most things. 

Before long she was in her favourite habitat - up a tree! 

Any railings or low walls we pass also get clambered on. From here we got a grandstand view of the Canada geese taking their babies for a paddle on the weir. The river is currently very low, but it will soon fill again as we have rain forecast for next week. 

A busy day in the park

There was something for everyone in the park last Sunday. 

It must nearly be summer as the bandstand concerts have started. The wonderful Hot Aire Concert Band was playing. They are very polished and have a great repertoire of mostly lively and well-known music. I really enjoy listening to them (despite my less than good hearing) and their sound is loud enough to fill the bandstand and carry really well. 

The cricket season has started, so there was a match going on...

and the once-a-month farmer's market was lining the promenade. 

For children, the land train has started running, doing regular circuits of the park (though I didn't manage to get a photograph of that this time).  It's all happening in Saltaire! If only the weather would warm up a bit... 

Evening in Roberts Park

More early evening wandering, this time in Roberts Park. It's probably my favourite time of day to see the New Mill, when there's still a bit of colour in the sky and the lights are on in the NHS offices, enlivening the reflection in the river. 

You get a double value sunset when it's mirrored in the river. This one wasn't stunning but it was quite pretty. The lights of the Boathouse glowed invitingly. This was a boathouse in Victorian times, when people could hire rowing boats on the river. It's been a bar/restaurant for as long as I can remember. 

The bandstand is lit with coloured lights and provides a lovely focal point above the Half Moon pavilion. 

Opposite the bandstand, the statue of Sir Titus Salt was silhouetted against the evening sky. 

 

Autumn in Roberts Park

It took me quite a few days to recover from my trip to Edinburgh. I did so much walking there that I rather tired myself out. Of course, it didn't help that I had a flu vaccination when I got back too, and that added to my lethargy. I'm feeling more like my usual self now but I haven't really stirred myself to do anything other than a few local walks. The autumn colours are gorgeous, so I won't apologise too much for yet another post full of trees. 

All of these pics were taken in Saltaire's Roberts Park. It was a lovely day and the squirrels were very busy racing around - looking for food or burying food, I'm not sure which.  

An ancient set of stocks that I understand used to be in Shipley market place (on Stocks Hill) is now located in Roberts Park. I sometimes think it's a punishment we ought to return to using. I'm sure we all have some folks we'd like to see pinned in there, having tomatoes or wet sponges thrown at them with accompanying jeers. Personally I'd put those dog walkers who don't clear up after their dog, or - almost worse - clean up and then hang the plastic bag on a tree! And the drivers of big SUVs that park on the pavement and don't leave room for folks to pass safely.

Evening stroll

I enjoy a stroll at the time of day when the sun is setting and the lights are coming on. Everywhere looks a little different: more mysterious, and the lighted buildings look cosy and inviting. A circuit down to and around the park and back takes me little more than twenty minutes but it can be refreshing after a busy day. 

Sunday bandstand concerts

Last Sunday saw the first in the series of free summer concerts in Robert's Park bandstand. The band playing was the renowned Hot Aire concert band - and they are very good, with a lot of young players too.  It was, thankfully, a dry day and the concert was well supported. At the same time you could watch a cricket match on the field below and enjoy your picnic, or a coffee or an ice cream from the Half Moon Café. Something for everyone! 

Roberts Park in blossom time

I was inspired by some artwork I saw in a gallery recently to have a play with layering some of my images into collages. It's a new kind of challenge to learn what works and what doesn't and how to blend different images together effectively. These things are always harder than you might think! The image above is by no means perfect. I'm not sure that the scale of the statue and the bandstand work together, although I didn't mean for them to look like one photo. I should maybe leave more of an obvious border between the images... Anyway, there's no such thing as perfection. It's about having fun with the process and stretching myself, both technically and creatively. I shall keep on trying, in the never-ending quest to produce some work that truly expresses my response to my surroundings. 

Park weekend

It's often busy in Roberts Park these days, especially at weekends. I think it has become much more popular since the Covid lockdowns of the last couple of years, when people from the wider area had to 'discover' places more local to them. Finding that the park was so pleasant, they have kept returning. The Half Moon Café, in the centre of my photo, seems really busy and has extended its opening hours, even in the winter. I am both pleased and (if I'm totally honest) a little bit miffed that I have to share 'my' park with so many other people, and queue for coffee! Even on a winter weekend, in a brief burst of sunshine in between showers, there were plenty of folk about, with dogs and kids and bikes and pushchairs. The low winter sunshine briefly illuminated the café, and the bandstand on the upper terrace, as well as picking out the huge variety of trees. 

Too many cars!

Saltaire, built in the 1850s when the main mode of transport was horse and cart (and the new-fangled railways) was never designed for cars, lorries or buses. There is little parking space on our narrow streets, and going anything above 20mph is dangerous when the sight-lines are reduced, and there are people walking (not to mention the large population of cats, who take their nine lives in their paws even to cross a the street). Lorries and large vans (necessary, I suppose, to service local businesses) and the bus, so important for our older folk to be able to get into town, can barely get through. Even the most attractive views are rendered ugly by parked cars. I've been frustrated lately when the autumn colours have had bright automotive bodywork competing with them. I often think there should be just one day a year when cars are banned so we photographers can move around and take uncluttered photos with ease! 

To make matters worse, there is so much traffic these days on the main through-routes, where the fast dual carriageway from Keighley comes to an abrupt halt in the bottleneck of Saltaire and Shipley. To avoid this, many drivers have been using our village streets as a rat-run to try to miss out some of the queues and traffic lights on the main roads. Over the years many solutions have been proposed, none of them really feasible: a by-pass that would ruin the pleasant green space down by the river? No. A tunnel under Saltaire? No. 

In an effort to grip the problem, the authorities have now simply closed off a number of the roads through the village and the neighbouring Hirst Wood estate. That means all the traffic: local residents, legitimate deliveries and sneaky rat-runners are now funnelled along Hirst Lane, Dallam Avenue, Victoria Road, Caroline Street and Baker Street, right through the village centre. (Though I have seen people driving on the pavements to get through!) Quieter and calmer, perhaps, for the residents of the restricted streets (though not so great if they need an ambulance or fire engine in a hurry). Not at all quiet or calm for those in proximity to the busy routes. I have no solutions but it is definitely a problem. The only way, photographically anyway, is to look up! 

Or head for the relative tranquillity of Roberts Park:

Sunday bandstand

A sunny Sunday afternoon in Saltaire's Roberts Park, and what could be nicer than relaxing whilst listening to a good brass band? There is a concert in Roberts Park on most Sundays over the summer. Yesterday's was the Clifton and Lightcliffe Band, whose history goes back to the mid-1800s. They had drawn quite a good crowd.  

Park bandstands were originally built for just this purpose and, whilst the summer programme offers various performances from choirs through jazz to contemporary music, in my view, a brass band is the best. The rich, loud, full sound flows out from under the roof and carries well to the audience, whereas more contemporary music has to be amplified and doesn't have the same ambience. It always cheers me that people will still put their hearts into a hobby, not just for their own benefit (though I'm sure playing in a band is both fulfilling and a good social activity) but to bring pleasure to others. 

 

Sunday afternoon in the park

Roberts Park was looking at its best in the sunshine, with the cherry blossom in bloom. It was a Sunday afternoon and there was music in the bandstand by Hot Aire, a local and well regarded concert band led by Stephen Bradnum, with a lively and varied repertoire. The band has many young people among its members and is known for developing people's skills as musicians to a high level, whilst providing a lot of fun in the process. 

Bandstand

Saltaire Living Advent Calendar 2021: #10

The artist David Starley always produces a stunning mini-masterpiece for his Advent window, this year being his tenth window. He creates an original oil painting, then photographs it and prints onto acetate to make the backlit window screen. This year's subject (as I am sure I don't need to explain to my regular blog readers) is the bandstand in Roberts Park, along with one of the cannons that stand beside it. (For more about those, please see my earlier post HERE.) 

That's the last of this year's windows (though there were many more that I couldn't feature) and I hope you enjoyed them. It's a lovely tradition and we can be proud of our village and its creative community. 

Pep Ventosa bandstand

I keep trying a few creative things. This image of Roberts Park bandstand is based on the Pep Ventosa technique, named after the photographer who popularised this impressionistic style. It involves walking around a subject and taking multiple images, which are then combined in blended layers. His own images sometimes use hundreds of layers. Mine only uses about eight. It makes it look as though it's spinning, which may work better with a carousel. (Pep Ventosa has several carousels on his website.) There's a distinct shortage of carousels in Saltaire though, it must be said... 

Cyanotypes

There was a short workshop on 'cyanotypes' as part of the Arts Trail. I was keen to learn about them so I signed up and had some fun. It was led by Jenny Wren (Jenny Dalby), a local artist who describes herself as 'indie artist, creator, dreamer'. Indeed, cyanotypes do have a certain dreamlike quality to them. 

They are a photography method dating back to the mid 19th century, and use UV rays to produce images on light sensitive paper. They were used at one time as a process to produce engineering drawings (blueprints). Cyanotypes were pioneered as a photographic recording medium by Anna Atkins, a botanist, in the late 1800s, to produce images of algae, ferns and other plants. She is considered by some to be the first female photographer. 

Jenny showed us how to use photographic negatives and items such as dried botanical specimens, feathers and lace to produce mixed media prints, which we then decorated with gold paint and copper leaf. I need to develop my creative eye for these, observing what works and what doesn't - but as a first attempt, created quite quickly, I was pleased with my image. 

Playing on...

Here's another park with a bandstand. This is Myrtle Park in Bingley. The bandstand is a good deal older than the one in Roberts Park (where the original had been demolished and was replaced a few years ago). I think this one is Edwardian, apparently manufactured in a foundry in Glasgow, before being installed in the park in 1913. It is still sometimes used for brass band concerts, though it has been subject to a few incidents of vandalism in recent months. 

Sunday stroll

I spent a lazy Sunday watching the Australian Open men's singles tennis final, my lethargy only redeemed by clearing a pile of ironing at the same time! It was rather late in the day when I popped out for a short stroll and by then the clouds had gathered, promising rain later. I just had a quick circuit of Roberts Park. There were plenty of people about, though not much new to see. The river levels have dropped a lot since the snow melted. 

I rather liked the dome-shaped cloud above the bandstand, echoing the shape of the roof and surrounding trees. And no, I didn't get wet! 

 

A little light music

The Christmas lights have been taken down but if you're missing their cheery glow, a walk by the bandstand in Roberts Park at dusk will uplift you. The dome glows like some kind of funky rainbow spaceship, whilst downlighters illuminate the platform underneath. The colours change slowly too. It's rather fun. I like to think it cheers old Sir Titus up on these long dark nights. He has a grandstand view from his plinth.