Narrow boats, Skipton

The Leeds - Liverpool Canal is, at 127 miles, the longest canal in Britain built as a single waterway. It came into being two hundred years ago and is today a typical, leisure-boat filled canal, with the towpaths used by walkers and cyclists. Its dimensions allow the passage of boats no larger than 62 feet long, 14 feet wide, 7 feet high, and with a draught of no more than 3 feet 7 inches. Most boats seen on the canal are of those whose design derives from the canal "narrow boat". Like those at Skipton, North Yorkshire, seen in the photograph, they are often brightly (and sometimes ornately) painted.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Hawthorn berries 2

Continuing from the previous post, I have to say that the prominence of hawthorn berries this year is not only due to the favourable spring providing the conditions necessary for flowers to convert into berries. A further factor is the way the leaves seem to have departed the trees well before the berries have begun to drop or been eaten by birds. These berries were on a bush by the River Ribble and the dark background of the shaded water emphasised their redness very well.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Hawthorn berries 1

A few days in the North Yorkshire town of Settle, the place of my upbringing, coincided with a spell of weather warmer than the seasonal average. The accompanying blue skies lit the landscape well and also made the hawthorn berries stand out much more than usual. It seems to be a particularly good year for these "haws" and that probably speaks of a favourable spring that enabled more blossom to produce berries than is normally the case. This pair, near the hamlet of Feizor, were particularly eye-catching.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

View of Settle from Giggleswick Scars

I've never understood the attractions of golf as a game and have no liking for the way the sport uses and abuses open land. However, were I to indulge in the sport I imagine it would be harder to find a pleasanter place to do it than the 9 hole course at Settle & Giggleswick Golf Club. It's the setting, below the geological fault line of Giggleswick Scars that makes it so different. On the day I took this photograph, from the Scars looking south, the low cloud of a temperature inversion was slowly clearing, adding interest to my shot into the sun.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Goodrich, Herefordshire

September is a good time for photographing agricultural landscapes. The cereal harvest is in and those fields have a sandy hue, dark or light depending whether they have been ploughed or are still stubble. The pastures often have a slightly yellow tinge in September, but where a second crop of hay or silage has been taken from a meadow they can be very pale green. Other fields, rainfall permitting, are frequently deep green. And, of course, the hedges of the field boundaries are deep green with few autumn colours yet evident. So the land was when we looked down on the village of Goodrich from nearby Coppett Hill, its church spire prominent among the clustered houses.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Feathers Hotel, Ludlow

I've seen old timber-framed buildings in many places in England and Wales but I've never seen one anywhere as ornate as The Feathers Hotel, Ludlow. Every piece of wood on the double-jettied facade is embellished in one way or another. Standing in front of the building it is impossible to stop your eye wandering across its facade in search of each carved delight. The frontage was added to an existing building in 1619. The hotel gets its name from the crest of the Prince of Wales.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

A pretty invader

Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) is a pink flowered, waterside plant, a relative of the Busy Lizzy. It grows up to 2.5 metres tall and can be seen in big drifts alongside rivers, streams, lakes, canals and ponds. It is the biggest flowering plant growing wild in Britain. However, it shouldn't be here. It was introduced to the country in 1839 as a garden plant, quickly escaped from its confines, and is now spread across the country, a naturalised invader that is crowding out native plants. Attempts to control it are being made, and it is illegal to allow it to spread from a garden into the wild. But it's a difficult task, partly because it is a pretty plant that people like to see.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Houses, Castle Street, Hereford

I've wanted to photograph this pair of houses for some time but I've always been thwarted by vehicles parked in front of them - until one September morning. The buildings date from the early nineteenth century and exemplify some of the characteristics of the style we call Regency. The French windows, louvres, the ornate cast-iron verandah with its sheet metal roof, are all of this period, as is the symmetry. One thing I find odd is that this recess, set back from the road, holds a pair of houses rather than a single, grander mansion. Another is that pink of the front doors.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

The Shambles, Monmouth

People can be forgiven for thinking that the name, The Shambles, is given to a picturesque hodge-podge of old buildings. Looking at it today that is what The Shambles in York, the most famous English example, appears to be. However, this name was given to buildings that were slaughterhouses and places where butchers congregated to sell their meat and offal. The Shambles in Monmouth is hidden away on a bank above the River Monnow and consists of 24 arches and rooms built of sandstone with brick-vaulted roofs. It was built in 1837 and serves the double purpose of supporting a road above and giving space for the slaughter and butchery of animals. A number of the rooms still have the pulleys and meat hooks associated with their original purpose. Such is its location, it must be overlooked by the vast majority of visitors to the town, and is probably unknown to more than a few residents.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

St Mary, Ross on Wye

The tower and spire of St Mary mark the position of the town of Ross on Wye from near and far. This is due to the elevated position of the church at the highest point above the River Wye, as well as the height of the spire and the size of the pinnacles. The spire reaches 205 feet and dates back to the 1300s. It was subject to rebuilding in 1721. The pierced obelisk pinnacles were enlarged in 1743, and further restoration work, due to lightning and its exposed position, was undertaken in 1852 and 1911.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Belted Galloway cattle

We came across this group of a dozen or so Belted Galloway cattle on the steep slopes of the Malvern Hills above the town of Great Malvern. They look somewhat like cattle dressed up in panda suits and were brought there by the Malvern Hills Conservators, the body charged with looking after this range of hills, in order to keep areas of grassland open and unencroached by bracken, shrubs and trees. The distinctive breed originates from the Galloway region of south-west Scotland where its hardy qualities enabled it to turn poor grazing into beef. They are a reasonably common sight in England, used by conservation groups to maintain open pasture and the flora and fauna that depends upon it.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Ledbury Park

On a busy crossroads in the Herefordshire town of Ledbury stands a remarkable timber-framed building, the grandest in the county, dating from c.1570-1580. It is unusual in combining the attributes and location of a town house with large gardens and adjoining parkland of a country house. It was built for the clothier, Edward Skynner, but from 1688-1941 it was the home of the Biddulph family. It has sympathetic extensions of the early and later nineteenth century, and today is divided up into a number of residences.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

A Green Man

The Green Man is a folklore figure that appears in carvings and other depictions across Europe and the Near East. Most often it is represented by a face made of leaves, or with leaves sprouting from the mouth, nose, eyes or ears. It may represent fertility or a mystic Man of the Woods. In England the Green Man is most often seen in carvings in wood or stone in churches. Medieval masons and wood carvers, and medieval clergy if it comes to that, had no qualms about reproducing images of pagan figures in Christian buildings. This example is the decoration of a capital in Grange Court, the former market house that was converted into a habitation in Leominster, Herefordshire.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Garden statues

Leominster is known for the number of antique shops that have been established in the town. We recently spent a few hours looking around them, finding as much interest in the labyrinthine interiors of some of the Georgian houses in which they were based, as in the contents themselves. A couple of the shops had overflowed into garden outbuildings and even the garden itself. The two statues here were in one such garden, cast versions of ancient Greek models, designed for the shopper looking to give a focal point to their bit of greenery.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100