High Street and The Homend, Ledbury

Ledbury's town centre main street has two names, the High Street and The Homend, the change coming at Bye Street, a side street by the clock tower across from the Market House. High Street is one of the two most common road names in England (the other being Church Street). However, The Homend is the only such named street that I can find, though the name is used by a cottage in the nearby Herefordshire village of Stretton Grandison. The Victoria County History says this about the probable derivation: "The name of The Homend is first recorded in 1288 derived from an Old English word 'hamm'  or 'hom' probably meaning ‘land hemmed in by water or marsh’, or perhaps ‘river meadow’. Interestingly, the other end of the High Street connects with a road called The Southend.

 The first photograph shows the Market House and part of the north side of the High Street. The second shows the Market House and The Homend.

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

The Shell Store, Hereford

During WW1 the government built around 240 "national factories" for the manufacture of munitions, of which about 20 were engaged in the filling of, mainly, artillery shells. One of the latter was at Rotherwas on the outskirts of Hereford where a very large building engaged in this work was called the "Shell Store". These buildings were, understandably, built very quickly.

The Shell Store took only four months. At the end of the war most munitions factories were closed. Rotherwas was one that was retained, and with the onset of WW2 it once again filled shells and bombs. In the years following the war these buildings were either demolished or used for light industry. The Shell Store lasted longer than most but eventually became derelict.

Recently it has been the subject of a major renovation costing over £7 million and is now ready to undertake its role as an incubator site for small businesses. We went to see it recently and got these photographs of the exterior.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Zip wire - no hands

The Forest of Dean has two commercial "adventure" climbing sites for children and adults. After having been clipped on to a wire so that falling becomes impossible, people can traverse various kinds of pathways through the tops of coniferous trees. The experience ends with a zip wire ride that takes the participants back to ground level. Some of the most intrepid undertake the ride using no hands. On the day we were there I had my small Sony camera, not the one I'd have chosen for this subject. However, it acquitted itself quite well, helped in no small measure by the complementary colours of the rider and the background of trees.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Plastic Pavilion, Forest of Dean

"Plastic Pavilion" is the name of one of the new exhibits that have been added to the Sculpture Trail in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. It is, to quote the official description by the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust, "an undulating, 16-square metre canopy made of 1,600 recycled plastic bottles. Filled with coloured water, the bottles glisten in the sunlight and sway in the breeze. Inspired by stained glass windows, the multi-coloured mosaic transforms public space into a serene oasis, encouraging people to slow down and enjoy a sensory experience." The artist is Seyi Adelekun, who says of her work: "My installation takes a lot of inspiration from the natural world, so it is an amazing opportunity to be part of this commission. I am so excited to install Plastic Pavilion in the mystical Forest of Dean this summer. I find a lot of solace being in nature, so I hope it provides people with a space for mindfulness underneath the floating cosmic eye."

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

Walking disused railway lines

Disused railway lines can be found across much of Britain. The rise of the motor car led to fewer people using the railways and the politicians' answer to the problem of funding lightly used lines was to axe them. Many became cycle paths and footpaths. They were a welcome addition to the web of public rights of way, although they do have one disadvantage. Because they are straight or gently curved to accommodate trains, and have no sudden change of altitude or direction, they can be visually quite boring. Today's photograph shows dog walkers on a disused line near Ross on Wye, Herefordshire. This track stops where it used to cross the River Wye on a bridge (which is now gone): another drawback of disused railway lines.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

View from the Devil's Pulpit

The village of Tintern stands on the west(Welsh) bank of the River Wye where it cuts through a narrow valley. A bridge built for the now disused railway line takes a footpath across the river to the east (English) side where it begins its steep climb up to a limestone outcrop that holds a viewpoint called the Devil's Pulpit. From this vantage point Tintern with its ruins of a Cistercian abbey, made famous by a poem by William Wordsworth, can be clearly seen. Legend has it that the Devil used this place from which to taunt the monks below.

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

Sylvan Great Malvern

The Worcestershire spa town of Great Malvern expanded greatly in the nineteenth century to accommodate both visitors who came to "take the waters" and well-to-do people who wanted to live a genteel life on the tree clad slopes of the Malvern Hills. Today there are Victorian houses and hotels in abundance in the town, often with large, tree and shrub filled gardens that give the town a sylvan character. I spotted the tops of these buildings among the trees as we looked up the hillside. The mixture of evergreens and deciduous trees is quite typical of the area and means that greenery in profusion is still on show in the winter months.

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

Lime and beech trees

Two of the most colourful native trees in an English autumn are the lime and the beech. Of the two, I would say that the lime is the most reliable, always changing its summer green for bright autmn yellow. Beech, to my mind, is somewhat less dependable in terms of depth of colour. But, in a good year its oranges and yellows outshines the lime by quite a margin. This year seems to have been a good one for the beech and this pairing of both lime and beech shows both trees off to great effect.

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

Autumn rivulet, Llanfoist

Is a water course as small as the one shown in this photograph eligible for the name "stream" or should it be called something different? I tend to think of streams as a something more substantial than this, often being features that attract specific names. Perhaps this is a rivulet, a rill, a runnel or even a streamlet. It flows down from the Blorenge at Llanfoist, near Abergavenny in Wales. The Ordnance Survey 1:25000 doesn't give it a name but it may be called something in the locality. It was running briskly when I photographed it, catching the plentiful autumn leaves dropping on it from overhanging trees.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Cherry tree leaves

One of the houses we have lived in had several cherry trees. Most were ornamental species and if they did produce cherries they were mostly small fruit. One tree sometimes had larger cherries to the delight of the local blackbirds. However, what all of them did produce in abundance was colourful autumn leaves. The depth of the autumn colour reflected the weather of the growing season, but more often than not they had leaves of a brightness rivalled only by the acers. Walking through the park in Great Malvern recently we came across a cherry tree with deep red, orange and yellow leaves, probably as bright as they ever get.

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

Shadows and reflections

November is the first of the months in which I relish the low sun and longer shadows. All through that month, December, January and February these two factors go some way to mitigating the darkness of the winter period. Recently, walking past a small industrial estate in Abergavenny, I noticed a car standing in a large puddle, the result of recent heavy rain. The deep morning shadows from nearby buildings accentuated the sunlit side of the car and the puddle doubled the effect. This combined with the sheen of the metal and the red of the light made a semi-abstract composition that immediately appealed to me.

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

View from Raglan Castle

After a walk around Abergavenny we stopped off at Raglan Castle on our drive home. The afternoon was one of blue skies, fast moving white clouds, and a temperature somewhat lower than recently. The remains of the castle are quite substantial (see photographs below and here) and include a spiral staircase up to what must have been something approximating the highest point of the building As we stood looking north-west at the summits of The Blorenge, Sugar Loaf and The Skirrid we could see the patches of light and the clouds' shadows moving across the fields. I took my photograph more in hope than expectation of capturing this effect and I'm quite pleased with the result.

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

Fireworks display

 "Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot". Thus begins the old rhyme, and remember it we certainly do at the annual Bonfire Night. Every 5th November fires are lit across the country, fireworks blaze in abundance, and people (well some) recall the attempt in 1605 by Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the House of Lords and kill all within. Quite a few bonfires still feature a figure or effigy of Guy Fawkes but this aspect of the celebration seems to be declining. Large, spectacular fireworks displays, however, are becoming ever more popular. The photographs above are a composite of a few I took at a fine display in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

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

More autumn acers

Gardeners generally call the Acer genus of trees and shrubs by their Latin name: to the layman they are more often "maples". The distribution of the 132 species extends across Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America. Only one species is found in the southern hemisphere.

 In the UK the most common Acer or maple is a the sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), a tree that foresters often describe as a weed species. However, such is the popularity of the ornamental acers they can be found growing in the wild having escaped the confines of gardens and country estates. The examples in this post were photographed at Westonbirt National Arboretum in Gloucestershire.

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

Late October view of Goodrich

Coppett Hill is an area of common land above the Herefordshire village of Goodrich. It is owned and managed by a Trust of local people that bought the land in 1985. On a recent walk we looked down from near the summit (201m, 659 feet) at the rabbit-cropped grass, over the autumn-brown bracken to the houses and church below and then across the south Herefordshire countryside. The ploughed fields, pastures and the fast-appearing winter wheat framed by green, brown and yellow hedges and trees told the story the advancing season, as did the showers and intermittent sun that dogged our brief walk.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100