On how unchanged our landscapes can sometimes stay
Published at 8:42 pm on January 10th, 2023
Filed under: In With The Old.
Recently I’ve been reading Viking Britain: A History by Thomas Williams, so far at least a very good and modern history of the Viking Period in the British Isles, evoking what we know, what we don’t know, and particularly, what experiencing the Vikings may actually have been like, and what they may have thought. In particular it is very good at making clear which stories are likely true, which are likely not true, and which were assembled to make something that may have resembled a form of poetic, literary truth, even if in truth things did not happen exactly as the sagas and chronicles describe.
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Keyword noise: history, Somerset, Vikings, maps.
If you have a day to spare at the tail end of autumn, and the weather is all damp and misty, what better to do than go for a walk in the woods? In this case, a Forestry England wood just outside Failand, Ashton Hill Plantation. At its centre is a stand of sequoias, looking suitably mysterious in the mist. For a moment you can start to imagine you’re in some sort of supernatural horror-mystery filmed in Washington State.
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Keyword noise: North Somerset, Failand, paganism, religion, autumn, The Children, countryside, England, folk custom, giant redwoods, green space, photography, rural, Somerset, woods, sequoias.
In which things are square, and vintage
Published at 9:01 pm on December 17th, 2011
Filed under: Photobloggery.
Back in August, I talked about photo framing, and the use of square frames. In fact, if you’re viewing this on the main page, there’s a good chance it’s down below somewhere, I’ve been writing so few posts lately. In essence: nowadays you get a rectangular photo, and it’s very, very easy to crop your photo to whatever aspect ratio you like. Back in the day, you got a square photo,* and if you wanted to crop it you had to take a guillotine to your print.
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Keyword noise: analogue, Ensign Selfix, film photography, framing, harbour, jetty, lighthouse, photography, pier, Somerset, square, vintage, Watchet.
In which things are squared
Published at 6:42 pm on August 15th, 2011
Filed under: Photobloggery.
Hot weather is not very nice. How people manage with it, never mind enjoy it, I’ll never know. The brightness of the sunlight is something; but even then, winter sunshine is much better for photography. Midsummer sunshine, in the middle of a clear-skies day, is just that bit too harsh.
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Keyword noise: harbour, lighthouse, photography, pier, Somerset, square, Watchet.
In which we go to Glastonbury
Published at 10:29 am on July 3rd, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery.
Talking of summer storms: we popped down to Glastonbury the other month, for a poke around the bookshops, and for a walk up to the top of Glastonbury Tor. As we did so, the heavens opened, and we, and all the other tourists making the climb, got soaked.
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Keyword noise: Glastonbury, Glastonbury Tor, photography, Somerset, storm, weather.
In which we visit east Bristol, and Clevedon
Published at 9:21 am on February 27th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery.
A month or so ago, we took a trip to Clevedon, Somerset. I wrote about it at the time, although, I realise now, didn’t explicitly say which town we’d been to. Here, though, are some of the photographs.
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Keyword noise: abandoned, Bristol, Christmas decorations, Church Road, Clevedon, Clevedon Pier, coast, derelict, frozen, hotel, ice, lake, moon, night, North Somerset, park, park bench, photography, pier, resort, Royal Pier Hotel, sea, seaside, Somerset, St George.
In which we describe Portishead
Published at 2:57 pm on February 23rd, 2009
Filed under: Dear Diary.
Another lazy weekend this weekend. Wanting to get out of the house, though, we took a trip to Portishead.
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Keyword noise: archaeology, architecture, beach, harbour, North Somerset, Portishead, sea, seaside, Somerset.
In which we go to Bath
Published at 10:38 am on February 13th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
Back in December, for K’s birthday, we took a day out to Bath.
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Keyword noise: Bath, Bath & North East Somerset, Brunel, chapel, Great Western Railway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, photography, railway, Somerset, Sydney Gardens, telegraph pole, Walcot Chapel.
Over on the bookshelves – but not the bookshelf I talked about the othe day – is an interesting little local book by an artist called Cleo Broda. It’s called Symes Avenue: Building On The Past, and it’s about the rebuilding of the centre of Hartcliffe, and the ways in which public art was involved in the rebuilding; particularly, community art which celebrates the area’s history.*
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Keyword noise: archaeology, Bristol, Bronze Age, Cleo Broda, countryside, Hartcliffe, history, megalithic, neolithic, oral history, photography, redevelopment, rural, Somerset, standing stone, Stanton Drew, stone circle, Symes Avenue.
In which we visit Weston-super-Mare
Published at 9:28 am on January 9th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery.
In which we are not as wet as we might have been
Published at 10:31 pm on May 29th, 2008
Filed under: Dear Diary.
Last weekend, feeling like we needed a holiday, we went away and pitched the tent. And it rained. The tent, fortunately, didn’t leak, but we ended up with great puddles round the door, a wading trip whenever we wanted to go in or out. Our last morning, we looked out to see ducks sitting and paddling in the water.
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Keyword noise: camping, Cheddar, ducks, flooding, holiday, rain, Somerset, weather.
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