I went for a walk this evening with my camera. The town was quiet; almost empty. Followed by my shadow, I ambled up and down the streets my eyes fixed upward as the yellow setting sun made the stone churches and houses glow. With the sun to my back, the sky was a bright blue, dark enough to show the white crescent moon. Dark jagged shapes created art out of everything that caught the light. The word beautiful seems inadequate. I may have been the only person to notice her shadow walking away! It was a special evening; it’s strange how we can see something a hundred times and yet not really see it.
It was a magical walk!
Love the pictures of the solicitor’s building, especially the second one. Of course, I like all your photos, though. 🙂
@Jen
I love that one too. A house within a house like something out of a sci-fi novel…which dimension are we in?
And all those angles of white against the blue. It looks like a sculpture of a house. Lovely!
what kind of camera do you have? it takes great pictures…that and the way you describe your surroundings almost tempts me into vacationing in your part of the world.
@Gabby
I love my little camera. It’s a Canon Ixus 130 (a gift from the Goblin – he’s so lovely!). I still haven’t figured out all the features, but it takes excellent photos. To have an excellent small camera I can take everywhere is a dream come true. It doesn’t have the lens for long distance, but for close up and medium range shots I think its great.
As for vacation locations…
A lot of the heavily populated areas of England are really ugly now (I was shocked – a lot of modern architecture is really bad; in the better areas its the fake Georgian, in the less well off areas its the Council housing which usually looks like open prisons) but there are lots of areas where if you leave the main roads and drive on what they call the B roads or the C roads (which are often only wide enough for one car which have a legal driving speed of 60 miles an hour) there are lots of magical places left in England. I highly recommend Suffolk if you enjoy walking holidays. It has shingle/pebble beaches and inland if you go when the oaks are in leaf there are parts where you feel like you’re in one of Gainsborough’s paintings or in an Agatha Christie novel.
I haven’t yet visited every corner of England, but I suspect the the same rule applies; leave the main roads and ugly large towns and you’ll soon find magical moments. In the summer the light down in the southern half can be amazing. The first time the Goblin took me to visit the Jayne Austen museum I cried all the way home because almost everywhere I looked was a 3-D work of art. We had the same light when we went down to Runnymede where King John signed the Magna Carta…the sunlight was again amazingly clear and bright. The Goblin was in one track mode, but when we finally ended up on the right path, I just stopped and pointed. Look! It was so bizarre; behind us was a cow field, in front of us beyond the pond shaded by a Weeping Willow…the garden of Eden. It was a combination of the landscape and the light. Stunning! And the yew tree was amazing! To touch something living that was probably alive when the Romans invaded was an experience!