photo challenge

The Old Quarry ~ Thursday’s Special

I’ve always found quarries disturbing places – the wholesale delving into the earth, the ravaged landscapes left behind. And yes, I know we need the resources. (Our own house is built of this fossilized Silurian Sea, although actually I’d be just as happy with brick or timber).

Shadwell Quarry behind Much Wenlock’s Windmill Hill is only one of the many old limestone quarries along Wenlock Edge. These days they are no longer worked but host various business enterprises that simply need a large amount of storage space. Quarry owners are supposed to do some restoration after the blasting has stopped, but I’ve not noticed much of this actually happening.

These photos show how slowly recolonization of quarried land takes place. (For an aerial view go HERE.) It has been twenty years since Shadwell was decommissioned.

The water in the quarry bottom is also a strange blue, almost turquoise at times, coloured by the limestone deposits. At over seventy feet deep, it lures tipsy young men to prove their manliness by diving in from one of the man-made cliffs while their mates film the act and post the videos on You Tube. Last summer I spotted gangs of school leavers heading off behind Windmill Hill. They were armed with ghetto blasters and towels and I overheard them saying they were ‘going to the beach’.

It’s interesting how people’s perceptions of places differ. One sees ‘exciting resort’; another oppressive dereliction – albeit with strains of desolate grandeur.

I’ve written more about the history of Wenlock’s limestone quarrying at Hidden Wenlock #4

This week at Lost in Translation Paula’s theme is ‘forbidding’. Please call in there if you want to take part in the challenge. She suggests many possibilities for interpretation.

Sun Through My Window ~ Thursday’s Special

For those in need of some summery brightness today, here are my allotment gladioli filled with August sunshine: transformed and transforming.

This Thursday’s Special challenge over at Paula’s is Backlit

Please drop in for more illuminated entries.

The River Runs Through It: Afon Mawddach Between Land And Sea

I’m on the last lap of Ailsa’s current challenge with this post. These photos were taken last September when we were staying near Dolgellau in Gwynedd, mid Wales. The Mawddach (roughly pronounced Mouthack) Estuary is a glorious place -for mountains, birds and all round peacefulness. You can walk or cycle beside much of it, too, following the Mawddach Trail that was once the railway line from Dolgellau to the holiday town of Barmouth.

The old toll bridge at Penmaenpool

We followed the route to the most southerly point where the Mawddach meets the sea, at the bleak little town of Fairbourne. You could call this place a failed resort. In the late 1800s, and after the arrival of the railway, baking flour magnate, Sir Arthur McDougall developed it into a holiday destination for English East Midlands workers. These days, though, it has a desolate air, although it does have a magnificent beach. We bought an ice cream at the dingy seaside caf, but when we broached the sea wall to see the sea, it was so windy it blew our ice creams away and all over us. That’s not supposed to happen when you go to the seaside. Nor did we have Mummy to wipe us down. What a pickle.

Fairbourne Beach looking towards Barmouth

Now that summer’s done, we take the Dol Idris path

Thursday’s Special: Manscape to Landscape

Where’s My Backpack: Where Land Meets Water

Black & White Sunday

Today Paula’s guest blogger over at Lost in Translation is Debbie Smyth who many will know from her own blog Travel with Intent. Today she is setting us the challenge to ‘let the shapes shine through’. This is what she says:

For me the most important point about monochrome is that by removing the distraction of colour, the photographer is able to direct the viewer to the key elements of the image. Going monochrome is one of several tools we have as a photographer that allows us to provide focus.

The composition of my own photo is perhaps a little ‘busy’ in this B & W version (it could have done without the pole), but I like the play of light on the dhow sails, the clouds, and Lali’s straw hat. It was taken in Manda Strait, in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago.

For the story behind the photo, please go HERE. But now here are more versions. The second one down is a ‘red filter’ edit, followed by sepia. Let me know what you think.

Guest Challenge: Knowing your place (colour photo challenge)

This week I’m also over at Paula’s blog, Lost in Translation. She kindly asked me to post a guest photo challenge ‘Knowing My Place’. It’s all about finding some cunning new angle that tells you something fresh about a place you think you know very well. To find out more read on, and to see Paula’s own amazing photo response go HERE:

Lost in Translation

Tish Farrell:

Music: Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge song cycle inspired by A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad

January can be a lowering month – at least in the North. We are expected to burst, sparkling new, into the New Year, when we might feel more jaded than go-ahead. Hopefully this photo prompt will have you seeing things in a new light.
I’ve called it ‘Knowing My Place’, and you can interpret it in any way that strikes you. ‘My Place’ will be somewhere that you think you know inside out: your home town or street, the journey to work, your office, kitchen, garden or desk; your state of mind, or work in progress. Now search it with the camera’s eye. Sleuth out an angle that starts to tell you something new about it.
When I first thought of the prompt I was thinking about my home town, Much…

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Endurance in Central African Republic

There’s a story here. You have to look carefully though. This is very much a happenstance shot, taken by Graham from a moving overland truck many years ago. In the truck, alongside him, were a bunch of young Australians and New Zealanders. You may picture a row of enquiring, youthful, fair-skinned faces looking out on this scene. It is hard to imagine what the locals made of this passing vision of alien hobo humanity. The Central African Republic (CAR) has never been a common tourist destination. It certainly is not these days.

In the late nineteenth century occupying French colonisers apparently tried to turn the country into a cotton plantation. It did not work. Ever since independence in 1960, all has been shaky. For the past decade the people of CAR have been caught up in bloody bush wars, these apparently ethnic based and factional: Christian versus Muslim. Neighbouring Chad to the north is implicated. As in the Democratic Republic of Congo, CAR’s neighbour to the south, this is a beautiful land stuffed with riches: uranium, crude oil, gold, diamonds, and valuable hardwoods. There is also good farm land and hydro-power potential. Yet its people are also among the world’s poorest. As in DRC, it is necessary to ask the question ‘Who benefits?’ to find out exactly why this state of things persists in the 21st century.

…forest either side the red dirt road, rolling hills, coffee bushes, pawpaw tees, kapok trees, bananas, innumerable mangoes and desolate villages…people waving and smiling, but also some half-heartedly thrown stones and raised fists from the kids…

from G’s Overland Diary

You can make a guess that a good part of the answer will involve a chain of traded commodities that reaches us in the industrialized nations, for we are the end-users and buyers. By some means or other, arms will be going the other way. For this is the nature of the rich world’s (largely unseen) relationship with African territories. In the past it was the cropping of humans for slaves, and the cropping of elephants for tusks to make drawing-room piano keys, and balls for the billiard table games of civilized gentlemen. Today, it is the minerals that are craved, and at any cost. The trade keeps unscrupulous African potentates in power. They pillage resources from neighbouring countries to sell to the so-called developed world (is this us?). And so we have the carnage.

Until 1997 France maintained a military force in CAR; senior French politicians are said to have acquired diamond and gold interests in the country during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Thereafter, fearing a power vacuum, Paris funded French-speaking African nations to provide a peacekeeping force there (BBC news page). Today, French forces are back as part of the UN peacekeeping mission. Their fellow peacekeepers are Rwandans, and these two forces do not see eye to eye either (The New Republic). However you look at it, the country is a bloody mess. Once the Pandora’s Box of vested interest by multiple players has been opened, it is hard work to restore any vestige of order. We see this in the Middle East too.

And so back to this photograph. The girl’s wave is wistful as she looks directly at us. Frozen in the moment is her wondering about life elsewhere. The mother, though, knows better. She looks steadfastly away, eyes focused on some other reality. Her stance suggests proud forbearance, feet planted firmly on the earth, her piece of earth, weight evenly distributed. The arms that encircle the baby are sure, composed, protecting, not clinging. She is doing what women do in Africa – endure. Perhaps she is enduring still. Most likely not.

DP photo challenge: endurance

For more about conflict resources

wild shopping in Kenya

In Africa shopping is often an adventure. Well, who needs the thrill of the mall when you can strike a deal in a hippo-infested papyrus swamp? And for carnations too. I was most impressed by this young man’s opportunism, though puzzled too. Flower-buying customers seemed in short supply in this particular location. I was in the wilderness grounds attached to the Safariland Hotel on the shores of Lake Naivasha when he popped out of the papyrus. I had been wandering alone there (as I did over several days), not on the look out for retail therapy, but for Cape Buffalo (as indeed the sign warned me), and also for hippo whose very loud grunting was resounding off the lake. Both creatures can be deadly if you catch them, or they you, in circumstances not to their liking.

In short then, I was engaged in my own form of adventure bird-watching, while the Team Leader, aka Graham, was back at the hotel, involved in workshop brain-storming with fellow scientists from across Africa. The other surprising factor is that I had some money on me so was able to buy a bunch. The flower seller kept his stock hidden from view in a swamp puddle. It seemed he was recycling the discarded side-shoots from one of the local flower factories. There are several of these huge horticulture enterprises along Lake Naivasha’s shore, all abstracting and polluting the only freshwater lake within Kenya’s Rift in order to export perfect metre-long stems of roses and carnations to Europe. The seller was thus making an opportunity out of stock control squeamishness over European “standards”. But as you can see, his little posy is very pretty. The flowers lasted ages, even surviving a hot drive back to Nairobi. A good buy all round.

You can read more of this story at CARNATIONS, CROOKS AND COLOBUS AT LAKE NAIVASHA For now, here are more views of this unique wildlife outlet store:

DP weekly photo challenge: adventure

Ailsa’s Travel Challenge: merchandise

Far away in Africa

Where’s My Backpack: Distance

This shot of Kilimanjaro, which is actually miles and miles away, was taken from Kenya’s Mombasa Highway near Kibwezi just after the rains. Below it are the green cones of the Chyulu Hills on the approach to Tsavo. Like Mount Kenya, this huge old volcano is very elusive. Sometimes it will fill the sky, other times it is more like a mirage. The next shot was taken in the early morning during the dry season. The mountain often appears with the sunrise, but twenty minutes later you will see nothing at all in the space that it occupied.

This dirt road is heading back towards the Mombasa Highway from Kenya Agriculture Research Institute’s Range Station at Kiboko. Buffalo lurk in the thorn scrub, and much else besides.

Early morning on the reef at Tiwi Beach, South Mombasa. The dug-outs belong to the local Digo fishermen, who make a living selling their catch to tourists staying that the local beach villages. (See Beaches – Mombasa)

A glimpse of Maweni Beach Cottages, built in the local style: coral rag walls and high makuti roofs thatched with coconut palm. Many of the local coconut plantations are ailing, due to too much tapping of flowering shoots to make the local brew tembo.

Mara grasslands and, in the distance, the Ololua Escarpment.

A room with a view, the ‘penthouse suite’ of the erstwhile Island Hotel, Shela Village, Lamu. This room had three whole walls of windows – the absolutely most perfect place for Nosy Writer to survey local life.

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”

Karen Blixen Out of Africa

The view that Karen Blixen saw from the veranda of her home outside Nairobi.

The Mombasa Highway just north of Kiboko. This shot was taken as we were heading to Nairobi about sixty miles away. The arid scrubland is part of Ukambani, home of the Akamba people, but Maasai come to trade here too. It was unusual to see the road with absolutely nothing and nobody on it.

And finally back up the Rift, north of Nairobi, a view across Lake Elmenteita of Lord Delamere’s Nose. This was the name the Maasai gave to the exploded volcano on the lake shore. Lord Delamere was one of the first white settlers in what was then British East Africa. I leave it to you to imagine what his nose looked like. Before Lord Delamere arrived to occupy this part of Africa, the hill was known as the Sleeping Warrior.