Beamish

It's been a while, I don't know what happened.  I have been busy clearing down my photographs from last year, then I got side tracked onto photos from 2009 and then pre 2009. I have deleted somewhere in the region of 10,000 images and I've still a way to go.  I've also re-processed (or processed for the first time) quite a lot of images from 2010 and 2009. I don't seem to have had time to post on any of my blogs.  Anyhow I'm back and I am going to blog more regularly from now on.

We had a couple of days off from work last week and made a trip up to the North East of England starting with a visit to the Beamish outdoor museum.  It's spread over quite a big area and there are a few different  parts of the site to visit.  You can either walk along the paths or there is a regular service of buses and trams to pick you up and drop you at the main centres.  I've left the photos small on the page because there are lots, but if you want to see bigger versions you can click on them.  Many of the inside places were very dark so some of the images have a bit of noise, however if the noise bothers you the pictures can't be that interesting.

We walked down to the pit village where we looked into the school house.  This classroom was set up for a class of children to come and see what school was like in the olden times,

In one of the rooms was a teacher screwing up bits of newspaper to use for lighting the fires in the classrooms. He was talking to a visitor and it struck me that he looked as if he was being told off by the teacher.  Made me smile.

Here's my wife Lynne learning her 9 times table and how to add up in Pounds, Shillings and Pence.  She seemed to be struggling a bit, but as an accountant you wouldn't expect her to be able to cope with money sums.

Across the road from the school was a row of typical pit workers houses.  Two up and two down where anywhere up to fourteen people would live. Four generations under one roof was not unusual. The heart of the houses would be the big coal burning range where all the cooking and heating happens.  The houses had old tin baths hung up outside which would be brought in and filled with water from the big kettles.

The next house in the row was a bit more grand and a lot less cramped. Perhaps a supervisor or manager lived here.

In their front room they had a lovely dining table set up for afternoon tea. The previous house had to have beds in the front room to accommodate the number of people living there.

At the end of the road was the pit head with the engineering shop and stores. Within one of the buildings was a small office where one of the managers would have worked.

We walked along the path towards the town and stopped off to have a look at the station. We really loved these old trunks piled up on the trolley and the old posters in the notice board behind.

From the station we walked along to the town where there was these old fashioned tin advertisements on the fence.

The houses in the town were much bigger than the pit houses and many of them had businesses being run from them.  Here is the office at the solicitors house.

This is the dentists' waiting room at the entrance to the house and his surgery was on the floor above.

Upstairs in the house next door was a lovely nursery with lots of toys and games scattered about and the table set out with a dolls tea set.

While downstairs in the kitchen was a lovely dresser with all the Sunday best china displayed,

And in the front room was a typical Victorian clutter with all sorts of ornaments an nik-naks.

Around the back of the houses was a yard where the horse drawn carriages were kept. Inside one of the sheds there was a tool bench in the corner with boxes for nuts, bolts and other assorted hardware. 

Along from the tool store was a little forge with the water bath for quenching the iron products made here.

Back onto the street and there was a row of shops including this sweet shop.  In the back room they made their own sweets for sale.

Further around on the road was the bank.

Inside was the cashiers desks.

This lovely little safe was tucked inside the managers office but the main safe and safety deposit boxes were down in the cellars.

Back outside the bank we see the row of shops and a pub.

Opposite these shops was a garage and a big old co-op with a separate door for each department.  We started off in the grocery department where there was all the old fashioned boxes of everyday products such as salt, corned beef and biscuits.

Next door was the drapers and then the hardware store.

It is an amazing museum and even though quite a bit of it was closed for the winter season we had a really good time.  All the staff were very friendly and more than happy to recount their tales of how things were in the Victorian and Edwardian times.  We also visited the Masonic Hall, the print shop where I "coined a phrase" with the printer and a few other places which I haven't included in the blog. We will go to the museum again in the summer season to see the bits that weren't open such as the farm and the manor house.  They are constantly building new places and are hoping to open a bakery and coal fired fish and chip shop in the town sometime soon.

If you've never been to Beamish, go now.

Garden Birds in the Snow

We've had the heaviest snow on record for November which has caused a lot of disruption but given me the opportunity to get a new selection of birds in the garden. I have made some videos of the birds on the bird feeders which I'll put at the end of the post. But I wanted to get some photos of the birds without the feeders in the picture. This first one is a little bluebird sitting patiently in the branches.

In this second photo is the first of three robin pictures. In this one the snow is coming down and the robin is hunched down and appears to be sheltering under the bigger branch. 

Here we have a blackbird feeding on the bright orange berries from the bush. Not a particularly good quality photo but I just liked the way you can see the berry just before it disappears. I have a series of shots with the bird having a couple of berries from the bush but this was my favourite.

The next is what I think is a female robin,but I'm not 100% sure. It's sat in almost exactly the same place as the black bird in the previous photo but the sun was a bit brighter so it's come out a little better.

This little blue tit was eating snow, I guess because all the water about is frozen. I just thought it looked very amusing with the snow all around its beak.  

The last two photos are the other robin pictures that I mentioned earlier. I think it's the same robin in both photos, quite a chubby little fellow.

The first video was taken after the first small amount of snow and shows the feeder with the orange berried bush behind and then one of the balls. Towards the end of the video is MacKinnley the cat from down the road. He's a bit of a bully, but quite a magnificent cat.

The second video is much longer is just has a compilation of bits from about 2 hours of recording. The first parts are of the nut holder looking down the road and the second set of parts are looking back towards the house. You might just see me looking out of the window sometimes

A bit of a mixture

I hadn't been to Scout Dyke Reservoir since August so I though it was time I went back for a visit. I had intended on getting up early enough to make some sunrise images but I seem to be having trouble waking up at the weekends. So it was about 8am before I arrived and about a dozen anglers were already out on the banks of the reservoir. The sun hadn't been up too long and there was just a few small clouds in the sky although it did look as though more were on their way.

As I walked along the reservoir wall I saw that the early morning sun was coming through a gap and hitting these trees at the bottom of the dam wall so I went down the slope to get a closer look. The foliage on these trees was very light brown and a bit dead looking but the orange sun made them glow. The grass of the fields in the background was also being lit up by the sunlight but the rest of the foreground was very much in the shade. I used tone mapping to bring up the detail of the small stone building and the bridge across to it. On a normally exposed shot these details were purely silhouettes.

I walked along the bottom of the dam wall slope next to the woods where I spotted a couple of mushrooms in the grass. Yes more fungi, I can't help it, it's just that time of year. As usual it was pretty dark and damp so to get the shot I put the ISO setting straight up to 800 which has made it a bit noisy in the background but I'm not too worried. The things I love about this photos are the textures on the mushroom and also the little drops of dew on the tips of the grass.

The second mushroom was up the slope a little from the first and although they look to be the same type the top hasn't opened up as much as the first, making it look quite different. There was no way I was going to get them both in focus so, a bit unconventionally I guess, I decided to focus on the one at the back. Again there's nice textures on the mushroom and the dew on the grass but if you look closely at the background on the right there are lots of tiny mushrooms too.

I took some shots of this angler casting his fly with a deft flick of his rod. I took several shots as he fished but I liked the shapes in this one the best. This side of the bank was still in a lot of shade so it was pretty dark still.

 We walked up to the far end of the reservoir and onto an area which is normally under the water. Although we seem to have had a lot of rain recently the water level in this reservoir does't appear to have gone up very much. The clouds in the background look a bit threatening for more rain as they started to move in front of the sun. This pile of rock in the foreground is the remains of a platform that the water bailiff had built for the herons a couple of years back when the water was low. I have some photos of him building it and also of a heron sat on top of it looking down into the water below. I'm surprised he hasn't rebuilt it while the water level has been so low. Maybe the anglers aren't too keen on providing perching facilities for the herons as they probably take a lot of the fish.

This is the main channel of water coming into the reservoir at the very top end. As you can see the sky in the opposite direction to the previous shot is completely clear blue. Although this channel is only five of six feet wide it is very deep and if you look closely at the foreground you can see how the edges look to go straight downwards below the weed.

As I walked down the other bank of the reservoir the clouds that were threatening earlier moved completely away and the sun came out. I was quite intrigued by this pile of stones because it wasn't here last time I came to the reservoir. I'm guessing that someone was a bit bored and decided to collect some of the stones from the old dry stone walls that were here before the reservoir was built and make a pretend boat with them. I guess it could be the beginnings of a pier to fish from and maybe the herons or the cormorants would find it useful. When the water level does finally come back up it will disappear below the water and fall apart just like the herons perch in the earlier picture.

Well I was a bit later than expected posting these pictures and I have some more to post on my computer and still more still in my camera to look at from this last weekend. I guess I need to spend some time and catch up before I have to start thinking about not taking any new shots for a while.

Autumn Scenes

There was the promise of a nice day so I thought I'd get some autumn leaves pictures in the woods a couple of miles from my home. In the middle of the woods is a field which has about half a dozen nicely shaped trees scattered around where I was sure there would be some good photo opportunities. I have photographed the trees many times before and I thought they would be looking good in their autumn colours. On the drive to the woods I spotted some trees in a field next to the road that looked quite interesting so I stopped and took a few shots. This first image is a tone mapped HDR of the trees with the houses behind and Holme Moss transmitter on the horizon. The power lines and post in the foreground spoil it a bit but I decided to leave them in the frame anyway.

When I reached the woods the sky was becoming a bit dull as a haze covered the sun. I took quite a few photos in the field but I wasn't that happy with any of them. I've included this image in the post as a starting point for what I was trying to make.

I decided to go for a walk in the woods and then if the light had improved to return to the field for another attempt at getting the shots I wanted. I walked up through the woods and then out to some fields at the top of the hill where there was a crab apple tree with loads of apples around its base. I took a few shots of the apples from different angles and different focal lengths and the two I liked where this one and one that I've used on my Begin Photo blog.

Further around the fields I spotted the head of a bird poking up under a tree in the corner of the field.  I took a few shots and tried to get closer to try and get some better shots. To begin with I hadn't recognised what sort of bird it was but as I got closer I realized it was a young pheasant. As I crept closer the bird had obviously spotted me and had started to make its escape across the ploughed field. There turned out to be three of them making there way slowly away from me.  One of them stopped briefly and opened up its wing before continuing on its way. I'm not sure if this was a way of making itself look bigger than it was but I think it makes a good image of the birds feathers.

After a bit more of a walk I returned to the field and took this next shot of my favourite tree in the field. Its the one in the background from the earlier photo. I like this shot because the cloud behind it is almost exactly the same shape on the top.

As I took more photos in the field the clouds in the sky continued to get smaller and separated.  I'd swapped my lens to a very wide angle zoom to take this next photo.  It's the same tree again from a slightly different angle and again I see a repetition of the shape of the tree in the clouds behind. There is yet another photo of this tree in my Begin Photo blog taken from a bit closer and again a slightly different angle. I probably took about fifty shots of this tree in the two visits to the field on this day.

The final shot was taken as I was leaving the woods and the sun was shining very brightly through the trees. Here the ground was covered with a layer of orangey brown leaves which contrast with the greeny orange leaves still on the trees.

I've taken a lot more photos in the last couple of days and I'll try to post some more before the end of the week.

Chateau Serrant

The first image from Serrant is the first view of the chateau as you leave the visitors payment desk.  This is effectively the side entrance where you would go on the bridge over the moat and through the smaller set of gates and into the courtyard.    The weather was lovely but at times a little too harsh for decent photos.

As we crossed the bridge over the moat at the side gate there were some big fish swimming about below us.  This one was very excitable and looked as if was trying to get out of the water.

Once inside the courtyard we had this wonderful view of the main gate which had a straight drive down to some more gates onto the main road.  At either side of the drive was a stretch of lawn and then a few avenues of trees all in straight lines.

We waited in the courtyard to join the guided tour around the inside of the chateau.  The tour started in some dark passages through the cellars where we were shown the original wiring from when the chateau first got electricity.  It looked quite scary but it's all been replaced by modern circuits because it was dangerous.  The tour then went around the kitchens which were also in the cellars where we saw some amazing old kitchen equipment.  Then up the stairs through the dining room, library music room and then up more stairs into the bedrooms.  There were some amazing things in there but I wasn't allowed to take photos so nothing to show here.  I could have bought some postcards or a guide book and scanned them but it's not the same.

After the tour we went to walk around the lake where we had some wonderful views of the house reflected in the lake.  I love the clump of trees beside the lake and you can just see at the other side of the trees are some steps down to the water.  I guess they would probably have had boats on the lake at one time.

It wasn't possible to walk around the lake as it was fenced off so we had to head back towards the house where I took this next shot using some of the trees around the lake to frame the shot.

It's quite odd how, what effectively is, the back of the house was much fancier the the front. I suspect people living here used to spend more of their time at this side of the house by the lake.  There were probably some lovely formal gardens down each side of this path but now there is just grass.  Directly behind me when I took this shot are the steps down to the lake that I mentioned earlier.

This shot shows the little bridge from the back doors which don't look as if they are used any more. There is a little door under the bridge which I think is where the kitchen is situated and someone had put bread on the step for the swans that were in the moat.  The family that own the chateau still live here up on the top two floors in the roof space and the two wings at the front of the chateau.

We walked all the way around the house and this shot shows the bridge that we crossed to get into the courtyard and the bridge to the main gate.  On the right of the picture is one of the private wings of the chateau where there is a little chapel for the household to use. In the centre of the image is one of the two separate buildings which flank the main gate.  I'm not sure what these were used for but I suspect they could have been the servants quarters because the damp dark passage where we began the tour started in the cellar of this building.

There were some other buildings where we entered the grounds from the car park but they seemed to be private residences now apart from the first one where we paid to come in.  There was another lake next to the one where I took the photos but that looked more like a mill pond or a little reservoir.  There was also a pigeonerre on site but it was currently being refurbished and was completely covered by a tarpaulin.  It's quite a nice chateau but certainly not one of the best in the Loire Valley.