A couple more photographs of the packhorse bridge at Ashford-in-the-Water today. I shared another photo of the bridge a couple of days ago and mentioned that the sheep paddock at one side of the bridge contained only ducks on this occasion. You can see a couple of them (well just the back-end of one) in the second picture.
On the day that I visited Ashford-in-the-Water, I also drove up to Monsal Head, a scenic viewpoint which overlooks a stretch of Monsal Dale where the valley takes a sharp bend. As with Ashford, the River Wye flows through (and indeed, eroded) the dale here too, a few miles upstream from the village.
One of the main features of the valley is the disused Headstone Viaduct which used to carry the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway. The line was open between 1863 and 1968. The route of the railway now forms the Monsal Trail, a popular route for hiking and cycling. The viaduct is 300 feet in length and 70 feet tall.
A little downstream from the viaduct a weir slows the flow of the river.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Three more photos from Ashford-in-the-Water, all taken on the banks of the River Wye where it flows past the edge of the village. It’s really quite picturesque.
The bridge in the third image is Sheepwash Bridge, a 17th century packhorse bridge which is a Scheduled Monument, giving it legal protections from modification. To the left of the bridge in the image is a stone pen. Lambs would be places in this pen so that their mothers would be enticed to swim the river to get to them. As they swam they would be pushed beneath the surface to clean their coats before they were sheared. There were no lambs in the pen on this day, although there were a couple of ducks.
That’s the same swan in all three shots. 🙂
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Just a quick post today with a couple of photos showing Holy Trinity Church in Ashford-in-the-Water, and a view across its graveyard. The church dates back to the 12th century but was apparently re-modelled extensively in the 19th century.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I visited the village of Ashford-on-the-Water last month. It’s a quaint little place full of picturesque cottages, and old church, and attractive scenes where the River Wye flows through. This was the first time I’ve visited the place since a school trip back when I was probably about ten years old (on a residential week at the nearby Thornbridge Hall).
This house caught my attention with it’s maze-like pattern of miniature hedges in the front garden.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
The church that can be seen behind the wall and trees in this photographs is St. George’s. It is one of a trio of Commisioner’s Churches built in the city under the 1818 Church Building Act. The construction of these churches was funded following parliamentary vote.
St. George’s was consecrated in 1825 and operated for over 150 years before being declared redundant and closing in 1981. After standing unused for a number of years, the church was purchased by the University of Sheffield and now houses a lecture theatre and student accommodation.
I went out with friends to a local pub today. I’ve drunk more than I have for quite some time – not enough to make me roaring drunk, but I certainly have something of a healthy buzz going as I type this. Please don’t hold me accountable for any rubbish I post, or any typos (above and beyond the ones that seemingly always drop into my posts, at least).
I didn’t intend to drink as much as I have (even though it was’t a particularly excessive volume) but, as anyone who’s been to a bar can probably attest, a couple of drinks and your intentions can slip, and I ended up doubling the quantity of alcoholic drinks I planned on limiting myself to. I hope I don’t have to pay for it with a hangover!
Today’s photo is of a pub, or the upper part of it at least. Not the one I’ve visited today though, this is the Red Deer in Sheffield town centre.
Looking back on the words above, they seem to pass muster. Perhaps I can hold my liquor better than I thought. 🙂
These are the same blocks of flats that featured in yesterday’s post, but shot from a different vantage point – this time from the Broad Lane roundabout.
When I first saw the developed negatives I thought that this frame had some sort of damage – and odd, white splotch. It turned out to be the street light. 🙂
This photograph shows Sheffield University Arts Tower on the left with three of the blocks of flats next to Netherthorpe Road (there’s another block not visible in this image). Between the two blocks on the right the tower of St. Vincent’s church can just be seen through the gap.
I’ve been on my first business-focused trip today since spring 2020. I felt oddly anxious about the experience, not because of Covid or anything like that, but because I have not left my home for any work-based reasons in over two years (well, I did need to travel into town to get my faulty laptop fixed last year, but that wasn’t a meeting or anything, and it was only into my local building) and this trip involved taking a train journey to another city.
The day went well though and the biggest issue was the fact that the smart shoes I wore to go with my suit (which, while maybe not quite at the cutting edge of modern fashion any more, thankfully still fits) managed to rip the back of my heels open. This has clearly happened in the past but I’ve blanked it out of my mind until today – I know that it has happened before because there is a partially-used pack of plasters in my laptop bag from where I obviously had to perform field surgery the last time I wore the razor-backed shoes. I sat and mended my feet on a seat outside the station before I even got on the train! There’s nothing quite like a minor, but painful, injury to start the day…
I did manage to fit my 35RC into the laptop bag and, while I didn’t really have much time to take photos, grabbed a few shots on my way to and from the station. Not enough to finish the roll though, so it’ll be a while before I develop those.
Here’s another view of the University Arts Tower with the figure of a walking man neatly framed beneath a foreground tree. I hope his feet weren’t hurting.