The River Witham flows very sedately through the centre of Lincoln, feeling more like a canal than a river. It is joined at Brayford Pool (seen in the first picture below) by the Foss Dyke, a man made canal the joins the Witham with the River Trent at Torksey to the west.
After Lincoln, the Witham flows through the flat Lincolnshire countryside, passing Bardney and Woodhall Spa, before eventually entering the North Sea at Boston on the east coast.
Over the coming days I’ll share a bunch of pictures I shot in Lincoln a couple of months ago. I was very fortunate to have really good light all the time I was there, but it was particularly good during the morning when the sun was casting some nice side-light. I really like how the buildings and the chimneys are illuminated in this one.
Another picture from Renishaw golf course. This old trooper of a tree is exhibiting signs that it’s not yet finished with life.
It isn’t the first time I photographed this particular tree, and an earlier shot from last October shot with my Olympus OM-10 on Ilford HP5+ can be seen below the square Yashica Mat image.
The photo today is of the clubhouse at Renishaw Golf Course. Or should I say the former Renishaw Golf Course, because it closed last year. The course is bordered by the River Rother at its eastern boundary and as such is subject to flooding. I would often drive past following periods of heavy rain and see some of the fairways submerged, perhaps due to the rainfall alone, but perhaps also when flood defences have been engaged on the river, causing it to flood in certain areas to protect others.
I don’t believe the club house ever flooded as it’s at a higher elevations, but it’s now up for sale.
I have more photos from the golf course that I’ve taken in recent months. It’s amazing how quick nature begins to reclaim such places when they are no longer actively maintained.
Something good that happened today…
Our house (just to be clear, not the Renishaw Golf Course clubhouse!) is currently up for sale as we’re hoping to move to a bungalow (albeit a large bungalow suitable for the four of us). Someone who came to look at our house last week has offered the asking price, which is good. We now have the challenge of finding somewhere that we would like to move into which, given the dearth of such properties on the market at present, may take some time..
There are still a number of the old K6 telephone boxes in Sheffield city centre, a lot of them clustered around the town hall area. This one stands on Leopold Street and has seen better days. I’ve photographed it on quite a few occasions, and it’s featured in the blog on at least one previous occasion.
There are still numerous K6 phone boxes around the country, but the ones out of town centres rarely contain telephones anymore, now tending to be used to house mini-libraries, or sometimes defibrillators.
Something good that happened today…
I had a call with a customer that I had been a little nervous about (this is not unusual, I often feel nerves before such calls, despite never having had one go badly), but it went well, which is always a relief. People I’ve been on customer calls with have always fed back on how confident and composed I am, but my own inner imposter-syndrome tends to try and tell me otherwise.
Muriel is the title of the piece of street art seen painted on the gable-end of the building in today’s photo. It’s by local artist, Pete McKee and had been there since 2018. Sadly though, someone has seen fit to stain Muriel’s coat.
Something good that happened today…
I’ve been backing files up onto an external hard drive for a while now, but was conscious of the fact that I probably wasn’t doing it very efficiently. Today I’ve rectified that and now have a much improved, simpler, and mostly hands-off method, so I’m happy about that.
While browsing Reddit earlier I came across a post about an old British children’s programme called Spider. Spider wasn’t something I watched as a child – I predate it by quite some time – but my oldest son had an episode of it on a VHS tape back in the 90s which contained a compilation of single episodes from various children’s animated shows, and we watched this one together on numerous occasions. Seeing a single image of Spider on Reddit instantly brought back the song, lyrics and all, that featured in this episode, titled Spider in the Bath which I’d stored somewhere in my memory banks awaiting something to trigger it one day. Today was that day…
A quartet of pictures I shot one morning on my way into the office.
Park Hill Flats are a notable (and some might say, notorious) landmark in Sheffield, being one of the major landmarks visible when entering the city by rail or by road down the main arterial route from the motorway.
When originally constructed in the late 1950s, / early 1960s they replaced older back-to-back tenement housing and gave the residents the luxury of their own private bathrooms and heating. Due to the construction on a hillside it was possible to reach every floor apart from the highest from somewhere at ground level and the wide frontages to the flats were wide enough for electric milk-floats to be driven, and the name “streets in the sky” was coined.
Over time, a mixture of poor maintenance, and rising antisocial behaviour and crime blighted the development. Over time it became more difficult to house tenants on the site. In recent decades, a part-privatisation of the development has taken place, with the blocks being gradually refurbished and improved into a mixture of upmarket housing, social housing, and business units, and there are now much improved facilities on the site.
Whatever your thoughts on the brutalist architectural design, the place is certainly striking, and for a photographer provides ample opportunities for interesting pictures to be made.
Something good that happened today…
I heard today that one of the people in our team impacted by the recent redundancies has secured himself a new role, so I’m very happy for him. He’s a great young man with a lot of promise and deserves every opportunity.
A very short walk from the Impressions Gallery in Bradford is a cafe called The Cake’ole (“cake’ole” being slang for “mouth” – the hole where you insert cake 🙂 ). I ordered a sandwich and a coke, and was very happy with both the food and the service. Next time I visit the gallery I’ll almost certainly pay a visit to The Cake’ole again too. Maybe I’ll try one of the nice looking cakes next time. I took the picture below while awaiting my sandwich.
Something good that happened today…
Back at work after the weekend on a gray and rainy Monday (it’s February in the UK, so this is perhaps to be expected). But I had another day that felt productive and that always gives me a satisfied feeling when the working day is over.
Steel City Snapper photography 