history – Steel City Snapper photography

My wife and I visited the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival today. It’s the first time we’ve been and it was an enjoyable few hours out.

Wakefield is one of the towns that delineate the area known as the Rhubarb Triangle*, famed for producing forced rhubarb, a method of growing the vegetable in dark sheds which encourages the plants to convert carbohydrates into glucose, forming stalks with a sweetly sour taste. Rhubarb has many uses, but is often served in sweet pies and crumbles,sometimes accompanied by other fruits. Wakefield Council holds the annual festival each February.

Fresh bundles of rhubarb on one of the stalls.

The event itself was somewhat akin to a Christmas market and I was surprised at how many stalls were present, along with various activities taking place, and local bars, cafe’s, and restaurants also laying on rhubarb themed food and drinks. We bought a number of items, including some orange and rhubarb marmalade (I’m on a bit of a marmalade voyage of discovery at present, having it with toast for breakfast several times a week), some rhubarb candles (which my wife will gift to a friend), a sausage and rhubarb focaccia (to be eaten tomorrow!), and some fresh stalks of rhubarb (some of which we ate with custard this evening).

Everywhere you looked, people had stalks of purchased rhubarb protruding from bags and backpacks.

As well as the stalls, there were a number of other events taking place during the event (which ran from Friday until today), including live music, arts and crafts, cooking demonstrations, various performers in rhubarb costumes, and no less than three different morris dancing groups (or sides, as I believe they are known) .

*the legal definition of the Rhubarb Triangle is apparently as follows…

“from Ackworth Moor Top north along the A628 to Featherstone and Pontefract. Then on to the A656 through Castleford. It then goes west along the A63 past Garforth and West Garforth. Head north passing Whitkirk, Manston and on towards the A6120 by Scholes. Follow the A6120 west, round to pass Farsley which then leads south west via the A647 onto the A6177. Pass Dudley Hill to pick up the M606 south. At junction 26 take the M62 south to junction 25 head east along A644 toward Dewsbury, passing Mirfield, to pick up the A638 towards Wakefield. At Wakefield take the A638 south to Ackworth Moor top.”^[

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 22 February 2026

I took a trip to Newark Air Museum today. This wasn’t my first visit (I think it’s my third), and I’ve posted pictures from the previous visits here on my blog, but today was the first time I’ve visited with my dad.

Actually, having said the above, it’s actually my fourth visit, because today was a second trip with my dad following an aborted attempt last autumn when we drove all the way there only to find out upon arrival that there had been a problem with the museum’s water supply and that it was closed as a result.

Thankfully, there were no such issues today (although I did phone them in advance, just to be sure!) and we got to wander around the place at our leisure for a few hours. My dad, now in his mid-80s, served his National Service with the RAF in the late 1950s, and I think he enjoyed looking around the place. During a brief chat with another gentleman of similar age, where he revealed that he’d been in the RAF, the other fella asked if he’s been a pilot! He was not, although he did ride a service-issued bicycle (which he crashed while racing one of his fellow servicemen one day, which resulted in him hiding the damaged bike until he left the service 😀 ).

It was a nice day out and I should try to arrange other such visits to similar places for us both, I think.

I shot a roll-and-a-half of Tri-X with my Yashica Mat 124G while there, but the pictures below are all digital pictures from my Ricoh GR III compact.