A local walk on the beautiful Farthing Downs…
New paths
The Covid19 shutdown has meant many more people taking daily exercise in the local parks. Interestingly this has resulted in the creation of new paths as people keep their distance from other walkers.
I can never resist….
And another walk
On today’s walk a drunk having a pee blocked my way on the narrow footpath. An “Excuse me!” from me and he hurriedly put away his equipment and ambled along until I could safely overtake.
Considerate dog walkers collect their pet’s poo in black plastic bags. Inconsiderate dog walkers don’t bother or simply discard the bag and its contents by the side of the path or into the branches of a tree. Nice. Today I came across a green-bag version which perhaps makes the inconsiderate dog owner feel better. 😠
Now for some nice pictures….
Another walk in the woods
A local, country walk
Astonishingly it’s only as a result of the current travel restrictions that I’ve discovered new areas of countryside within walking distance of home. With the aid of the Ordnance Survey app on the phone I was able to negotiate a myriad of footpaths on a 6 mile circular walk. The app also allowed me to record the walk – that’s a prison in the centre of the aerial photo!
Before the lockdown
As I set off, on an almost 3 hour walk, the village was empty of vehicles – quite a ghost town.
In the park and along the river there were many people enjoying the fine weather. Everyone was keeping their distance.
It would be a great shame if the government locked us all down because of the few who gather en masse.
The daily, allowed walk
Carshalton Ponds
With 15 minutes to fill, pictures of ponds and daffodils, shot with an iPhone app that saves images in raw format.
Beddington Park
I took these pictures in Beddington Park on a cold, miserable and grey morning. It used to be a rather scruffy park but now it’s really quite pretty.
I accidentally took the pictures with a filter on the iPhone camera app and they came out horrible, so I deleted them. I then discovered that the iPhone allows you to undo changes and so the damage done by the filter could be reversed after un-deleting. There was still a lot of work necessary in Photoshop to enhance the colours on such a sunless day. I may have gone a bit to far with the colour enhancements – artist’s prerogative!
Glass plate prints at the library
It’s not often I visit the main library but I’m glad I did as I came across a lovely, small exhibition of glass plate portrait prints. There’s a web site about the larger collection and a full set of images can be found on a Flickr site. It’s a fascinating collection that was discovered in the basement of a shop seventy years after the plates were abandoned by the photographer David Knights-Whittome.
Cricket is back
Much to our surprise, cricket has returned to our park after an absence of something like 10 years. When we first moved here there was hockey, cricket and football being played, but only football remains, and even this seemed to be tailing off. As far as I can tell, the sports pavilion lost its changing facilities to a nursery, which may have hastened the demise of organised park matches. So it’s a pleasure to see the return of cricket – and on a cold, grey, late-April afternoon, too!
