favourite photos: summer 2023 (part 2)

…continued from Part 1.

There are five named rivers that flow for part of their lengths within a five-mile radius of Penrith. This is a view of the River Lowther, looking upstream from the bridge that carries the A6 across the river:

Many farms in the Penrith area have fortified buildings as a defence against marauding Scotsmen, like this one in Newton Reigny, on the road out of the village towards Catterlen:

This photo was taken looking back towards Newton Reigny.

And this is a view of the Beacon (see Part 1) from the only road leading out of town to the northwest:

In the foreground is a large area of ‘allotments’, land rented by the local council to local people who probably don’t have a garden. Beyond these is the oldest part of Gilwilly Industrial Estate.

And this is another long-range view of the Beacon, this time taken from a dirt track that connects the newer part of the Gilwilly Industrial Estate with Thacka Lane:

If you’ve looked at Part 1, you will probably have noticed that I like to take what I call ‘disappearing perspective’ photos, where straight lines converge on an imaginary point in the distance. This is a chicken farm somewhere north of Penrith:

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this solitary foxglove:

…although it does look rather lonely!

I don’t see many scarecrows around Penrith nowadays (they’re still common in Hong Kong), but this one in the allotments I referred to above is quite amusing (but not scary):

I included several photos of horses in Part 1, and this is probably the reason there are so many:

The next photo is a view of one of the most easily recognizable mountains in the Lake District: Blencathra, known colloquially as ‘Saddleback’, although it isn’t a name that I use, because ‘Blencathra’ is one of the few ‘fells’ with a Cumbric name, and all the local toponyms derive from Old Norse:

The next photo was taken in a newly developed area of town that has been named Carleton Meadows:

We’d been cycling along the road behind the camera (informally known as Grass Dryers’ Lane) when I spotted this path and thought that it might be worth following. In fact, it leads to Scaws Estate, where I grew up, and I was able to point out our old house on Brentfield Way.

I took the next photo somewhere in the Beacon plantation, and I think that this is another foxglove:

As a variant on a photo that I included in Part 1, this is Paula trying to take a photo of a Highland cow (Carleton Meadows in the background):

I don’t take many photos of petrol spills on wet roads nowadays, but here’s one:

Two curious sheep:

There is a third sheep somewhat further away that also wants to know what is going on.

I included a photo of the entrance to the tunnel under the railway at Skirsgill in Part 1, but this is what the light/dark contrast looks like from inside the tunnel:

Another couple of horses in a field adjoining Thacka Lane:

On the same day that I took the previous photo, we’d noticed that there was the usual back-up of traffic turning off the M6 from the north at Skirsgill (junction 40—it was a Friday afternoon), and we would eventually be walking back into town over Castletown Bridge. The usual pedestrian route crossing the bridge is on the north side, but I crossed over to see if I could get a photo of the traffic jam. I got much more than I expected:

The northbound carriageway is also clogged up, apparently because someone lost control of their car and crashed into the wall marking the central reservation (gawping at the traffic jam on the opposite carriageaway?).

The next photo is a ‘challenge’ for Penrith natives:

Where was it taken? The location is within the generally accepted town boundary.

On the day that I hurt my back in July, I went out for a bike ride, during which I stopped to take the following three photos.

This is a view of Ullswater taken just outside Pooley Bridge:

That’s my bike leaning against the wall on the right.

The next photo was taken from the bridge over the River Lowther at the bottom of the hill leading east out of the village of Askham:

I’ve cycled through Great Strickland several times, but I’d never taken the road out of the village to the east, which leads to Morland. Naturally, I stopped to photograph the church on the outskirts of the village, which is the parish church of Saint Barnabas:

The final two photos were taken in the Thacka Beck Nature Reserve. I think that this is an escapee from a nearby garden:

I took many photos of Belted Galloway cattle in the nature reserve this summer, but this one, which captures two cows standing in the central pond, is my favourite: