I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.
Every week Sue from ‘A Word in Your Ear’ dips into her English Oxford dictionary and picks a word on the page that it falls open at. The challenge is to post a photograph, poem, story – whatever the genre you like best to describe what that word means to you.
This week’s challenge is C O N T R A S T(click to join in with the challenge)
On the colour wheel you can see which colours contrast with each other as they lie opposite on the wheel e.g. magenta and lime, blue and yellow .
And it just so happens that this week I bought myself a bunch of lovely purple tulips with a contrasting yellow centre. Perfect for this challenge I thought 🙂
Originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) Tulips were imported into Holland in the sixteenth century. Each year, theTulip Festival is organized in the Noordoostpolder. Held in the middle of the tulip fields, this flower festival runs from late April to early May.
The word tulip is probably derived from the Persian for turban because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban.
Following on from last week’s post about Witley Court today I am showing you the windows from the local parish church for Great and Little Witley. A more elaborate church on such a small scale I have never seen; thank goodness this didn’t burn down at the same time as the house. It is a very small church as you can see from the header photo above!
Nine of the ten windows made from stained and enamelled glass by Joshua Price in 1719 and 1721 from designs by an Italian artist are scenes from the New Testament. I’ll let you try and work out what they depict.
(click an image to enlarge)
The pictures on the ceiling are painted by the Italian artist Antonio Bellucci (1654 -1726) and are oil on canvas.
This delectable baroque style church is St. Michael and All Angels Church, Great Witley.
Fortunate to have a lovely sunny day on Sunday (Mother’s Day in the UK) and an extra hour of daylight (the start of British Summer time so clocks went forward an hour) I was determined to get out of the house and go for a walk.
Cardingmill Valley lies on the edge of Church Stretton, a little Shropshire town that I still need to explore. Church Stretton is a small town and civil parish in Shropshire, England. The town lies entirely in the Shropshire Hills AONB, on the A49 road approximately 13 miles south of Shrewsbury, the county town, and 15 miles north of Ludlow. Wikipedia
Just as Ludlow is the gastronomic capital of Shropshire, Church Stretton is the walking capital of the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. I have been here many times, it is my favourite part of Shropshire and has been called ‘Little Switzerland’ on account of its hills. And when coated in snow it is very pretty.
But on Sunday it was sunny and spring was springing. We could have taken any number of trails, but decided that we’d return to the Reservoir as it is a wide path and fairly flat.
Turn right onto the orange trail
This trail is quite gentle and soon you are hidden amongst the hills with only the sound of birdsong and a burbling brook. A hidden lost world.
At the reservoir you do have to climb up quite a steep hill to reach the water, and the trail continues should you wish to head further onto the Long Mynd (Long Mountain).
You can swim in the reservoir, though the water probably isn’t all that warm today.
Before heading back to the car park I nipped over a stile to have a closer look at the reservoir and found this pair of Common Toads at the side of the path. I spared them their blushes and swiftly moved on.
Need to be nimble!
Amplexus
Doesn’t look as though we can go this way, so head back down the hill.
A choice of routes, but I’m going to stick to the one I came along, the other one looks as though it might end in a sheep trail and I’ve been there before and it didn’t end well.
Or you could go over the stream and head for a path on the other side.
Returning on the orange route there are caves up on the left, and ahead on the top of that hill in front are the remains of an Iron Age Hill Fort.
Back at the road we could turn right and walk to the tea-room, but as it is now after 5 p.m. it will be closed.
A typical “Which Way” fingerpost
We’ll head back to the car, after one last look around and go home for a well-deserved glass of red wine. If you decide to come for a walk here, please take note of the signs. Some people seem to think their dogs are much better controlled than they actually are around sheep, and watching a sheep being chased is not amusing for me or the sheep.
That means on a lead!
Yes, there are sheep grazing
Taking the red route next time…
The Most Scenic Carpark?
Next time I’ll take you up the red route and see if we can find the waterfall.
Cee’s Which Way Challenge: There is no specific theme given. It just needs to be some sort of ‘Which Way’. The possibilities are endless.
Description: Every Tuesday I offer the “A to Z challenge”, walking step by step through the alphabet.
If you would like to join in then please click here
The five principal elements of the Taj Mahal complex—main gateway, garden, mosque, jawab and mausoleum (including its four minarets)—were conceived and designed as a unified entity.
A couple of weeks ago I used the Jawabto illustrate architecture for the letter J so this week I am going to show you the Mosque, Minarets and Mausoleum which were mentioned in that post. Remember, the Jawab is simply a building mirroring the Mosque for symmetry in the design.
Mausoleum and Minarets
At the western side is the mosque (masjid) facing east, reported to have been built by Isa Muhammed 1631-1648. It is built of red sandstone and has one dominant portal known as an iwan.
Mosque
Either side of the major iwan are two smaller arches sandwiched between four towering pinnacles. The spandrels above the arches are studded with coloured marble inlay and the mosque dados feature naturalistic floral designs.
On the roof and complementing the arches below are three marble-coated domes. Inverted lotus shaped designs cloak the top of the domes, surmounted by gilded finials. On the four corners of the mosque are chattris, or domed kiosks, which have a marble coated veneer.
Mosque
I will also include a minaret, four of these form part of the mausoleum, which have the same chattris as on the corners of the mosque and jawab.
Minaret and Chattri
One of the most beautiful structural compositions in the world, the Taj Mahal was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983.
Sunday dawned cold and grey. But the photo trip was still on and we spent a couple of hours in the company of Charley from Overland Canyon Tours in the Antelope Canyon which is a few miles outside of Page where the slot canyons are majestic narrow passages with just enough space for a small group to walk the sandy floor – and for the occasional shafts of sunlight to shine down from above. [1]
The best time to visit is when the sun is overhead so you get those super shots of sunlight on the sand particles shimmering in the oranges, reds and yellows of the naturally carved sandstone. Unfortunately for us there was no sun, but that did not spoil our enjoyment of this incredible place. Even light flares added an interesting purple hue to the rocks. For those of you who are fitter than us you might like to visit the Lower Antelope Canyon which is reached by a series of ladders. All I can say that climbing the steps up into the cab of the Ute was hard enough!
In the afternoon we took a drive back down to Bitter Springs and turned right on to the 89A across the Navajo Bridge to visit Lees Ferry where you can get down to the edge of the Colorado and watch groups preparing to raft down the river. [2]
(click on an image to enlarge)
Preparing for rafting
At Lees Ferry
Rafts in waiting
Over the ten miles or so south of the Navajo bridge, the Colorado has several fascinating narrow tributary canyons including Seven-mile Draw, Soap Canyon, Jackass Creek and Badger Canyon. The layers of sandstone and shale that form the vermilion cliffs once extended five miles to connect to the same layers in the Echo cliffs. The Colorado River cut a canyon through the Navajo sandstone.
Navajo Bridges (old and new)
Navajo Bridge across the Colorado
We stopped to marvel at the balanced rocks on the way back to Marble Canyon. Thousands of years ago a huge boulder of conglomerate broke from the cliff above and rolled to a stop here. Since then at least 6 feet of this slope has eroded away.
Balanced RocksBalanced Rocks
Ultimately the softer rock, now protected by the umbrella of harder conglomerate will erode, and the boulder will topple to the ground again.
Balanced Rocks
Several fallen boulders at the foot of the desolate Vermilion Cliffs on the Arizona Strip north of the Grand Canyon.
Hard upper layer – Shinarump Conglomerate – forms the cliff top.
At the 89a junction we turned right and drove to the Cliff Dwellers Lodge about nine miles further east to have an early dinner at the diner there.
Cliff Dwellers Lodge
During the Great Depression, a few white settlers built a small town of wooden structures with shingle roofs that still cling to gigantic boulders in a moon-like setting at the foot of Vermilion Cliffs.
Through the window of a cliff dweller’s homeTough living
Returning to Page after a very interesting day we managed to catch the sun setting on Echo Cliffs on the land of the Navajo Nation.
[1] When we did this trip it was OK to have any type of camera but now you need to have a SLR – point and shoot, IPads and IPhones are not accepted, if you have one of these you may find yourself on a normal tour. We had bridge cameras.
[2] There was a landslip in 2013 which meant that this route was not accessible for quite some time. It is advisable to check routes in this region before setting out.
TRAVEL WORDS 