Early frost, sun and culture.

A beautiful start to the day for the ladies early walk but there was a frost. Walking through St Ives lower woods we saw this herd of Belties with some young calves in Low Park. (Glad we weren’t walking in there.) You can see the wet dewy bloom on the grass left by the frost and highlighted by the early sun.

The bluebells are on their way in the woods here and up by Altar Lane but they will get better in a week or so depending on the weather.

Later we went into Ilkley, taking a bag of books to Oxfam and then headed to the cinema for a magical experience of Exhibition on Film - ‘Vermeer the Greatest Exhibition’. A first for us but most informative and enjoyable. A large number of 37 known paintings by Vermeer have been assembled from across the world to be exhibited for three months at the Rjksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Not too far to visit really but apparently tickets for the whole three months sold out in a few hours. Grace and I went to the special Van Gogh exhibition building there a few years ago but according to NannaK, who watched an online programme also on this exhibition, people were standing 10 deep. This was filmed the day before opening so shots of the entire rooms were shown and some of the pictures are pretty small, I don’t  think I would have seen much being vertically challenged!
We had the advantage of an interesting commentary too with information on how the paintings were constructed ie what he had initially painted in and then removed, by the use of X-rays etc. 
Excellent as this was I would still like to see one up close, especially ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’, as apparently it is impossible to see brush strokes and paint marks on any of this works. His genius was use of and recreation of light and variable focus pinpointing the main details like a photograph.
A fabulous afternoon culminating with Fish and Chips which has always included tea bread and butter but they are now charging per slice for bread and butter! Sign of the times!