Lacock

I remain impressed with blippers who can go out on a shoot and then post up an image and write about it the same day. Do they have staff or something? It takes me days to edit the results and process the keepers, and then, once that has been done, to decide on the one that best represents the whole expedition.

Last Sunday I had gone to Lacock to see the early snowdrops in the Abbey grounds, hoping to get a shot which showed them in the context of the Abbey.  This was done almost as soon as I arrived, so my intended blip was in the bag. I was then struck, however, by the photogenic qualities of the flooded fields and swollen river that lay behind the Abbey in the late afternoon light and took a further batch of pictures that I was very pleased with.

I decided to walk up through the grounds to Bide Brook, a tributary of the River Avon, to see if it too had high levels, and when I arrived I was delighted to see a grey and white cat there that reminded me very much of my own Smokey. I had come across it at the same spot in May 2012 and got a few shots of it as it had sat beside me while I was eating my lunch. I had nicknamed it Whitetip because the very tip of its tale is white. It was just as friendly as before, allowing it to be stroked and posing for pictures - a third option for blipping purposes.

There was still some light left when I left the Abbey grounds and so I took a stroll through the village, including Lacock Bakery in Church Street, where a dog on a walk had paused in front of the bakery bike while its owner waited for someone to come out of the shop. I had another look at Bide Brook at the ford on Nethercote Hill, but by now the light was rather poor and I left after taking three or four shots and made my way back along Church Street and West Street to Archie and the promise of a warming drink when I got home at 1635 hr.

I'd finished working on the set by Wednesday night, and awoke on Friday to find that one of the rather desultory shots of the ford had been picked by Explore on Flickr and at the time of writing had amassed over 6,390 views and 85 Favourites. It is the seventh time one of my pictures has gone into Explore, and each time it has been of an image I'd thought twice about even uploading! I haven't chosen it for my blip but there is a link to it below, if of interest.

L.
24.1.2014

Blip #1157
Consecutive Blip #019
Day #1396

Alternatives:
Snowdrops And Lacock Abbey
Black And White Snowdrops
Pool Reflections
Flooded Field
Whitetip
Nethercote Hill Ford (in Explore)

Lenses: Pentax 12-24mm, Pentax 17-70mm, Pentax 55-300mm

Bleeding Obvious Wiltshire series
Lacock series
River series
River Avon (Bristol) series

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Lovin' Spoonful - Fishin' Blues (1965)
The Spoonful show their jug band roots in this version of Henry Thomas' song, from their first album, Do You Believe in Magic. It was used in the Woody Allen film What's Up, Tiger Lily the following year.

One year ago: Curzon Street Cemetery