Every Picture Tells a Story - Part II

I blogged recently about the stories behind the pictures HERE 

My continuing research recently found me in my car, with a friend, and with my back seat loaded up with the contents of my daughter's uni house. (This is how I spend most summers, driving around like a demented motorised snail, with someone else's house at my back, rather than on it. (Unless I brake sharply, of course). Halfway along the skinniest road imaginable, my little long-suffering car started making strange graunching noises and by the time we parked up, I was less concerned with pictorial research than with ensuring I had enough mobile phone signal to contact Green Flag. First stop, the visitors' centre. What this picture, of the wonderful aisled barn, 

doesn't tell you, is that there was a little glass pod at one end of the barn, in which were encased a farmer, complete with flat cap and Northern accent so fruity you could pour gin on it and make punch, and his whippet. Of course with his whippet. The farmer was on the phone, shouting seven shades of nasty to a hapless supplier who'd failed to send the correct invoice. We obeyed the notice which said, "Visitors please enter" only to be greeted with "No, shut t'door, the dog'll be off and I'll not catch 'im. What d'you want? Leaflets? Tek that one there and shut t'door behind you."

Scarecrows in the aisled barn

After that less than cordial encounter, we went snooping around the ruins of the old manor house which offered countless photographic opportunities. And what the picture below does not tell you is how long I waited to click the shutter, while the only other people in the valley that day chose that moment to walk past this window. And stop. And walk back. And then wait for their friends. And their small child. And the dog.

My friend and I climbed a hill. Just a small one. If you've clicked on the link to my previous exploits, you'll understand that big hills and I don't really get along. And so I was able to take this picture of a very old pack horse bridge. And position myself so that the afore-mentioned children, clad that day in Barbie-pink jackets, and sitting at the far end of the bridge, could not be seen.

The bridges in this village are very old and very famous. And my friend was enraptured as she walked across this one below. I was not so pleased, however, because I was trying to take another picture. And so it was that she crouched behind the tree that you can see to the right of the photo and obligingly waited until I had my shot. This day, she was wearing turquoise. Does nobody wear brown or grey any more?!

We climbed out of the valley and scaled a larger hill where we sat for a while in this, the panopticon.

And a man came with a big telephoto lens. Ever-conscious of the photographer's need for unobstructed views, I asked him, "Are we in your way? Would you like us to move?"
"No," he said, "You're not. But that is."
At least I only want people to get out my way. Asking concrete structures to shimmy to the left is a little more tricky ...

If you want to know where I was and what I was really up to, pop over to HERE where I talk about The Ruination of Wycoller