Queens Road, Kendal - a glimpse of pastoral

Looking north approaching Queens Road

 A skyscape livid and brilliant,   bruised and louring clouds etched with silvery light.  A week of Atlantic lows with sudden downpours.  A morning walk along Queens Road gave dramatic light.   Turn you back on the road and there are vistas over pasture and old orchards, to the fells.  

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Following a heavy shower the sun beams down on damson trees where locals often stop to look for rabbits.  There's also a steep pasture, today with goats and sometimes Herdwicks for conservation grazing. A colourful mass of willow-herb is in flower and the bees love it.   Ivy flowers atop the limestone walls, giving off a pungent odour, and bees love that too.  In December, when the sun is low in the sky,  ranked  chimneys give character to the town.  A young man told me once that when he was a child his mother told him to count the chimneys, to keep him quiet.  I lingered to try to photograph the effects of sunlight through saturated Herb Robert about the top-stones of the wall.

14th September   Another day of rain with dry but less sunny interludes. The River Kent flowed dark, swift and silently. A riverside walk used to be pleasurable but for several years flood-defence measures bar access to the riverside and the charm has gone. So have many of the water-birds that were found on shoals below Stramongate Bridge.   Bees are lively amongst ivy flowers, a late source of nectar for pollinators but the only butterfly are the more resilient whites- in this weather. ​

Below, a link to an earlier blog to include rue-leaved saxifrage, a delicate flower found here earlier in the year.
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