Queens Road, Kendal - a glimpse of pastoral

13/9/2025

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.

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.