Famous landscapes:
Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset
Friday, 14 January, 2011. Filed under: Landscapes | Views & Scenery
A couple of snaps taken early in January on one of the most famous hills in the UK - Gold Hill in the thriving hilltop town of Shaftesbury in Dorset. It’s famous because Ridley Scott filmed a commercial here in the 1970s - an advertisement for Hovis that, in many ways - namely it’s sepia toned air of nostalgia, was the direct antithesis of Bladerunner.
The views look south towards a landscape made from Cretaceous chalk and greensand and older mudstones and siltstones from the Jurassic period. To the west of Shaftesbury the Jurassic continues - with many of the same limestones that are found in the Midlands cropping up, lending the area its Cotswolds atmosphere.
The views look south towards a landscape made from Cretaceous chalk and greensand and older mudstones and siltstones from the Jurassic period. To the west of Shaftesbury the Jurassic continues - with many of the same limestones that are found in the Midlands cropping up, lending the area its Cotswolds atmosphere.
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Landscape blog
Tuesday, 16 November, 2010. Filed under: Landscapes
On our occasional trawls around the internet in search of snippets to amuse we often find hardcore walking and rambling sites - all kit and kaboodle and useful instructions for getting a platoon to the top of a mountain. All well and good but, apart from the picture from the summit, the journey always seems more like a technical challenge than an engagement with the landscape.
We were pleased, then, to find Alan Rayner’s Blog on the Landscape. Alan’s posts are illustrated with some thoughtfully composed photographs of this and that along the way - mostly natural features, plants and fungi - and his woodland shots, often difficult to capture well - are lovely.
Kit fetishists will be pleased to discover that Alan - an engineer by trade - appears to have designed and manufactured some of his own lightweight equipment and is always on the lookout for more, but a genuine love of the landscape permeates the blog. Recommended.
Night time views - Salisbury
Tuesday, 24 August, 2010. Filed under: Photography | Views & Scenery
Sometimes it’s hard to get the full beauty of a viewpoint amongst all the clutter of the day, especially on our crowded collection of islands. In history, when buildings were few and far between and we hadn’t yet divided the country up into interstitial parcels of land between roads - as is the psychological outcome of the motoring atlas - the views over the landscape we had must have felt very different. As mentioned in The Lie of the Land, our ancestors had a very different relationship with views from high ground - upland (even a range of hills as modest as the Cotswolds) had a terror all of its own and a view over a wide vale like the Severn would have come as a welcome relief.
What buildings there were nestling in the valleys would have had greater significance - especially after a long journey or pilgrimage across the country. I hope that this view of Salisbury Cathedral - which for hundreds of years would have been the tallest building in the western world - captures something of the awe a long-distance medieval traveller would have felt 700 years or so ago. By removing the detail of the town that has grown up around it, with its ring road, modern development and other 20th and 21st Century clutter and even with the housing development in the foreground, this magnificent old cathedral still takes your breath away.
What buildings there were nestling in the valleys would have had greater significance - especially after a long journey or pilgrimage across the country. I hope that this view of Salisbury Cathedral - which for hundreds of years would have been the tallest building in the western world - captures something of the awe a long-distance medieval traveller would have felt 700 years or so ago. By removing the detail of the town that has grown up around it, with its ring road, modern development and other 20th and 21st Century clutter and even with the housing development in the foreground, this magnificent old cathedral still takes your breath away.
More pictures from trains
Monday, 19 July, 2010. Filed under: Landscapes | Views & Scenery
I’ve added a few more photos to the gallery of landscapes taken from trains. It seems like an unconventional way of capturing scraps of scenery as they zoom by and an excellent mental diversion when the novelty of getting out and about wears thin which, as any commuter on Britain’s railways will tell you, can be quite quick.
If you have some train pictures you want to share, feel free to add some in the comments below.
Monstrous Carbuncle
I like Dorset - as mentioned in this week’s Lay-by of the Week, it is where a lot of the ideas for The Lie of the Land came from and it is a county that seems to have as many different facets as it has market towns.
But one of those towns – and not just any old market town, but Dorset’s county town – will never be the same again. For Dorchester has been tainted by its association with the monstrous carbuncle that is HRH Prince Charles’ Poundbury or, to give it a name accidentally arrived at in a Freudian slip of the tongue, Poundland.
View Monstrous Carbuncle in a larger map
This grotesque and repulsive display of architectural pus sits on the eastern horizon as you approach Dorchester from the west. The awful buildings infect the surrounding landscape with their weak-minded parody of a passing resemblance to a rough similarity to a half-remembered Tuscan hill-top village. Who-ever presided over this inferior and wholly unaesthetic effort should be shot through the lungs with high-velocity 2H pencils.
Some of Poundbury is well-executed, even if it is obviously the work of a cobwebbed mind. While the Duke of Cornwall proclaims his love of traditional vernacular architecture and actually has interesting and useful ideas about the sustainability of communities, his biggest showcase looks like a malformed bleb from the side of the A35.
But one of those towns – and not just any old market town, but Dorset’s county town – will never be the same again. For Dorchester has been tainted by its association with the monstrous carbuncle that is HRH Prince Charles’ Poundbury or, to give it a name accidentally arrived at in a Freudian slip of the tongue, Poundland.
View Monstrous Carbuncle in a larger map
This grotesque and repulsive display of architectural pus sits on the eastern horizon as you approach Dorchester from the west. The awful buildings infect the surrounding landscape with their weak-minded parody of a passing resemblance to a rough similarity to a half-remembered Tuscan hill-top village. Who-ever presided over this inferior and wholly unaesthetic effort should be shot through the lungs with high-velocity 2H pencils.
Some of Poundbury is well-executed, even if it is obviously the work of a cobwebbed mind. While the Duke of Cornwall proclaims his love of traditional vernacular architecture and actually has interesting and useful ideas about the sustainability of communities, his biggest showcase looks like a malformed bleb from the side of the A35.
Win a hamper in our landscape photo competition.
To celebrate the launch of Lie of the Land, The British Landscape Club’s under-the-field-guide to the British landscape, we are running a photography competition to find Britain's best photographed landscape.
So get snapping those buxom hummocks, discordant coastlines and stone circles and submit them to the Lie of the Land Flickr photo pool at http://www.flickr.com/groups/lieoftheland/.
The winner - who will win a lovely picnic hamper - will be announced July 30 2010 Leading up to the announcement we will feature ten photos a week right here on the website. There will be also be runner-up prizes of signed copies of Lie of the Land.
For general competition terms and conditions go to:
http://www.panmacmillan.com/displayPage.asp?PageID=3823
Please be assured that your photos will only be used in connection with this competition and any publicity it generates - which may include the websites of national and local newspapers. The submitter retains all copyright to their photos and the right to a byline/credit where ever it is used.
Lay-by of the Week
Monday, 15 March, 2010. Filed under: Landscapes | Views & Scenery
From the A498 in Snowdonia, North Wales comes this splendid post-glacial landscape with views of Llyn Gwynant, a mile or so south of the Pass of Llanberis, a stone's throw from Snowdon itself.
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If you pan to the right, you'll see the lay-by itself. Further down the A498 there is a closer view of Llyn Gwynant on a sharp bend of the road and excellent views up the valley - an enchanting vista on a fresh spring morning.
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View up the Gwynant Valley.
View Larger Map
If you pan to the right, you'll see the lay-by itself. Further down the A498 there is a closer view of Llyn Gwynant on a sharp bend of the road and excellent views up the valley - an enchanting vista on a fresh spring morning.
View Larger Map
View up the Gwynant Valley.
