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Well, I’m still walking in the lockdown, usually leaving home at 0530. The lighter summer mornings make early starts easier, and I relish the emptiness the lockdown has brought. Although there is some traffic about – and with the lockdown loosening that has increased a little – in the course of walking for two hours I may only see 10 or fewer other pedestrians at this early hour. And the fact that some of us now regularly encounter each other has brought a welcome camaraderie – a greeting, a few words exchanged, always at many yards’ distance – which brings a little more sense of normality, a little less desolation in the midst of all this quiet emptiness.
I’ve mapped out a route for walking along which, in most places, there are spaces that make it easier to distance myself from oncoming people. Those out running are the main problem, and I am by no means the first to notice that many (but not all) of them simply run straight towards you, spraying out great lungfuls of moist breath and evidently expecting you to get out of their way. Me being me, I have on a couple of occasions refused to move, and have seen the shocked looks as they veer suddenly to one side at the last moment. This pandemic has revealed many interesting aspects of human psychology.
But the point of this post is to pass onto you something strange. For there is one short section of my long walk that I have for some bizarre reason grown to like and welcome each early morning – and it is the scene above. This is a long, wide, dead straight road, a major thoroughfare, that our really totally inadequate and inept local authority has chosen to place a 20mph speed limit on. And as I walk out onto this road and look to my left, I see the scene above. There is a lovely grove of trees on the right that always have squirrels around them, and occasionally foxes too. And further up on the same side of the road there is a little patch of red, that is a lurid advertisement on the side of a bus shelter. And beyond are the slopes of Dundry Hill which – on this particular morning – had lovely mist in the treetops along its summit.
And I can’t explain why, but every time I come out onto this big, empty, quiet road, and look up towards the lurid red poster on the bus stop and the green hill behind, I have definite feelings of peace, calm and belonging. And I also have a feeling that when that poster and the lockdown are gone, that this place will not affect me in the same way. And so I’ve taken a few photos to remind me of this scene, to help remind me of how these strange days were – and here are some of these pics. And I’ve remembered that, as always, Life itself can be strange.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto each image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended for the first two shots only!!!
Technique: TG-5; Lightroom; south Bristol; June 2020.
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Getting closer to the bus stop: the poster and the misty hilltop now more plainly in view.
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LOL!!! and here is “the artwork” itself. I have not the slightest idea what its advertising – but I like the lurid red!!!
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