When we’re not working, we like to spend our leisure time walking and visiting new places. We thought it might be of some value to our website visitors to include our day out photos on the blog to inspire families to get out and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. We’ve also included a map of the location of our visit, to make it easier to find.
So hope you enjoy this resource by simply following the places to visit link
Rocks are hard objects we don’t think of as bendable in any sense of the word, and yet Spanish artist José Manuel Castro López has found a way to manipulate stone so that it appears soft and pliable. His stunning sculptures don’t even look real, as the rocks he carefully crafts are full of impossibly awesome twists and folds. Simply looking at his work makes you question everything you think you know about rocks.
PANO | LA from SCIENTIFANTASTIC on Vimeo.
Live life the way it was intended, look up from your phone, you don’t know what you’re missing…
Amazing 3D art
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I love a good story, I used to sit and listen to my grandad tell stories about his life as a young man, particularly throughout the second world war. I’m still lucky to be able to chat with my 96 years old Auntie, who loves to talk about stories of my dad, her younger brother.
She was telling me the other day about cycling from home in Stretford Manchester to the leafy Cheshire countryside of Mobberley to visit my father, who was then an 8 years old boy. He was living on a farm there, due to being evacuated out of Manchester at the start of the second world war in 1939. She didn’t know much about the area, only that it was a long way to cycle.
I decided to do a bit of research and found this website which has some interesting information about the history of Mobberley. I emailed them and was surprised to get a quick response from a very kind gentleman who gave me some information about which schools in Manchester the children had come from, the venue they were chosen by the local families of Mobberley at, and which school they attended during their stay.
We took a trip to check the area out and looked at a few of the important landmarks involved in Dad’s stay. Below are a few photos taken from our visit.
This is Victory Hall where the children, including my Dad were brought to and chosen by kind local families, to look after during their stay.
This is the school where Dad was educated while staying in Mobberley. Somewhat different to when dad was there. But great to see the school is still thriving after so many years.
Above is the church that stands across the road from the school.
Having had a few hours drive out today we ventured up towards Bolton and the beautiful countryside on its outskirts, the weather held up for us, but some storm clouds were on view. Here is a selection from around Belmont and Egerton taken on my phone. I’ve included a map of the area, if you decide to pay it a visit.
We recently visited Astley Hall near Chorley. It’s a great location for a family day out. Plenty of open spaces, bowling green, children’s park, woodland trails, cafe and gardens. Well worth a visit, don’t forget to take your camera. I did, so took these on my phone.
I don’t like to dwell on loss and death, particularly on a business website which celebrates love and life through photography but I thought I might share this personal story with you to inspire you to make more out of the photographs that you and your family may have taken a lifetime to collect.
Last year my father sadly passed away, and having organised most of the funeral arrangements, I wondered about his eulogy.
Dad was keen to speak at a number of funerals I’d attended with him, his brother’s and his wife’s (my step mother) particularly and I understood he felt it the right thing to do on such occasions.
I’d thought about what I might say at his funeral, but kept hitting something of a block. I’d shared many memories with dad, but didn’t have the feeling that I needed to share any these stories with other people, for some reason. I felt some guilt and a certain amount of pressure to do or say something at this funeral service, rather than leave it to someone who didn’t really know him very well.
With so much to do after the death of a loved one, I put it to the back of my mind, at least in the short term, until the date was looming and it became more pressing to organise something suitable.
As part of clearing out his house, I’d come across Dad’s old photograph albums, he loved taking photos and lots of them too. As I started to go through them, the idea came to mind about doing a presentation of his favourite images for the funeral, a kind of collage of his life.
I spoke to the funeral directors, who in turn spoke to the venue and after a day or two they said it would be fine to present on a screen at the venue, if I forwarded the slideshow ahead of the day, which I did.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to celebrate Dad’s life with photos of his life, shared with the family he loved, many of whom would be at the funeral. It would give them a chance to reminisce the good old days, and to feel part of the day rather more than they would at a funeral.
It turned out to be a nice surprise for many of the people attending the funeral service, and seem to go down well with all.
I liked the poem by LInda Ellis called “the dash” so incorporated it into the slideshow because we were celebrating Dad’s dash after all.
Hope it inspires you to make the most of those precious memories that you’ve captured in the past and are going to capture years into the future.
Croston is a village and civil parish in Lancashire, England near Chorley. The River Yarrow flows through the village. We had the pleasure of popping into the village on our drive through to Southport on a lovely summers day. I took a few photos of the village using my mobile phone camera, hope you enjoy them.
