Photos from Hebden Bridge
Right outside the train station: HB is known as an artistic/new age/hippy kind of place.
Best UK restored station of 1983, apparently. It's very pleasant and there are informed enough staff to make it not matter that there are no electronic departure boards. Great coffee shop (they do veggie bacon sarnies) and there's a nursery upstairs, so parents can drop their wee ones off on the way to the commute. Genius.
The front of our house.
And the back - you just walked straight through from front to back door. Seemed the residents used the back street as a garden, place to hang washing, play area for the kids, etc. There were garden tables out there and plant pots so it was effectively a cul-de-sac. I don't know how official it is - if that happened in Brighton I'm sure the council would step in. But it was fab for us because it meant that Item could play out every night, meet all the local children, and pet the kittens who lived opposite.
On the last night I sketched the street with all the washing out and the kids all gathered round to ask me questions.
I was trying to take a photo of them all playing volleyball over the washing lines, but they sussed what I was doing and started posing instead. That boy at the back in glasses is Caleb, and he was the friendliest to Item. Really nice kids. I found myself very much regretting not having this kind of culture in our part of Brighton: kids of different ages all playing together, and amusing themselves, and falling out and making up again without adults intervening. And not only because it relieved us of childcare for an hour or two a day - honest.
Item's favourite feature of the holiday house: an old-lady style recliner, with remote control buttons to make it go up and down.
I reckon you could blindfold yourself, swing a camera at the end of a rope, and set it to take photos at random intervals, and you'd still have trouble getting a non-picturesque shot in HB.
As you climb the steep hill to Heptonstall, you get the aerial view of the town.
Could I have one of those tall houses at the back, please? Yep, the ridiculous thing is that there is an inequity in house prices between Brighton and Yorks and we probably could get a nice house here.
Heptonstall, where I also wouldn't turn down a house if it were offered to me.
Item, on the walk up to Heptonstall, or I should say run, really, because that's how she did it.
The gorgeous shop in Todmorden where K425 took us to eat in the cafe above.
More to follow; Item bedtime.
Postscript:
If you're super-interested, you can see all the HB photos here.
Also. My holiday kind of began when I waved Item and The Boy off and had an hour to spare before catching the train to Tom's village. I sat in Euston station with a coffee and sketched a few folk. It was the first time I've had time to myself to do any sneaky people-drawing for ages.
