Winter Walk in the Park

Last Saturday, we had blue skies with winter sun in Ipswich from dawn to dusk and despite the temperatures hovering all day around freezing, plenty of people visited the local parks for their permitted exercise. I was walking through the park as the sun began to set and stepped away from the busy paths to stand for 10 minutes to capture the sun doing down.

You can see there were both family groups and joggers making circuits of the pond,

My favourite photo from Saturday. All taken on my phone as only space for food shopping and not camera in my rucksack.

and also plenty of dog walkers too, but everyone began to rapidly vacate the park as the sun sank beneath the horizon. Nobody wants to be locked in by mistake in these freezing temperatures.

The sun almost behind the buildings on the horizon and time for me to leave.

When I got home and scrolled through the pictures I liked the ‘through the big old trees’ shot so much I am now using it for the background on my phone. Even though it’s a winter scene and the trees are dark and towering, there is a warming glow (much more noticeable on my phone than it appears here) which I find genuinely uplifting each time I open the phone. For me this is an example of the usually insignificant aspects of daily life that have become those brief pleasures helping many of us get through these grim days.

Sunsets on the Waterfront

During the last two months of 2018 the weather was surprisingly benign with a number of clear winter days ending with beautiful sunsets. 

The low sun and the still water down on at the Ipswich Waterfront provided a variety of opportunities for interesting images, some vivid and some gently serene. Here’s a selection.

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Golden Hour in a Fine Urban Park

Although Ipswich, a town of about 134,000 people, is not a large place it has some beautiful parks. Recently I went along to Christchurch Park for the first time. The so-called golden hour for taking photographs may be a great time for capturing a weak wintery sunset and the fabulous rich colours of the last leaves, but it was a bitingly cold afternoon.

Nevertheless, despite my fingers becoming stiff with cold, I managed to take a few interesting photos. As I have already mentioned previously my favourite park in Ipswich is Holywells Park, however probably the most well-known park is Christchurch Park.

Originally, this parkland was the grounds of the Augustinian Priory of the Holy Trinity founded around 1177.

However, the land has changed ownership several times since it was seized by the Crown as part of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. The park is also the site of the beautiful, late-Tudor mansion, Christchurch Mansion.

Christchurch Mansion. Red Tudor brick built between 1548 and 1550. The mansion’s upper storey was rebuilt after a fire in 1674 and some remodelling was carried out in the 18th century by the Fonnereau family.

The Mansion’s last private owner, Felix Cobbold, gave it to the community in 1895 on the condition that the Ipswich Corporation purchased the rest of the associated property within which the mansion was set. And, as an urban space open to the public, it has belonged to the people of Ipswich since 1895.

The park is slightly bigger than Holywells Park with more open spaces and vistas, and consequently feels less intimate and domestic than Holywells. It is more like a traditional urban park, but still offers a restorative green space within a five minute walk of the town centre.