22
Jun
Photo of the Week: Blue fields of flax near Ripon
This week, we bring you three pictures for the price of one. These gorgeous photos were taken by subscriber Rodney Towers alongside the A61 coming out of Ripon.
The swathes of blue are flax flowers, which were once a common sight in the English countryside. The stems were used to make linen and the seeds were used to make linseed oil.
-
Mr Towers writes:
When there was a vibrant flax industry in the north of England, particularly in the nearby Washburn Valley, this would have been a very common sight.
Today of course, we have become well accustomed to seeing acres of yellow oilseed rape in flower during April and May, and so one must suppose that in times past people would have become equally accustomed to seeing similar acreages of blue flowering linseed in May and June.
It might be a moot point to say which colour might gain the popular vote.
-
Photo of the Week takes centre stage in our free nightly email newsletter. The newsletter drops into your inbox every evening at 6pm. To sign up, click here.
-
Photo of the Week celebrates the Harrogate district. It could be anything from family life to capturing the district’s beauty. We are interested in amateur and professional photographs, in a landscape format.
Send your photographs to letters@thestrayferret.co.uk for a chance to be featured next week. We reserve the right to adjust and crop images to fit into our format.
Photo of the Week is free to view. For more content like this, and to support independent local journalism, please subscribe to the Stray Ferret here. It costs as little as 14p a day.
0