Maps on a Monday - North Yorkshire moors

It's interesting that, apart from the main features, the two maps choose to show very different details.  Flamingo Land doesn't sound too typical of the North Yorkshire moors, a national park with one of the largest expanses of purple and brown heather moorland in the UK.  It also has a wonderful coastline, ancient woodland and historic sites

But what I really need to know is, who was Fat Betty and why does she feature on the second map?

Tasmania, Australia

I've had a number of cards from Tasmania, including a map, and another specifically about Port Arthur, shown in the bottom section.

This card came with the stamps above, but other cards have had these baby animals from a series of baby animals.  These two are the dingo and the kangaroo but others are the bilby, the koala and the sugar glider.  Sugar glider?  A shy, gliding possum, apparently.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Horse drawn trams in Belfast

The Sepia Saturday prompt this week is an omnibus, a passenger carrying road vehicle.  The first ones, dating from 1820, were horse drawn.

Horse drawn trams were later adopted because the wheels rolled more easily along the rails, so horses could pull heavier loads (= more passengers) and could get to their destinations slightly more quickly.  the ones in these cards used to run on the streets of Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Royal Avenue, Belfast

Castle Place, Belfast

The Belfast Street Tramways Company first operated horse drawn trams in 1870 until they were bought out by Belfast Corportation in 1905.  During that year they were electrified so the pictures must date from before then.

The cards themselves probably date from about 1902, I would say.  They do have divided backs but there is space on the front left for messages and it looks as though the "Write Here for Inland Postage only" has been added later.

A young couple

I imagine this must be a picture to mark a First Communion.  It is one of the many pictures taken by Belgian photographer, Norbert Ghisoland.  He was a miner's son, born in Frameries in 1878, who went on to become an "accidental anthropologist" by recording the social history of the time.

At one time studio photography was expensive enough to restrict it to the wealthy but techniques improved to reduce the costs and opened up opportunities to those of more modest means.  Ghisoland's aim was only to provide his clients with the pictures they wanted but the 45,000 (about half the number he originally took) of his negatives have left a great record of the times.

These pictures, found accidentally in the family attic by Ghisoland's grandson, have been the subject of several exhibitions in Belgium and around the world.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Lanzarote

Lanzarote is the easternmost of the Canary Islands.  According to the young person who sent me the card, it is a very beautiful island but it's better to visit for a holiday than for living because it is very small and isolated.  At the time of sending, she had been there four years.

The map takes some interpretation.  Some of it is evident - muscular men in the sea, camels.  The devil on top of the mountain appears to signify the Timanfaya National Park.  Just below that, the brown hoops over greenery I think must represent vines growing in small terraces protected from the wind by walls.

The whole island is a designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve because of its unique environment.

Reflections in a canal

First of all I thought I had been sent some modern art, then I realised I was holding the card upside down.  I think.  Either way, it's a very attractive card.

Updated to show how I first saw it.

Football fans (soccer)

According to the details on the reverse of the card, this photo shows "Italia - Olanda" and was taken in 2000.  A little detective work was needed to discover that in that year Italy and the Netherlands played against each other in a UEFA European Football Championship semi final.  The shop, a macelleria, is a butcher.

The spectators will have been happy because Italy beat the Netherlands.  They will have been less happy four days later when France beat Italy in the finals.

I would never have thought I could take an interest in these things but I seem to have absorbed something after years of indoctrination by my personal adviser who is the Scottish equivalent of these spectators.

Arts and crafts in Ukraine

A beautifully colourful arts and crafts fair in Ukraine that i would love to be able to visit and browse around.  A postcard has to be the next best thing.

Spanish collar

A form of punishment for drunkards and night-time revellers.  A multinational card, written in German, about a "Spanish collar", sent from Japan.  I suspect the contraption is a figment of someone's imagination because the only reference I can find is to a medical condition that I won't go into here. 

The stamps above came on this card.  The following ones arrived on other cards.

And let's not forget Hello Kitty.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Say cheese!

For Sepia Saturday this week I show you a postcard of a small group of Dutch children in traditional dress who appear to have been told to smile for the camera.  They come from the island of Marken in North Holland.

Marken wasn't always an island but became separated from the mainland in the 13th century during a storm.  It has always been low lying and prone to flooding so traditionally the houses are built on stilts.  In 1957 the island has been connected to the mainland once more, by a causeway, but it retains its traditional ways as tourism has become a main source of income.

The cards, along with 10 others in the series, came in the folder above.  They were produced by Nenke & Ostermaier who held one of the patents for the Photochromie process, first invented in 1874.   They produced many cards for the UK and the USA before starting publishing under their own name.

PS I've just realised that Postcard has some very similar cards.  It must be a case of great minds thinking alike. :)

Selling onions in the Andes

"Nada menos, no sale mamita"

I don't buy my onions like this, but I wish I did.  It looks much more fun than the suspiciously sterile and uniform ones on offer in our shops.  These ones are being sold in a market in Peru in the Andes.

I don't know how much fun the baby is having though.  I suspect he or she will be awake soon and complaining loudly about a stiff neck.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

For cat lovers

A tree and a reflection

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection. Eugenio Montale

Discuss.

Automated flower vendor

In the Netherlands you will see snack bars made up almost entirely of vending machines which offer a variety of foods.  You put in your one or two Euro and out comes a hot snack such as frikadelle or croquettes.

I don't think they have gone as far as selling tulips from vending machines, but the idea brought a smile to my face.

Small things

The quote from Mother Teresa can be found in a number of forms:

We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. 

I don't suppose it matters which, if either, is correct, the meaning remains the same.  In German on this card it is "Wir können keine großen Dinge tun - nur kleine, aber die mit großer Liebe."

And this week I'll be restricting myself to small things (with great love of course) and just posting some attractive images.  I've returned from being away, having picked up some sort of cold that has me laid low.  So it will be short and I hope sweet for a few days.

The old town of Lijiang

Lijiang in the Yunnan Province of China has a history reaching back 800 years and once was an important trading centre.  It is built facing a river from which a complex series of waterways and channels has been developed to supply every house.  As a result there are plenty of bridges, 354 in all leading to the it being called the City of Bridges.  Now it's on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

My card arrived with the following stamps:

Unfortunately the perforations don't show up well on the scan but the stamp on the left is diamond shaped (and upside down).  The next ones arrived on a different card

I always find stamps from China are very attractive even though I rarely have any idea what they are showing.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Just after WWI

For Sepia Saturday this week, I'm cheating.  I am away from home without a suitable subject so this is a repeat post from just over a year ago.

Among a collection of old cards, I found these - the ones that make me wonder about the stories that fit the pictures.

The first has the undated message on the back:

This ship is the one I was aboard when I first came to Venice.

The Marco Polo was converted to a troop transport in Venice from 1917-1918 and was sold for scrapping in January 1922.  So that gives me a fairly precise date.

The card was accompanied by several others, mainly of submarines, both Italian and British.

The submarine above I think is almost certainly a Squalo with its fairly distinctive profile.  I really don't know about the second.  Both PTOs say "Italian submarine".

Mounts Bay, where this picture was taken, is a bay in Cornwall near Lands End.  St Michael's Mount is in the centre of the bay and I wonder if the small conical shape on the horizon could be that.

I'm sorry, by the way, for the wonkiness of the cards.  Not one of them is square and it was impossible to straighten them up any more without having to crop too much.

The British L class submarines served in the 1920s, so again the date fits.  The majority were scrapped in the 1930s.

Was the sender a submariner, or merely interested in submarines?  And why would he be in Venice?

The Valley of the Loire

The Loire Valley is understandably best known for the wonderful châteaux built along the banks, many of the most impressive ones dating from when the French kings started building their own here.  But the whole of the mid-section of the Loire Valley, between Sully sur Loire and Chalonnes sur Loire, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As the committee said the area is made up of "historic cities and villages, great architectural monuments - the Châteaux - and lands that have been cultivated and shaped by centuries of interaction between local populations and their physical environment, in particular the Loire itself".

People tend to forget everything other than the most famous châteaux but there is far more to the area.  Here are three cards to celebrate the river itself which shaped the history of the Garden of France.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.