Strange Things Found

I am out walking everyday in Burnley, Lancashire with my dogs. Often I do familiar walks over and over again due to convenience and time pressures. I have learnt to never take the same walk for granted as there is something different to see every time. In this list of strange things that I have seen I have counted only things which are temporary, they may be natural or man made in some way, but not features such a waterfalls or sculptures.

I have left out some of the distressing things I have seen and had to report to the authorities for example the dead puppy in the canal and hundreds of carcasses of butchered poultry which had been fly tipped on a footpath. And I didn't photograph the rather large, purple, phallic sex toy which had been fly tipped on the footpath behind my house even though it was definitely an unexpected sight! I was most concerned with getting the dogs past it lest they should think it was a dog toy.

I spotted this tree in Cemetery woods Burnley. I don't know if someone had walked out there with a bag of old children's toys with the intention of decorating a tree or whether one person had fly tipped the toys and another person had just entertained themselves decorating with what they found. None the less it was an unusual sight and whilst it is still visible, the toys are gradually dropping off and may eventually be cleared away.

Once again I was in Cemetery woods with the dogs. I was looking in the leaf litter for fungus and turned over this twig to find, what I believe to be, a slime mould called Dacrymyces chrysospermus. It has a jelly like texture and was opaque. It's the first time I've seen a slime mould since I was a child.

At the time I just knew I was looking at the most amazing cloud I'd ever seen. I now know that this is an arcus cloud - specifically a roll cloud. I was in awe when I saw this whilst walking on the moors near Goodshaw, Lancashire. Goodshaw is about 5 miles away from Burnley, so just about counts as my local patch.

This is the most permanent of my finds and can still be seen at St Peter's Church which is right in the middle of Burnley. I believe the root has grown into the wall and because it is a wall of fairly loose construction and the growth has been gradual, the wall has absorbed the changes and formed a lovely pattern above the root.

This was an amazing night out walking around Burnley. Ice had formed on all the tree twigs producing an effect more beautiful then any man made chandelier. Even more brilliantly for 5 minutes there was a gentle wind causing the iced twigs to dance; glistening in the glow of street lights and tinkling as you can hear on the video clip.

This particular tree was photographed on Stoops Estate, Burnley.

I was wildly excited to see this phenomenon on a stunning winter's day. I was walking on Pendle Hill about 6 miles from Burnley. (It counts as my local patch because I can see it from my bedroom window every day).

It is called a sundog or parhelia (it may be parhelion in the singular) because like a dog near its master it occurs near the sun. Effectively it is a bit of rainbow caused by reflections from ice particles in the cloud and is reasonably common but often fleeting.

This shot was taken at night with a long exposure of about 10 seconds. I was walking the dogs in Burnley cemetery.

Having seen sundogs earlier in the year I've been on the lookout for similar phenomenon so I was very pleased to see the coloured clouds at night - again caused by light reflecting off ice crystals in the clouds. I think it's accompanied by moondogs, also known as paraselenae, but am not entirely sure as these seemed closer to the moon then I had expected from seeing other people's photographs..

This chimney was on a former industrial site near Hapton, Burnley and counts as a temporary strange sight because this was the last weekend it was standing before being demolished. I saw it from the canal and it was the only thing which hadn't yet been flattened, making it standout and draw me to it.

I'm normally irritated to see human's cast offs littering the countryside, but these pink underpants, hanging on a barbed wire fence beside Crown Point Road, Burnley, made me chuckle. They lifted the mood, adding colour to a rather grey day in Lancashire. The view they look out on is quite a splendid one towards Coal Clough Wind Farm and Hurstwood reservoir.