A Constitutional Preamble

I thought I'd add a little introduction to the parks phase of this literary affair, instead of whipping out a pile of tree photos for you to ogle at with no prior communiqué whatsoever. A twigger warning, if you will.  (I may apologise for that later.)

I started going for walks primarily as a means of finding interesting doors to photograph.  If you know me on facebook, or have had a look at my other blog here, you'll know I have a passion for portals that started with a visit to Vézelay in France last August, a destination to which I brought my brand-new (though not new in terms of tech) Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7". This darling machine connected to the internet if there was WiFi around, and as I couldn't afford a laptop, this was the next best thing! And it took photos, so in that respect it was WAY better than a laptop! Oh my! I didn't own a smart phone (and I still don't), but this piece of kit was quite the Welcome To The Smart Age just the same, and I had a whale of a time taking photos, editing them, and slapping them all over my facebook page.  All from the comfort of my own hotel room!  

Yes, the quality isn't fabulous, but for a night-time photo basically taken with a big-ass fake phone, it turned out rather well.  (Abbaye Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay.)

The town is an ancient hill-top settlement, originally going back to Roman times, and it became the start of one of four important pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela, so the tiny township is filled with steep roads, and ancient buildings that offer a plethora of characterful doorways to capture on cyber film. And a facebook photo album was born.

baby's first portal photo

At the time I wasn't thinking about the health benefits of going for walks, although after this entry (I may apologies for that later, too) to the joys of pounding the pavement in search of additions to my album, it became more obvious the further I travelled afield that the exercise was actually doing me good. I discovered that I liked walking, coupled with capturing moments on memory card that had already captured my imagination.  

I was tempted to add the portals to this blog, but as I'm at around four hundred doors and counting, I think they deserve their own piece of internet real-estate. Instead, I am happy to share with you in future posts some of the things that have stirred my fantasy on walks throughout this city, and elsewhere, but I'll leave this post with a couple more doors - one that shows the sloping nature of the roads I was talking about, and the other simply because I love that it's absolutely chock-full of texture!  What a story it could tell!