How much Stile do you have?

Slab stile, St Lythan's Church, near Wenvoe, Vale of Glamorgan

If you use Twitter, it's very easy to be drawn into the depths of despair reading the widespread crap you find on that platform, or knowing that anything someone posts seems to draw one of two responses. Either people agree 100% with you, or people 100% disagree with you often in the most unpleasant way. Whatever the subject (and Brexit and Covid are the two prime examples) or whether blue is black and white is gold Twitter can be disheartening place to be sometimes. But then every now and then you come across some gems that you'd never have come across if you hadn't been trawling the bird. And what could be more gently entertaining than finding out about a competition to find everyone's* favourite stile?

(*everyone that voted that is!)

I first came across this because I'm an avid follower of Quintin Lake on Twitter. He's an architectural photographer who also loves walking and photographing his journeys. A couple of years ago  he walked and photographed the entire coastline of Britain on a humungous project he called The Perimeter. This was fascinating enough on its own, and he's still publishing his photo blog on this mammoth undertaking, but one by-product of this was a post he put on Twitter last year concerning the "Stile Cup" which (unsurprisingly) I'd never heard of before. That's a beauty of Twitter - you'll occasionally come across a post linking to people or things that you'd never have done so in the normal course of things, and it can open up a whole new world. And so it was here. There is a Twitter user named @LakeStiles who posts all sorts of photos of stiles and gates (bear with me, I'm a country boy at heart). This Twitter user also runs an annual "Stile Cup", where other Twitter users can send in images of interesting stiles, which are then voted on in groups of four by followers until an ultimate Stile Cup Winner is found.

Well, Quintin Lake submitted the photo below, which after a very hard fought contest, became the winner of the 2021 Stile Cup.

2021 Stile Cup Winner: Credit Quintin Lake

Having said above that it's "gently entertaining", I have to say the final run in of last year's competition (semi final and final in particular) got quite heated and tense as those who had submitted photos that made it that far used all manner of messaging to get people to vote for their photo albeit in a fun, (well I think it was fun) way.

This year I've submitted my own entry. The photo at the top of this post is a slab style stile (if you follow that) quite commonly found in these parts, this one adjacent to St Lythan's Church near Wenvoe in the Vale of Glamorgan. I don't expect to make it past round one of the 2022 Stile Cup which kicks of next week (search #StileCup2022 on Twitter), but at least I've made an effort to enter.

If you've got an interesting photo of a stile, you've got a couple more days left to enter. Just DM @LakeStiles with your entry.

Anyway, my overall point here is that there's some great and interesting stuff on Twitter if you look hard enough (accepting that "great" and "interesting" are very subjective!). We might clamber over standard wooden stiles on our walks about the place without giving it a second thought, but there are some fascinating alternatives out there if only you open your eyes. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it beats the hell out of trawling the mess, misinformation, trolling and detritus that is Covid or Brexit Twitter.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks