So October ends, as it always does, with the realisation that now the clocks have gone back to Greenwich Mean Time, we are in winter: at least as far as the sun is concerned. Still, we keep pumping lots of crap into the sky and I’m sure it’ll keep us toasty and warm for some time to come. The spots in the sky can be explained by the train company’s disinterest in keeping their windows all that clean. Taken somewhere near Newark, I think, but I don’t know the exact location.
London time is called for. Specifically, at the National Archives, which are somewhere over there, downriver a little way. It’s good to have a change of scene at this time of year.
It’s that time of year where it can’t decide whether it’s warm or cold. Hence, this mist, which sort of springs from the boundary between the two states. The question of whether or not we should turn on the central heating is more of an economic than a climatic question, however.
Coming all the way to the north-east of England only to see 90 minutes of football would have been a bit of a waste, whatever the result. I stayed over and allowed myself the opportunity to be somewhere very beautiful by 9.45 the following morning. 400 million years ago all this area was apparently a volcano the size of modern-day Mount Etna: Housey Crags are the remnant of one of its old lava vents, massively eroded.
Of all the blog’s 4,500-plus pictures taken in England, this is the second-most northerly, behind only the one in Berwick (10/7/21). For more pictures from the day, see my County Tops blog.
It’s a stock local shot, from a stock local walk, but all the same, there are worse things to do on the last Sunday of the summer than to trundle out in the direction of Stoodley Pike. Not that I actually climbed up to the monument itself today, but it doesn’t photograph any better there than it does from below.
Begging the pardons of Kinder Scout and Broad Law, which both might feel they qualify, but it was time I went up a proper mountain, and Yr Wyddfa (a.k.a. Snowdon), the highest peak in Wales at 3,560 feet, is a big pointy beast and definitely counts. I will additionally note that Wales can offer alcoholic beverages at its highest point thanks to the summit cafe, though I stuck to tea. No summit views today though, thanks to cloud up high, so let’s choose this shot featuring the day’s walking companion — my sister Vicki making a second appearance in a fortnight, seen here on the way down.
My September 2026 definitely didn’t open with a bang, and the subject matter of this shot reflects that. But the cool blue, plus the generally laid-back clouds and the moon — and who doesn’t like the moon? — together they make for as good a representation of the day as I otherwise managed to achieve with the camera.
Prior to this evening, this blog had featured two solar eclipses: one annular, witnessed in Laura, Queensland, in May 2013, and the total one seen from Ullin, Illinois, in August 2017. Both of those I had travelled specifically to see. This partial eclipse, however, came to me (and the rest of the UK) rather than the other way around. I did get a photo of it through the eclipse glasses but not a particularly sharp one, so let’s document it this way.
This was, more or less, the peak — I was in Leeds, and it peaked there at about 91% totality — and while it was definitely a noticeable dimming of the light there is still plenty of sunshine coming through and the moon is not at all visible without the eclipse glasses. Going on what the media, particularly social media, was touting to those who had never seen such an event before (and the UK’s last really significant one was in 1999), many people seemed to assume things would be getting pitch black. So, welcome to the difference between hype and reality. Eclipses are still pretty cool though: as I say on one of the other two pages, the fact that the apparent sizes of the Moon and Sun are so nearly the same is a massive cosmic coincidence: we may be one of the few planets in the galaxy that can possibly experience such an event.
Having exchanged contracts the day before, it was on 3rd July 2001 that Clare and I moved into our house in Hebden Bridge: separately, I recall, as on the day I came in from our previous place in Leeds with the help of my Dad while her family brought her over from Morecambe with stuff from there. And we’ve been there ever since. I’m not sure we expected to stay for a quarter of a century — but it’s how things have panned out and right now we have no plans to move out.
It seemed appropriate to get a shot of the town and of the house within it for today, so here you are: as seen from the little, overgrown graveyard at the top of the Buttress. Our place is pretty much in the middle of the shot, part of the ‘castle walls’ that line the Keighley Road. Hopefully they’ll still be standing in another 25 years, or indeed another 125: maybe we’ll still be there after the first span of time, but not the latter.
