Friday 1st September 2023, 7.00pm (day 4,390)
As seen from the Walthamstow Travelodge, looking south. Yes, I’m in London again. I like London. There are things to do here.
Rain over London
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Landscape
View from Pecket Well
Friday 25th August 2023, 12.25pm (day 4,383)
Today marks the end of the 12th full year that I have been doing this blog. In that time I have engaged in plenty of travelling, though there’s been less of that in recent years, for various reasons. But the attractions of my local area are still just about enough to sustain the interest. For now, I’m carrying on…. year 13 starts tomorrow.
North from Helvellyn
Thursday 17th August 2023, 2.00pm (day 4,375)
I established today that over the last two years I have made frequent promises, on both my walking blogs, that I would soon be going back up Helvellyn, which at 3,117 feet above sea level is the third-highest mountain in England, and which first featured on here in December 2011. Today, finally, I made it and it was well worth it. This was the first walk to count as both a Wainwright and County Top walk; so including this picture, three blogs for the price of one. Am I overdoing it? No, I don’t think so.
The Humber Bridge, from North Ferriby
Saturday 5th August 2023, 1.15pm (day 4,363)
Back on November 4th 2020 I stood under the south end of the Humber Bridge — the right-hand end as this picture shows it — and took this shot. It was a day of considerably nicer weather than today, despite this being August. Anyway, this gigantic construction can join the Forth Bridge and Tay Bridge as great bridges to have appeared twice. I believe that this one is so long that the two stanchions are slightly out of parallel with each other, to allow for the curvature of the Earth, and I wonder whether you might even be able to see that on this shot, though probably that’s my imagination.
On Ullswater
Thursday 20th July 2023, 4.50pm (day 4,347)
There are many worse ways, and places, to spend a Thursday. Taken from the Howtown to Pooley Bridge ‘pleasure steamer’ service, following a good walk up Place Fell; soon to be duly recorded on the Wainwrights blog.
Birchcliffe
Wednesday 19th July 2023, 1.05pm (day 4,346)
Another day at home, musing on the existence of portals to other dimensions, as possibly manifesting on the Birchcliffe hillside, around the upper floor of 7 Chapel Street I reckon.
Beauly Firth
Saturday 15th July 2023, 1.55pm (day 4,342)
Let’s permit Scotland to offer up its combination of mountain and seascape one more time before we have to head home. The Beauly Firth is the far end of the Moray Firth; this shot is looking inland, to the Highlands beyond. And yes, somewhere over there it is raining.
Thurso beach
Thursday 13th July 2023, 11.25am (day 4,340)
OK, it’s another beach (after Monday), but Scotland is a country that does very good beaches — they’re just not very warm. This becomes the northernmost picture so far taken in the UK, a position it will retain until I finally make it to Shetland or Orkney. It will probably forever remain the northernmost picture taken on the mainland of Great Britain, at around 58º 36′ N.
Morning run, Cromarty Firth
Wednesday 12th July 2023, 8.55am (day 4,339)
More athleticism. Clare is in training and demanded a hill to run up. The tiny settlement of Nigg, on the Cromarty Firth, obliged this morning. The return to the Black Isle region was motivated largely by my desire to get more photographs of it, particularly of this firth thanks to its collection of old oil rigs and vessels that are either mothballed or being decommissioned. It’s proof that industry need not wreck a landscape.
Avoch Beach
Monday 10th July 2023, 3.50pm (day 4,337)
The Black Isle, just north of Inverness, is actually a peninsula rather than an island, though it is almost cut off by rivers. It previously featured, thanks to Fortrose Ness, on my trip round Scotland last May, and as it seemed a pleasant spot I have returned, this time bringing Clare along (although that’s not her in the shot). Avoch beach is just up the Beauly Firth from Fortrose; the latter remains the northernmost British location to feature on here but that is a distinction it will lose by the end of this week.
Being 42 