The hoped-for walk duly happened — leg 6 of the Calderdale Way was completed, with Clare, over four months after the last one. But we are getting round, and somewhere just before this shot was taken (from Norwood Green, a village on the outskirts of Halifax) we turned generally to the west and started heading back home. There are a couple more days’ walking to do before it’s finished, at some not-yet-determined future date.
Base Brown lies in the upper reaches of Borrowdale, in the Lake District. I realised today that this place constitutes my third longest-lasting love affair: we’ve been going at it regularly since 2009 and I’m certainly not getting tired of the place.
(Seeing as I mentioned it.. Clare [1996] comes in second and, as I can still be moved to care now and again, Brighton & Hove Albion [1976] being the leader.)
Anybody who thought I might spend a second consecutive day of bright winter sunshine ‘working from home’ obviously doesn’t know me very well. I guess the same applies to these three guys, though they enjoy here a form of sporting entertainment that’s not for me.
This is taken on the west coast of the Wirral peninsula. The river is the Dee, and the land in the background is Wales. Visible on the horizon is Moel Famau, where I spent a rather good day last June, doing the same thing as I did today — bagging a County Top walk. I guess this counts as a photo where one can definitely see the territory of two different countries, as long as you non-Britons accept that England and Wales are different places (which they are, in many ways).
Welcome to 2022, and if all the days of weather are as good as 1st January, that will be fine by me. A beautiful day, and quite warm. I realise this would be a better photo without the foliage to the left but I couldn’t move it, and with limited positions from which this view was visible I decided I’d rather capture the sunbeams before they disappeared.
I’m not trying to be overtly metaphorical here. But this shot certainly sums up today’s weather. Enough snow to feel, not enough to make a difference, all under steel-grey skies.
As the country spirals back down into a stupid, paranoid and self-deluding feeling of ‘safety’, I’ve given up trying to talk to anyone about this so will just carry on doing my thing, including all activities which are health-giving and beneficial. The Lake District seems a fine setting for just that sort of thing. This is the National Park’s 150th appearance on this blog; an average of over once a month, which emphasises its value. ‘Work from home’? Bollocks to it. That will kill us all, faster than anything else.
The flight home. The Sahara looked astonishing: this was a day when I wish I could break my own rules and post more than one photo. The River Niger certainly was worth seeing, a braid of blue and green running through a sandy wasteland. We must have crossed that somewhere in Mali.
But instead I will go with this shot; for much of the three hours it took to cross the desert I was thinking, hmmm, well it’s certainly barren, but more rocky than sandy. But then came this sea, this ocean of dunes, tinged by the setting sun. This must be far enough north to be somewhere in Algeria. Not that national boundaries really mean a lot here. If anything this is Arrakis. Had a gigantic sandworm crested out of this stuff with Fremen on its back, I would not have been surprised.
The spectacular scenery of St Helena is enhanced by the fact that the pattern of vegetation one sees in the UK is reversed. It is the coast, the lower levels, that is rocky and barren, and the mountains which are covered in lush vegetation: all down to the fact that the rain falls high up, but not low down. This is taken from the Blue Hill area, looking down to Sandy Bay, past the basalt pillar known as ‘Lot’ (and his wife is somewhere over to the right of this image).
Until the 1500s St Helena was covered in forest. Then humanity arrived, and even if people didn’t cut down the trees themselves, they released goats onto the island, which munched away at any new shoots for the subsequent half-millennium. Although some recovery has been made recently, in places, a lot of the lower parts of the island look like this as a result. It’s attractive, in its way, but it’s also dead land. Only about 21% of the island is cultivated with another 11% afforested. 54% is classed as ‘barren’. Two years ago today I was in Java, another steep volcanic island; but one festooned with terraces, every inch used to support the population. The contrast is notable.
Briars Pavilion — the first home of St Helena’s most famous resident, Napoleon Bonaparte. When he arrived here in 1815 post-Waterloo, he lived here for the first couple of months while his more permanent home (Longwood House) was being prepared.
The Heart-Shaped Waterfall — well that is its official name, and you have to say that it is appropriate. But it seems they only turn it on during the winter months (May – September).
Being 42 