A glorious — and three-day — weekend continues with the chance to spend a Monday relaxing with our friends in Aberdour and exploring its stellar beaches: this one, known (erroneously) as Black Sands is particularly fine. This weekend has reminded me why I should come to Scotland more often.
Always get a window seat… Last possible view of Tromsø after take-off, as a second or two later we were enfolded in the cloud stealing in from bottom right. Farvel indeed… until next time.
Optimism in the face of bleakness. These are the qualities that have kept the British seaside going for many generations now.
Last day before the return to work, and fortunately, the weather seems to have relented (for now) and decided to give us a taste of spring. A day for a short walk in the woods then. I like the formal qualities of this shot, the way the parties on the other bank gather themselves into groups; though the two in the middle background seem to spoil it just a little bit.
Another less-than-exciting day in this rather gloomy and light-free Easter break. Managed a short walk in the woods in the afternoon but that was about it. This is the waterfall that spills out from under the bridge at the top of the woods, taken from above, looking down from the bridge. It has turned out more of an abstract and I’m not sure that it says anything in particular but at least it’s different.
Back in the foul summer of 2012, on 23rd August 2012 in fact, I pictured a walker up in the wilds south of Great Langdale with Pike o’Blisco in the background. Well, here is another walker, actually up on the summit of that fell; and as you can see, the weather was thankfully rather better today. (That is Wetherlam in the background.) I did speculate today about how many nice photos like this I might feature on, unknowingly.
Early flight home out of Tromsø. The first half-hour was spectacular: a panorama of seemingly endless white mountains, the tips tinted pink by the rising sun. Felt like asking for compensation from SAS as I had a rather grubby window beside my seat, but did manage to get a couple of tolerable shots. This one is impressive, first, because of the scale and prominence of the rocky towers on both peaks: measurable from the fact that the shadows cast by both are quite visible on the slopes behind (it’s clearer with the right-hand peak).
But I swear it was only later I realised how closely these resemble… well.. if you can’t see it, translate the title of the post out of Norwegian. Please tell me I’m not the only one that thinks this.
Storsteinen is the name of a 421-meter (1381 feet) summit not far outside Tromsø city centre and reachable by the Fjellheisen cable car. As far as my primitive Norwegian can establish, its name just means The Big Rock. Certainly a fine place for an excursion to pass the time on my last full day here on this particular trip — though I’m due back in about seven weeks.
Even including the picture taken on the summit of Kilimanjaro, and the ones in Moscow in January 2017, I nominate this the coldest of all the 2,386 pictures thus far. According to information on the Fjellheisen web site, it was -13ºC up there today. And I can assure you all that it felt like it.
This is not the first time I have managed to get out of the UK during one of its wintrier spells only to find myself heading somewhere even colder; though the weather in northern Norway at the moment is also rather sunnier and more pleasant than at home. Taken from the plane at some unspecified spot between Trondheim and Bodø as I hopped up the coast on a succession of flights.
OK, so, we have had a bit of snow. This is Old Town, above Hebden Bridge, but most of the place looks like this at the moment. Things were functional round here but I was glad I didn’t have to schlep into Manchester…. no, those pleasures await me tomorrow, unless I can find a reason to avoid it.
Being 42 