The summit of Sail is 2536 feet above sea level but the fell is described by Wainwright as ‘the least obtrusive of the 2,500-footers’ and he has a point, there’s not really much to it. Still, it was the highest point reached on my walk today, and the view is a good one despite the grey clouds: the distinct northern group (Skiddaw and Blencathra) on the horizon, Keswick below. A good walk today — I’m having my weekend Friday and Saturday.
I guess when I pre-imagined the Arctic, this is what I thought it would look like. Skulsfjord has a cool name and sits in the northern part of Kvaløy (Whale Island), to the northwest of Tromsø. There are worse places to visit on a Wednesday afternoon.
We are in one of those crappy spells of weather. You know, where it is cold and damp and it tries to snow but it’s not cold enough to do it properly so everything turns to grey slush virtually on impact. Well, you know these things if you spend Februaries in Britain, anyway.
Incidentally, this is a luggage rack on top of a car. I like the inverted mountain-range look of the meltwater drops. Hence me categorising the post as ‘Landscape’ even though it obviously isn’t one in the classical sense.
Three-day weekend, so went out on a walk before the weather deteriorated and I had to go back to work. Steel Knotts is only 1412 feet above sea level but asserts itself ruggedly among the taller fells all around.
Public holiday today, and a beautiful day of weather, so I made the most of it and went on a Lake District walk. The remaining photos will be up on my other blog some time tomorrow morning. Combe Gill is a hanging valley above upper Borrowdale, tucked into the massif that is known as Glaramara. And yes, there’s something, well, intimate-looking about it.
“All wind is made by wind farms.” (From Andy Riley, Great Lies to Tell Small Kids)
Went to Southport today so Clare could see her gran, who now resides there. This provided a photo opportunity, melancholy December seaside weather and all that…. Except that calling Southport a ‘seaside town’ only seems to apply at high tide. It has a 1.1km long pier, which Joe and I walked the length of today, and even at the end of it the sea was not actually visible. Talk about a long tidal range.
Another beautiful day — as have been many over the last four months, it cannot be denied. A very sharp frost, which lasted all day, across the entire country (I saw enough of it today — I know this); but once more, cloudless blue skies. I spent it entirely either on a train or working at home, so did not manage to capture it that adequately, but here’s my best effort from early this morning, as the train out of Cambridge whisked me through some rural county or other.
Having worked five of the last six Sundays, and as I’m going to be working this Sunday too, and with it being the only Friday morning all semester when I wasn’t teaching — I arranged weeks ago to make this a completely guilt-free day off. It could have been raining, misty, foul, all the things it usually is in late November….
…. but it wasn’t. Thank you world.
Back on 7th October 2011 this summit, Bowfell, was pictured from a greater distance on an earlier Lake District walk, and it also popped up on 22nd June this year, which makes it the first mountain to get on the blog three times (excepting the obvious case of Kilimanjaro).
I have a commitment to try to avoid repeating myself on this blog: but of all the views that have appeared more than once, this one, the one looking west from my house, has been the most often repeated. And for good reason. It has saved many an otherwise drab day.
And yes, we do already have snow, have had for three days in fact. After the whole year has seemed to be running late climatically — winter has hit early, and quite hard.
