Was up at 5am to go to London for the day to work, and did take a gratuitous shot of Hebden Bridge at that time mainly because I have still yet to offer a shot from the hour of 5:00 – 5:59 in my near four years of doing this blog. However, this one twelve hours later was a more creative effort. Taken from the train home, just south of Peterborough.
Far too glorious a day to not go on a walk. The walking blog will get updated tomorrow, but for now, here’s one of today’s spectacular views: Great End on the left, then the three lumps from centre to right are Loft Crag, Pike o’Stickle and Harrison Stickle — the Langdale Pikes. England doesn’t get a great deal better than this.
Having put myself about a bit over the last couple of weeks — this is only the fourth of May’s pictures to be taken in Hebden Bridge — I had a profoundly inactive day today, spent working at home. Lucky for you this dusk shot manifested itself this evening as you were this close to getting a picture of my feet. Be thankful for small mercies.
The real point of this weekend was to meet and — hopefully — bond with the people who are going to be attempting Kilimanjaro with me. Here is a selection of them, at least. A good weekend, I think we’re more ready than we were on Friday anyway.
Yesterday the weather was quite poor but this morning, at least, it was glorious, and Aberystwyth clearly comports itself very well in such conditions. There are only about 23,000 people here (even when it has its full deployment of students) but it is still the biggest town for about a hundred miles in any direction. Yet this morning in the sun it felt quiet and peaceful and looked very beautiful. Maybe it’s not the same on an August holiday weekend — but I do not know the place well enough to tell for sure.
You didn’t think I was going to come all the way to Scotland to work and not get a walk in, did you? This is about an hour north of Dundee by road, the southern edge of the Cairngorms National Park. Here we are about 2,600 feet above sea level, at the head of Glen Clova. A good walk today.
I’m not facing head-on the General Election that is taking place today. In any case nothing will be resolved until tomorrow morning at the very earliest, and probably several days after that if the opinion polls are to be believed. I left home very early this morning because of work commitments in Dundee, Scotland, a city I have never visited before, and this shot of the evening light there (plus the small plane — does it look like a blotch, or does it add to the shot?) makes this only the second Scottish location, after Edinburgh (April last year), to feature on this blog. It may be that the Scottish Nationalists hold the balance of power after today’s voting, so this could be an appropriate location to spend the next few days.
“OK, I might have a bit of a silly tail. But I live in a cooler place than you.”
And yes, that’s snow in May.
Though the choice of photo didn’t reflect this, I was walking in the Lake District yesterday, and I’m going to walk there again tomorrow — so to mark the day inbetween, here’s another version of the Lakeland panorama, cast in metal and placed on Morecambe promenade as a view indicator. Attractive enough in its own right, too, on another beautiful day.
Taken somewhere over Wales on our final descent into Manchester this morning, allowing for the time difference a 19-hour journey door to door. The humps in the foreground are the wing and engine; behind are various hills poking above a layer of mist and fog.
