Saturday 9th November 2013, 2.40pm (day 807)
Paid a visit to my family today who live over the other side of the Pennines. I am lucky that all my family members basically live in quite good-looking parts of the planet.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Landscape
Photographing the view from Latterbarrow
Tuesday 29th October 2013, 1.45pm (day 796)
Second day of this two-day break in the Lake District with Joe. I make no apologies for uploading another landscape shot today, though let’s give it that slightly different angle and included in it someone else who was doing their best to capture what was, for a hill only 803 feet above sea level, a quite exceptional panorama. Latterbarrow rises to the north-east of the village of Hawkshead.
Windermere
Monday 28th October 2013, 3.05pm (day 795)
Joe is on his half-term holiday, so these two days I’m off work doing my part of the child care duties. And I decided to take him somewhere I liked. Why not.
Newspaper editors in London might also like to use this picture as evidence that today was not, despite their headlines, the day that the ‘Killer Storm Stopped Britain’. Or perhaps they were using ‘Britain’ as shorthand for ‘that small part of a decent-sized country which is nearest to London’ — as they so often do?
View of the Duddon estuary, from White Combe
Friday 11th October 2013, 11.50am (day 778)
I have worked the last two Sundays and I’m working this coming Sunday too, so today I took the day off and made the most of a decent weather forecast. This is taken in the far south-west corner of the Lake District, looking southeast over the long estuary of the River Duddon, with the town of Barrow on the peninsula in the background. (More pictures from the day will be put on my other blog later.)
Sunset over western Norway
Wednesday 2nd October 2013, 7.00pm (day 769)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only real spiritual benefit one gets from air travel is seeing the world from 30,000 feet. It can be an amazingly beautiful place.
Eystein, on Lifjell
Sunday 1st September 2013, 1.50pm (day 738)
And here is my host and mountain guide, Eystein — or at least, his back — pictured on the way back down from a summit that nearly bears his name, Øysteinnatte (Øystein’s Knott, a knott being a rocky tor), part of the larger massif of Lifjell. An enjoyable weekend’s walking to say the least, but it’s back to work (in Oslo) tomorrow.
Mountain tarn, on Gøysen
Saturday 31st August 2013, 2.05pm (day 737)
Saturday saw us walking up to the peak of Gøysen, part of the Skorve massif. This shot was taken at approximately 1250 metres above sea level, making it one of the highest on this blog so far. I love the crystal clarity of the water in this tarn (one of many terms for mountain features which have been adopted into English, or at least into northern English dialect, but which come from Norwegian originally: like force (foss: a waterfall) and fell (fjell: a mountain)). The colours on the mountain were also very profuse. More photos from this walk have been uploaded onto my walking blog, by the way.
The road by Seljordsvatn
Friday 30th August 2013, 5.30pm (day 736)
So here I am back in Norway for a week, where, if in doubt, there’s always the landscape shot. This is the lake of Seljordsvatn, by which I was lucky enough to be spending the weekend, in the cabin of my friend Eystein and his family (you’ll be seeing him on Sunday’s pic). The lake is famed for its legendary water serpent, apparently. This is also one of the better shots I have ever taken from a moving car.
Ice rainbow
Thursday 29th August 2013, 6.30pm (day 735)
I’ve only ever seen this a couple of times before — a rainbow, or at least a spectrum, high in the air, nowhere near the ground and with no rain in sight. I guess it must be caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Bad weather on the way perhaps. Let’s hope not: I intend to spend next weekend walking in Norway.
POSTSCRIPT: Have discovered this is something called a ‘circumzenithal arc’. They are not rare as such, but apparently only appear when the sun is at exactly the right angle to ice crystals in high-level clouds, and thus can be seen only in very restricted locations on the ground. So if you do see one, feel privileged – it may well only be visible in a space a few metres around you.
The River Wharfe, at Wetherby
Sunday 25th August 2013, 1.10pm (day 731)
Still in Wetherby – the wedding celebrations lasted all weekend. The Wharfe is one of England’s most beautiful rivers from its spectacular course through the Yorkshire Dales, in Wharfedale, and right on down to here. Eventually, like most rivers in the region, it enters the North Sea through the Humber estuary.
You might also have noticed that it’s day 731. 731 = 366 + 365. Which means this brings to an end the second full year of this blog, one photograph posted every day since 26th August 2011. I did say at one point I would stop here, but I’m inclined to keep it all going for now. See you tomorrow. I will also add another top 10 at some point soon, of my favourite photos from the second year.
Being 42 