Found out today that my new camera not only has a 20x telephoto lens on it but also a digital zoom that goes up to 70x. This is just me playing around with it, but I at least feel proud of the timing. Also, this one shows that today, wonder of wonders, was a nice, warm, sunny day with blue skies – perhaps the best one we’ve had since the end of May.
Third day in four out walking, and between them all I have done 43 miles (nearly 70km). On none of them has the weather been great and today was the worst of the lot. It’s time for a rest…
From A. Wainwright’s The Southern Fells (volume 4 of his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells): page Hard Knott 2:
“On the south-western slope of Hard Knott the rocky cliffs of Border End fall steeply to an inclined grassy shelf, which extends for half a mile and then breaks abruptly in a line of crags overlooking the Esk. This shelf, a splendid place of vantage commanding a view of the valley from the hills down to the sea, was selected by the Romans towards the end of the first century AD as a site for the establishment of a garrison to reinforce their military occupation of the district….
“One wonders what were the thoughts of the sentries as they kept watch over this lonely outpost amongst the mountains, nearly two thousand years ago? Did they admire the massive architecture of the Scafell group as they looked north, the curve of the valley, from source to sea, as their eyes turned west? Or did they feel themselves to be unwanted strangers in a harsh and hostile land? Did their hearts ache for the sunshine of their native country, for their families, for their homes?”
I’m in the Lakes again. After today, 18 to go. The picture is taken on Middle Fell, near Wast Water, but in the background is Yewbarrow, and if there was a super-dooper 100x zoom you may well be able to see the same sight as depicted way back on Sept 2nd, as that’s Great Door over there. More to come from the Lakes for the next few days, I’m here until Thursday.
I’ve been up 193 of these buggers now and of them all Catstycam is the one that most looks like a child would draw a mountain. It’s really quite a sexy beast – though as I proved today, a relatively easy walk up and down.
The landscape shots on this blog tend to have been of the Lake District, but I must remember more often that I live in a pretty decent part of the world, too.
Seeing as when I do these walks the landscape photos are collected together on my other blog at 214wainwrights.wordpress.com , I have lately been trying to pick other pictures to put on here, that is, pictures that are not necessarily of the landscape but epitomise the day. Yesterday’s was an example of that.
However, I put a ‘landscape’ photo up here to draw attention to the other big theme of today – the bloody weather. Honestly. Most of the rest of the country had a good day today, but I can assure everyone that on the tops of Kirk Fell; Great Gable; and Green Gable, between 9am and noon today, it was revolting. I found it quite dispiriting and didn’t enjoy the walk until it was finished, when I had a sense of achievement. Base Brown was the fourth fell of the day, and I and these two other walkers watch as it stops having its rare moment of clarity and the big devouring cloud beast comes in again, just as we thought we might dry out for a few minutes.
On a pleasant summer’s day, here is the Nutclough stream, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in its flow. (It probably wouldn’t.) This is the stream that turned into a torrent on 9th July and took out a couple of houses two hundred yards downstream. More before and after comparison pictures are on the Facebook album, as linked.
This is a bit out-of-focus, but it was taken from a moving train. Specifically, a train that was crossing what Wikipedia, at least, defines as the longest railroad bridge in the USA and, at 9.3km, ‘likely to be’ the world’s longest rail bridge over water. It crosses the south-eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain and took me and a couple of hundred other passengers out of New Orleans this Sunday morning.
I got off after a six-hour journey at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I am staying for the next five nights: some others were going as far as New Jersey and weren’t going to arrive until tomorrow lunchtime. And the train guards work all but 4 hours of the full 32-hour journey! Now there’s a group in need of a better union. Remember also that the UK government look to the US for best practice in its labour laws.
Today in Donetsk the Ukraine v France game started, but was then suspended for an hour because of heavy rain.
This June in Hebden Bridge spring started, but has since been suspended for a couple of weeks because of general crappiness, of which today saw more; including this attempt to emulate the weather in the Ukraine, except it’s nowhere near warm enough for a decent thunderstorm. It’s just rain.
Being 42 