It’s Clare’s birthday today so I let her have final choice on today’s photo. This was taken somewhere over the UK as we came into the final half hour of my flight back into Manchester airport this morning. A mouth? Lips? Had I got this a couple of seconds earlier you would have seen an almost perfect heart (as in the card suit shape) below the line. Anyway – happy birthday dear 🙂 XXX
Flew over to Moscow again today, where I’m working all week. My intention was to post a totally gratuitous photo of Germany, where I changed planes, purely to get an 8th country onto this blog. But though I got some decent shots of Frankfurt today, where it was a lovely sunny day, this shot of the Pennine hills just outside Manchester as we took off this morning has to be the winner. Germany can wait. I’ll be passing back through on Friday so we’ll see if an equally gratuitous shot makes it then. Meantime, the mist.
Was almost obliged to go on a walk today, if I still intended to finish my project by the time I go away next year (in case you weren’t aware of this one, see my other ‘214 Wainwrights’ blog). It was tougher than expected today, partly because the forecast let me down – promising decent weather after noon, this was the reality; the last blue sky I saw all day.
A somewhat boring day – had to work, for the third Sunday in a row – but a beautiful one, particularly in the morning. Hard to capture the combination of blue skies, a sharp chill in the air and mist clinging to the sides of the valley first thing, but this is my best shot.
There are only so many things you can capture on camera when you spend most of the day on a plane. I know I have done the theme – the picture taken just after take-off from Domodedovo – before, but what the hell, different day, different sunrise, different picture, different beauty.
Along similar lines to yesterday, in some ways, but still the only really decent photo I took today in an otherwise rather mundane day for pictures. It’s a classic view, and not hard to capture – just head up the A6033 from Hebden Bridge to Pecket Well, towards Haworth, and there it is. The church is in Heptonstall, a village above Hebden Bridge (Sylvia Plath is buried in the churchyard) and there has been a monument on Stoodley Pike for two hundred years. This is the second structure; the first collapsed in 1854. It was originally built to commemorate the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
A thoroughly glorious day, and a weekend too. The whole town was out enjoying it today. Plenty of other candidate photos today but this one serves to encapsulate the atmosphere. Do we forgive it the summer just gone, the ‘wettest for 100 years’ apparently? Well… let’s not go that far yet. If it stays sunny until mid-October, say, we might do.
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?”
