The sun is just about still making it over the hillside in the mornings, but not for much longer in the year. It will be February before it makes a reappearance in the east before noon on any given day.
9th November 2021 was the day on which I landed on St Helena. No such adventures await me this November, but then again, I don’t have to spend ten days in quarantine again. It was too nice a morning to stay indoors, wherever I was.
Onto campus for a day that was less-than-inspiring, but at least the sun was shining. This tree caught the light very well as I transitioned across Oxford Road for a much-needed cup of tea.
Brock Barrow is only about 750 feet above sea level (228m for all you metric system users) but it has a good view, including of Coniston Water below. Nice cairn too. It becomes my 303rd Wainwright on my second round: 27 to go. Tell you what though, it was damn windy and cold up there, even if it doesn’t look it. I just about got my 202nd Wainwright walk in before a storm arrived at lunchtime.
Two mornings in a row on campus. Well, I should put in a bit of effort now and again. Not that many other people were doing so today. The solitary, distant figure on the left is the only one to make it into this shot.
Tried to get on a train today to go somewhere other than home, but when it turned up 20 minutes late and dangerously overcrowded, I remembered, only then, that Manchester United were at home (not to mention Leeds and Liverpool), and the hourly Sunday service was really not up to the job. I therefore returned home: but there were things to see on Calder Holmes Park that were just as interesting as what I might have encountered elsewhere. So the bad planning (mine, and the train company’s) didn’t matter in the end.
Hebden Bridge in autumn plumage. A nice place to be. Cold at the moment, though, but the trees look good.
Halifax Minster is a great, soot-coated monolith of a church, and its gate provides a suitably Gothic (and autumnal) vista for this year’s Halloween shot, with Clare playing the part of the spectral apparition. Maybe. Anyway, with this shot, the town of Halifax hauls itself up to 9th place in the ‘all-time list’ (see the stats), with its 34th appearance on this blog.
Can’t say I had the greatest day at work today but at least it was sunny outside. A walk in the woods helped, a little. I guess because these trees are more sheltered than most, they’ve barely begun to turn yet — just the merest splash of autumn has hit them, thus far.
No, I won’t do it. I won’t stay cowering at home, plugged into the Matrix and denied the world outside. My physical and mental health — the things we’re supposed to care about, right? — these are too important. And most of the woods and parks that I am frequenting are pretty busy with other people, suggesting that these souls, at least, have taken the same decision. It is not for the gaggle of failed journalists and lobbyists for the tobacco industry who got themselves elected about a year ago to tell us what is healthy and what is not.
Being 42 