Tag Archives: mountains

Feb 04 2023
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Mount Pleasant, and Lot

Friday 3rd February 2023, 8.20am (day 4,180)

Mount Pleasant and Lot, 3/2/23

My last full day on St Helena — this time. There will be at least one more, though as yet I don’t know how it’ll be paid for. But considering that this was the view that opened up when I was on my way to my morning meeting — there are reasons to put in the effort it’ll take to return. The basalt column of Lot, behind the house, makes his second appearance on the blog (see this shot from my first visit); and that’s his wife, who never seems to credit a name of her own, over to the right.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jan 10 2023
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Upper Annandale

Monday 9th January 2023, 11.25am (day 4,155)

Upper Annandale, 9/1/23

Took a different road home, at least between Edinburgh and Carlisle, and was rewarded with many magnificent landscapes, particularly with the mix of sun and cloud that characterised the day. Not that there were always places to stop the car and take advantage. Had I been able to stop on the Forth Bridge, I might have been able to capture the photo of the year (OK, I know it’s early in the year): sun rising behind the other two bridges, wreathed in mist etc. But this one will do, taken from the point at which the A701 starts its drop down into Annandale and the town of Moffat.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Nov 30 2022
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Above the clouds

Tuesday 29th November 2022, 10.05am (day 4,114)

Wansfell Pike, 29/11/22

A day when it was hard to pick one single photo, but that is why — for such occasions — I have my other walking blog, where I don’t submit myself to such silly rules as one pic per day. The weather conditions for a walk in the Lake District were marvellous today, not just because of the blue skies above but the clouds below, filling up the valleys all day and allowing even the most humble of mountains to float above giant lakes of whipped cream for a while. The parts of Loughrigg Fell that are on the left cannot be more than about 400 feet above sea level, at the points where they emerge from the clouds. Wansfell Pike, the prominent rise in the background, is about 1,500 feet.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 22 2022
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Skiddaw Forest

Wednesday 21st September 2022, 12.15pm (day 4,045)

Skiddaw Forest, 21/9/22

The title of this post is not ironic: despite appearances, this place really is called Skiddaw Forest. I don’t know if other parts of the world use the word or its equivalent to describe places that are as vastly treeless as this is, but we English do pride ourselves on our sense of wry humour, do we not. (For more pictures of this and nearby places, see my Lake District walking blog.)

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Nov 30 2021
1 Comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Sandy Bay, and Lot

Saturday 27th November 2021, 1.20pm (day 3,747)

The spectacular scenery of St Helena is enhanced by the fact that the pattern of vegetation one sees in the UK is reversed. It is the coast, the lower levels, that is rocky and barren, and the mountains which are covered in lush vegetation: all down to the fact that the rain falls high up, but not low down. This is taken from the Blue Hill area, looking down to Sandy Bay, past the basalt pillar known as ‘Lot’ (and his wife is somewhere over to the right of this image).

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Oct 11 2021
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

A burned bit of Iceland (not the UK!)

Sunday 10th October 2021, 2.40pm (day 3,699)

Iceland view, 10/10/21

Yes folks, after 615 consecutive days on the island of Great Britain, I have finally left it. It was February 2nd 2020, in Bucharest, that this blog last featured anywhere outside England, Scotland or Wales. You know the reasons why. And yes, I appreciate travel can be seen as a privilege, and I’m grateful that I’ve finally broken the run, for all that the last 20 months have, at least at times, seen plenty of interesting sights.

This is not my final destination: instead this was taken on my first descent, into Keflavik airport, where I and the family were last seen waiting out the 12-hour flight delay that EasyJet (never, ever again) subjected us to in July 2019. I changed planes here and moved on. You can tell it’s Iceland, though — only that island has random burned bits like this, huge lumps of volcanic cinder that just seem here to be a normal part of the landscape.

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 15 2021
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

The Old Military Road

Saturday 14th August 2021, 10.05am (day 3,642)

Old Military Road, 14/8/21

The A93 runs north from the town of Blairgowrie, in Perthshire, to Braemar in Aberdeenshire. Just north of this point — and a couple of hundred feet below the point from where I took this picture, looking back into Glen Shee — the tarmac reaches the Cairnwell Pass, which at 2,199 feet above sea level, makes it the highest public road in the whole of the UK. It’s called the ‘Old Military Road’ as it was originally built as part of the general plan to assert military dominance over the Highlands of Scotland after the last Jacobite rebellion in the 1700s.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Oct 16 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Ether Knott

Thursday 15th October 2020, 1.15pm (day 3,339)

Ether Knott, 15/10/20

The start of teaching has been delayed four weeks this year, but the summer can’t last forever. This is basically my last three-day gap of freedom before it all kicks in. And in weather like today, I made the most of it — as did the other walker just visible on this shot, below the summit of Ether Knott, a minor protuberance above Borrowdale. Behind, Skiddaw, one of the Lake District (and England’s) 3,000-footers. Boosting one’s immune system is very much the way to go, whatever the lockdowners think.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jan 23 2020
1 Comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Snowdonia (probably)

Thursday 23rd January 2020, 3.15pm (day 3,073)

Snowdonia cloudscape, 23/1/20

Up in the air again, from Manchester airport heading roughly north-west, though not very far (so if you want, you can deduce where I travelled to before I post from t/here tomorrow). Not long after take off, visual interest was added to the flight to the south, where this cloudscape revealed itself. I wasn’t sure at the time where this might be but a subsequent look at the map suggests the hills in the background must be Snowdonia, in the north-west corner of Wales. It’s the general golden wash that I like about this photo, however. Far better weather up there than down on the ground today — as is often the case, of course.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Nov 02 2019
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

Mountains/islands

Friday 1st November 2019, 3.15pm (day 2,990)

Mpuntain/islands, 1/11/19

I am speaking at a conference this weekend, so today was my first flight since the EasyJet Iceland debacle back in July. (Never ever again, EasyJet.) Fortunately all went perfectly today. As to where I flew to — well, you can find that out tomorrow. The flight meant it was my first opportunity in those four months to get shots like this. All of Europe seemed to be covered in cloud today; only these peaks made it up above the grey. I don’t know exactly where this is, somewhere toward the eastern end of the Alps so maybe Austria or Slovenia, but this will have to join the list of locations in which I can’t even identify a country for certain.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
%d bloggers like this: