If you think I was staying in and working on a day like this — you obviously don’t know me very well. This picture is taken from around 3,000 feet up, on Skiddaw, fourth-highest mountain in England, yet with almost no wind today it wasn’t even particularly cold. A glorious day: can the rest of 2019 be like this please?
Little to add except that it was time to get out into some mountains again — even if they weren’t very high. The late December gloom never really lifted all day, but for this shot, it doesn’t matter.
I’m on a three-day weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday). I can think of worse places to spend it. In the background: Red Screes, Caudale Moor, Thornthwaite Crag.
After a week in northern Finland, where it was rather damp and chilly throughout, at least there was sunshine when I had to go into Manchester today and, well, spend most of the day inside teaching. But never mind. This is a rather mundane shot in the end, with a green splotch of flare on it, but I like the shadows and light.
I’m still off work and have no intention of going back for a few days yet, so time for another Lake District walk. Rather dull, grey weather did limit the photo opportunities, but with this shot, of the fell known as Hopegill Head, seen from the north, there was a rare moment of faint sunlight which caught the clouds and the green fellside below.
On the higher of the two summits of Angletarn Pikes, the gentleman seems determined to draw the attention of his wife towards the less interesting half of the view.
There’s something strange going on with this shot don’t you think? It almost looks artificial, like the two models are in a studio and the mountains are back projected. Brothers Water looks strange too, like all this is a collage I’ve pieced together and then stuck on a bit of tin foil in a deconstructionist kind of way.
Hard to find much to complain about today, photographically or otherwise. And certainly no need to take further shots of toilets.
Today was one of those days where I could take advantage of the fact that my job often requires me simply to read things, in this case a draft PhD thesis; so into the pack it went, and out into the country I went. No thanks to the local train service, but that’s another story. The thesis was read. Well, about two-thirds of it anyway.
“Come on a walk up Scafell Pike, son. It’ll be fun. You can have the pleasure of attaining the highest point in England,” says I, a few weeks back. I’m sure there were points today when Joe cursed me for letting me talk him into this particular hike — particularly here on Ill Crag, one of the subsidiary peaks nearby, and the first outrageous excrescence of boulders into the journey. This picture can also be presented with the benefit of hindsight and knowing that in fact, there’s worse still to come before the summit — all 3,210 feet of it (978 metres) — is attained.
But he made it. And it was a beautiful day.
On a day of ideal walking weather, the Lake District was not a place to go to for the solitude — at least, not the parts of it that I hung out in, namely Great Langdale and the 2816 feet (858m) summit of Crinkle Crags, one of Wainwright’s “Top SIx Fells”. But I cannot begrudge anyone else their enjoyment of the fine conditions today. We are just the same, after all.
