Wednesday 19th November 2025, 2.40pm (day 5,200)

Definitely just a dusting — but, nevertheless, today was easily the coldest day of the winter so far. And I guess we must say winter has now arrived, at least, in West Yorkshire.

Definitely just a dusting — but, nevertheless, today was easily the coldest day of the winter so far. And I guess we must say winter has now arrived, at least, in West Yorkshire.

The latest anthropomorphically-designated bout of crap weather, ‘Storm Claudia’, apparently came through today but while things were definitely damp this wasn’t a major event. Either way, staying indoors and watching next door’s guttering struggle a bit seemed like a good move. I had work to do.

The Bay in question being Morecambe Bay. I wonder how often these get used — going on the state of the sail of the one on the right at the back, I assume, not very often, even when the tide is in. Perhaps this shot is a little too over-contrasted but I was playing with settings on the camera, and it was a rather moody day of weather — note the chunk of rainbow to the top left.

Rain has certainly been a feature of the last couple of days. On Friday it came down mostly continuously, while today, Saturday, offered more of the ‘heavy shower’ pattern — as with what came over about 13 minutes into Halifax v Brackley, and a couple more times during the game, too. At least football is a sport (unlike tennis and cricket, say) which plays on through this kind of thing.

As stated yesterday — a second shot from the same place: from yesterday’s shot, pan to the left, go up a ways and pull back out and this comes in view. Not always with the mist, though there’s usually a bird around somewhere.

Some might say we haven’t had enough rain in 2025 and probably they have a point, but there’s been quite a bit lately, and today it was obvious even at 8.20am that there was going to be plenty more. So profoundly uneventful was today that this is basically the same shot as on last Monday — only without the boots and with more water outside. But I had work to do, so what the hell.

This shot somewhat misrepresents the day’s weather, as for most of my time in Solihull today (near Birmingham, and making its debut on the blog) I walked and sat in quite pleasant sunshine. But not from between about 2.30 – 2.50pm. And the seats for the match to come were not under cover. Fortunately, it stopped, and two other big fat thunderheads that looked like they were later coming in also passed us by.

Thunderstorms were coming and going all afternoon: here, we are perhaps a quarter of an hour from the next one. In response, the local rail system threw its hands up in fear and went into another one of its spasms, but I just stayed in and watched.

I would have preferred more of the sunshine and less of the showers, but at least this is a combination known to produce some pleasing atmospheric effects. The mountain behind is called Stob nan Coinnich Bhacain — please don’t ask me to pronounce that — but my destination for the day was Ben Vorlich, County Top number 107. More photos are therefore on the other blog.

Chose exactly the wrong time this afternoon to pop down to town for a bit of food shopping, particularly as I did so without umbrella or jacket. I may, or may not, have taken this one from inside the White Swan pub…. OK, I did. But it was certainly a preferable option at this point in time.