Croyland Abbey...

I drove across the Woodhead Pass yesterday, as I took the 'scenic route' south. That same road is impassible today, I hear, due to snow. Strange weather...

Croyland Abbey...

Heading south...

Driving through snow, hail and rain, on my way to Coventry: a very different scene to Wasdale, just a couple of days ago...

Wastwater screes...

Back in Yorkshire, but just for a day. Seeing friends in the Fox & Goose in Hebden Bridge this evening, then heading south. First stop: Coventry…

Church on a hill...

A pic of Preston Patrick church, in springtime light... before I headed back across the Pennines...

Ennerdale Bridge...

I was in the Fox and Hounds pub in Ennerdale Bridge yesterday evening: another community-owned pub, like the Fox and Goose in Hebden Bridge, where I’ll be on Wednesday night. I had a roast beef dinner, a couple of pints of Ennerdale Blonde - very more-ish - and they were fine with me parking up overnight in the pub car park.

Something’s gone awry with my photo-editing software. I was busy editing pix and uploading them (McDonalds have free wifi and, best of all, you don’t even have to eat there… but just park close by). Then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t export an image into Photoshop because “Aperture does not support the image format”. Well, Aperture and Photoshop have been coping perfectly well, in tandem, with my pix these past few years… so God only knows what’s gone wrong.

The good news is that I can carry on shooting; the bad news is that I won’t be able to process the pix until I get the problem sorted. I think I’m going to need some help…

Houses in Caldbeck...

Honister Pass...

Barack Obama sounds at his most presidential at the end of his term of office. He’s stopped saying things like “Change has come to America”, having learned the hard way that congress can act as an effective brake on presidential ambitions. He’ll no doubt be cherished as an elder statesman in years to come… like Tony Blair in reverse. I enjoy listening to Obama talk… which is more than I can say about anyone in Westminster. Every few years we’re supposed to be witnessing the “end of Punch and Judy Politics”, but it never actually happens…

Horse on Caldbeck Common...

Been taking pix all day, and now I’m in Cockermouth. Every time I suggest that the town is looking better than ever, another flood comes. Maybe not now; the landscape is very dry…

Kirkstone Pass...

Had a productive day’s photography yesterday. It’s a shame to miss out on another day of sunshine today, but I have articles to finish. Another tiny motorhome - even smaller than mine - on Kirkstone Pass…

And down the other side, towards Brotherswater...

Cartmel Fell...

Yesterday felt like the first real day of spring, so, to celebrate being gout-free, I had a walk around the Lyth Valley, trying to get some shots of the damson trees in blossom. I visited some old haunts, including the ford and clapper bridge over the River Winster and St Anthony’s Church at Cartmel Fell, with the sloping churchyard still carpeted with daffodils. In the woods around the church I saw and heard chiffchaffs and willow warblers; a woodpecker was drumming. Paths converge on the church, so walkers came and went - using the little church as an excuse to stop for a few minutes, to look at the old carved box-pews inside or sit on the bench outside and feel the unaccustomed warmth of the sun.

Though I didn’t get as many pix as I would have liked, it was good to be out and about in spring sunshine. Buzzards were wheeling overhead and magpies and jays were active at the woodland edges. The last bird I saw, before driving to Windermere in the evening, was a little egret, taking wing from one of the water-filled ditches in the Lyth Valley. The show of blossom should be even whiter and frothier in a day or two, so I’ll have another attempt to get some pix before I drive back over the Pennines a week today…

Don't know...

The charity shops in Skipton were open yesterday, Sunday: a sure sign that the town is now a ‘place to go at the weekend’ and mooch about. I found Ordnance Survey maps for both Orkney and Shetland; they looked brand new. I bought them all, so that’s decided: I’ll have to go.

George Osborne has gone on the offensive this morning, warning us that “the average famiily will be £4,300 worse off” if we leave the European Union, and income tax will have to rise by 8p in the pound. If this is true (and who reallys knows?) then why did David Cameron promise to have a referendum on the matter, and accept the ‘will of the people’? Did he really think it through? And what percentage of the electorate really understands the issues well enough to make an informed decision? I’m in the ‘don’t know’ camp…

The church at Kirk Hammerton, near York. The Anglo Saxon tower is intact and entire, and dates back more than a thousand years. A jackdaw is returning to its nest...

Nun Monkton...

In my favourite campsite - near Grassington - for the day, busy editing, uploading and keywording pix, while my gouty foot stops throbbing…

Nun Monkton, near York...

Riding Pillion...

The gout has returned. I spent a long a long afternoon, hanging around in Whitby, waiting for my GP in Windermere to fax through a prescription for the tablets I need. Who the hell uses a fax machine in 2016? The gout got worse, rather than better, though the pain should be gone in a few days.

I the meantime I took a ride on the North York Moor Railway (thanks for your patience, Helen, while I was hobbling about). Visited the Birch Hall Inn, near Goathland: two tiny bars with a sweet shop in the middle, where your drinks are served through a hatch.

Riding pillion across Scale Lane swing bridge, Hull…

Climbing the mast...

Crew member forced to climb mast as punishment for forgetting to put sugar in the captain’s tea…

Hull...

I was in Hull today, taking pix in clear spring light. The centre of the city is a mess; the council have obviously decided that Hull needs to be re-paved before it assumes the title of City of Culture in 2017. I find it hard to believe that the work will all be finished by the end of this year, so I took some pix of the work in progress. If the deadline isn’t met, the news media will want pix to illustrate Hull’s civic embarrassment… and my pix should meet their needs.

There was still plenty to photograph, especially around the marina. I had a chat with a woman, about how good it was to be up and about on a glorious day like today. “I’ve just seen a gorgeous little motorhome”, she said (mine), and told me it was her dream to travel around. The nomadic idea seems to have a broad appeal.

Staying in Patrington this evening, with hopes for another early start tomorrow morning. It’s years since I’ve been to Spurn Head. It’s a magnet for spring and autumn migrants, so I’ll make sure to have my monocular in my pocket. I’ve seen a game of cricket before I’ve seen the first swallow… and that doesn’t seem right…

Tripod...

My tripod is light and convenient; unfortunately it just isn’t very steady. And a tripod that’s unsteady isn’t much use at all. So I decided to buy something heavier and more rigid, that would stay rock steady in windy conditions and for long exposures. I went into Leeds by bus, and went to the photographic store in the Merrion Centre. I thought it might take me all morning to try out the various models, but no: someone had traded in a Manfrotto tripod, and I got it for £80 - a good deal less than I was expecting to pay.

The bus was packed on the return journey. A man with a limp got off at Lawnswood Cemetery, carrying a bunch of flowers. A young woman got on with a pushchair, and everyone moved so she could sit down. Then a really old guy with a zimmer frame got on the bus, and the young woman made way for him. It was good to see that there’s still a ‘buffer zone’ between the creeping suburbs of Leeds and Bramhope, where I spent my childhood years. We passed Breary Marsh and Golden Acre Park, where I first learned about birds. There was a gardener working there who knew about birds, and he was happy to stop working for a few minutes and help a young lad tell the difference between a linnet and a redpoll, a gargany and a gadwall…

Kendal...

A lovely fresh morning in Kendal. The cherry blossom is beginning to show, as was the frothy white damson blossom, when I drove along the Lyth Valley yesterday. In the hope of hearing the first chiffchaff or willow warbler of spring, I stopped at Barkbooth Lot, a small wood in the hands of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. But trees had being felled, the paths were blocked and the place where a couple of cars were parked was a puddled of mud. I drove on.

I’m in Kendal to get my camera sensor cleaned. When dust settles on the sensor it creates circular blobs on the pix; though not always very conspicuous, they all have to be cloned out before pix can be uploaded to the agency. I’ll hopefully be free of dust-spots for a while. Then, one by one, they’ll reappear…

Wastwater...

Visited Wastwater this morning, and got a few shots before the clouds rolled over. Finished my writing, and now hope to get some more Lakeland pix before heading back over the Pennines...

Newton Arlosh...

Back to more familiar haunts, as I made a tour of the Solway Firth, from the Cumbria side. I love the church at Newton Arlosh (though the inside’s a disappointment). It’s one of the few remaining fortified churches in Cumbria, with a door only two feet wide; the tower, with its narrow windows, could be isolated and defended…

Cricket...

I stopped at Gatehouse of Fleet yesterday, and found a pub that was showing both the Leicester match and the final of the T20 cricket - England v West Indies - live from India. Everybody (except, presumably, the fans of Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester City, who could possibly catch them) wants Leicester to win the league. It would prove, if only for one season, that the prizes don’t always go to the teams with the most money to spend on ludicrous transfer fees and grossly inflated wages.

After Leicester’s 1-0 win I settled down to watch the cricket, in a side-room of the pub, with comfy armchairs (and a smaller armchair audience). It was a fantastic game, with the game in the balance until the final over. The armchair experts agreed with me that England hadn’t scored enough run. They ended up with 155, when 170 might have been a par score. But then Joe Root opening the bowling with his dibbly-dobbly spinners and got two quick wickets. West Indies kept losing wickets, and were mostly behind the required rate. When they needed to score 19 from the last over, the odds were on an England win.

Then Carlos Brathwaite, one of the West Indies lower order batsmen, hit the first four balls of the over, bowled by Ben Stokes, over the boundaty - 6, 6, 6, 6 - and that was that: the game was over. Stokes looked disconsolate; there was a distinct feeling that England had dragged defeat from the jaws of victory. But it had been a great game of cricket… and I didn’t think I’d ever say that about this abbreviated 20-overs-a-side game, with the hoopla, the music, the fireworks and the dancing girls.

The West Indian women had won their T20 competition earlier in the day, against the odds, by beating Australia. It will be good too if these results bring about a renaissance in West Indian cricket, which has mostly been in the doldrums these past twenty years.

The first test match I saw was at Headingley; from memory it would have been 1963. I’d been collecting the cuttings from the back pages of the newspaper about that summer’s West Indian tour, and I can still recall most of the members of their team: Seymour Nurse, Conrad Hunte, Frank Worrell, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Deryck Murray, Lance Gibbs, Charlie Griffith, Wes Hall.

Gary Sobers was the ultimate all-rounder: a graceful batsman and equally graceful fast-medium bowler who also bowled off-breaks. Wes Hall’s run-up was so long that he pushed off from the pavilion steps. He was very quick (and batsmen didn’t weat helmets or arm-guards or chest-protectors in those days). West Indies won the series 3-1, but I had to look up the result on Wikipedia. Even at the age of 12, I think I was more interested in the game than the result…

Iona...

Stranraer...

The Scottish leg of my never-ending tour is nearly over. I’m in Stranraer, discovering for myself why the words ‘Come to Stranraer!” never appear in the tourism brochures. The last month has been very positive: good memories, lots of pix and I’ve heard no anti-English sentiments (of course, I can’t read people’s thoughts)…

Lochans on Mull...

Tobermory...

Got the ferry to Gourock this morning; now driving down the coast.

Tobermory...

Islands...

Off the islands now, and spending the night in Dunoon - really to take the ferry to Gourock tomorrow. Heavy rain all day, which made the rivers into torrents and created little flash floods along the roads. The gloomy weather makes my days on the islands - Arran, Skye, Mull and an afternoon on Iona - seem like hallucinations, the light was so clear and bright.

Lots of images… Curlews calling as they glided down onto the saltmarsh… Skylarks singing… A male stonechat looking unfeasibly colourful, almost tropical… Oystercatchers everywhere… Herons blown about in the wind like broken umbrellas… Storm clouds combined with patches of sunlight: very photogenic… Hills wearing clouds like capes or shawls… Cumulous clouds stacked up like scatter cushions…

Waiting for ferries to arrive (always on time)… Driving along single-track roads (giving a little wave of thanks when people pulled into a passing place, and getting a wave back. People must think the drivers of motorhome are doddery old geezers, and who’s to say they’re wrong?)… Being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves…

Mull...