Wheels...

A frustrating day of faffing about. Before driving off this morning, I saw I had a puncture, so I pumped it up and headed for a little tyre place in Ulverston, near the canal. The guy got the tyre off, and put it in a waterbath, only to find that the problem wasn’t with the rubber at all, but with the wheel. Bubbles were rising from a welded ‘seam’ in the metal: something I’d never seen before.

The next stop was a car-breakers yard, on the other side of England’s shortest and straightest canal, but they didn’t have a wheel of the right size. The sat-nav lady directed me to the Citroen dealership in Barrow; they’ve ordered a replacement wheel, and I’ll be back on Monday for them to sort things out. In the meantime I’ll need to keep an eye on the tyre, and keep it pumped up.

Seeing some chums this evenings, in a little South Lakeland pub…

Sculpture... the spirit of Barrow...

Muncaster...

Called in at Muncaster Castle to get some pix. £10.50 just to wander round the gardens: bloody hell! The lady who took my money smiled sweetly and said the price included access to the shop and café... as though you have to pay to walk into a shop or a café.

Having got some decent shots, I stayed around for the display of owls and birds of prey, if only to get my money’s-worth. It’s the kind of event I’d normally pay good money to avoid, but it turned out OK, with a good crowd there to watch. The Lanar Falcon (a bit like a Peregrine) was fantastic, like something from another dimension altogether. I felt the wind on my cheeks as it flew past. The handlers brought out an eagle, an owl and a vulture, finishing off with a trio of Black Kites…

Walney Island...

Parked up in the car park of the Queen’s Arms, in the village of Biggar, on Walney Island. Visitors to the Lake District don’t come here. The road to Barrow is known, rather unkindly, as the longest cul de sac in the country, and you have to drive through Barrow, and over the Milennium Bridge, to get to Walney. When you’re on Walney your’re somewhere between the middle of nowhere and the back of beyond; it’s bandit country.

I’ve only been in the pub a few minutes, and already I’ve had more fun than I had over ten blighted days in the Hebrides. The locals are friendly. One guy said “You could leave your doors open, and your wallet on the table, and it would still be there in the morning”. I told him I’d leave my doors open, and my wallet on the table, but if it wasn’t there in the morning I’d now have a pretty good idea where to go looking for it.

The pub is like somebody’s front room. In the next room there are people having guitar lessons: hesitantly butchering some much-loved songs. I like it here…

Dusk in Penrith...

Brougham Castle...

Committing to an image means doing whatever you can - devoting enough time and energy and patience - to get a picture. If there’s a fence between you and the optimal viewpoint, find a way to get over it. If the light isn’t quite right when you arrive (it seldom is…), be prepared to wait for the light to improve (anything from, say, a few minutes to a few hours). When a picture presents itself, commit to taking the image there and there; promising yourself that you’ll come back another day and get the shot is just another kind of postponement.

I have to be single-minded (not multi-tasking…), which is why I generally photograph on my own. A companion might get bored, just hanging around waiting for the light to change… or I might imagine they are getting bored, which would have the similar effect of taking the edge off my concentration. If I’m thinking about someone else’s welfare (or preoccupied with anything else), my powers of observation may dip by 20%, which might represent the difference between a shot that’s OK and one that really works.

I’m sitting in the Romahome, which is parked up near Brougham Castle, just outside Penrith. The light looked promising a few minutes ago; now I’m not so sure. The sun has disappeared behind a long bank of cloud, and I may not see it again for a while. The sun may appear for a few seconds, through a gap in the clouds. If I’m ready, I get the shot; if I’m not ready, I’ll miss it. This kind of light - that lasts only a few seconds - can often be very special. But the camera needs to be on the tripod, the lens cap must be off and my thumb should be on the infra-red shutter release.

The aperture and shutter speeds need to be set - not for the lighting conditions right now, but for what the lighting conditions will be like, when the sun makes an appearance. That’s not a complex calculation, on a summer’s day. With the ISO set to 100 and an aperture of f11, that leaves the shutter speed as the only variable: 1/125sec for hazy light, 1/160sec for direct light, 1/200sec when it’s bright, 1/250sec when it’s really bright.

I enjoy that combination of being patient… then acting quickly. It keeps me on my toes. And the time spent standing and staring is never time wasted. It slows me down. I stood on the old sandstone bridge over the River Eamont, which used to carry the A66 road. Behind me was the new road bridge, with Bank Holiday traffic crawling along the dual carriageway.

A heron flew upstream, the last swallows dipped and swooped, a pair of yellow wagtails explored the water-margins. A guy stood next to me and took a picture; if he’d waited another ten seconds the castle would have been illuminated, briefly, but by that time the camera was back in its case and he was on his way. A group of teenagers walked accross the bridge, with three llamas. I didn’t ask. An old guy stopped and we chatted about the good old days. He mentioned the Romans too, but was hazy about his facts. We marvelled at the swallows, preparing to fly to sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s the survival of the fittest”, he said. Then we looked at each other, and wondered how the hell we’d survived for so long.

I felt the warmth of the summer sun on my back and watched my shadow on the ground go from pale to dark - the soft edges hardening into sharp definition. The clouds drifted across the sky, and a patch of light moved across the fields, then swept across the facade of the castle.

New Squares, Penrith...

Still in Penrith, enjoying the church bells on a sunny Sunday morning. The little café over the road is open, so I’m having a bacon sarnie and a cup of tea. Not sure what to do with my day, which is a bit of a novelty. I’ve just re-taxed the Romahome online for the first time. It only took two minutes; better than queueing up in the Post Office with a handful of vehicle-related documents. I have pictures to edit, and a few chores that need doing. But maybe I’ll take a stroll around town with my camera, to see what I can see. Maybe I’ll come back with pictures, maybe I won’t…

The pic is of a fairly new shopping area in the town, which, to judge by the number of empty shops - and lack of shoppers - isn't doing very well. It's just far enough out of time to be inconvenient; you can walk around town without ever realising the new shopping area is there. Another white elephant, I think...

Gnats...

I generally know when I’ve taken a decent shot, or series of shots. But the picture isn’t finished until I’ve edited it in Photoshop; it’s only when I examine the image - at 100%, pixel for pixel - that issues become apparent. The pix I took in the North Pennines looked fine, until I realised I’d shot them through a haze of gnats or midges. The only remedy is to clone out every spot and blur - which might take an hour or more for a single shot - or just bin the lot. I’ll leave the decision till tomorrow.

The weather’s against me today. Broken cloud is what I like, but today the breaks in the cloud are few. I popped into the Stag Inn in Dufton, for a pint; it’s a friendly little pub and a welcome sight for Pennine Way walkers, before they tackle Cross Fell (the highest point in the Pennines) and High Cup Nick. I’d love to take pix in a pub like this, but sometimes it’s best to leave the camera alone, enjoy the ambience and not get in the way…

The road to nowhere...

Trainwreck...

The poster for Trainwreck, the film I saw in Penrith last night, featured Amy Schumer (a stand-up comedian until now, rather than an actress) drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag, and wagging her finger at the audience and anybody else who might be tempted to pass judgement on her promiscuous behaviour. The film starts with a few of her sexual liasons, all determinedly unglamorous, mostly in the wake of heavy drinking sessions. Different guys leave her apartment, night after night; she doesn’t let them stay till morning. Once the deed is done they’re out the door.

Her attempts to get her hulk of a boyfriend to talk dirty to her fall flat; he can think of nothing more appropriate than the kinds of things he might say to his bodybuilding buddies at the gym. One morning she wakes up - disorientated, hungover, alone - in some apartment. She looks out of the window and says “Oh my God, I’m on Staten Island”, which must be a funnier joke for New Yorkers than it was for me. This is supposed to suggest that she’s hit rock bottom, that she’s spiralling out of control… that her ‘trainwreck’ of a life has finally hit the buffers. But it’s not what I would call a trainwreck; she’s just doing what she wants. She might be making a few questionable decisions, but she manages to deal with the consequences. Trainwreck? A few timetable issues, that's all.

Anyway, she meets someone and finds - reluctantly, against her better judgement - that she has feelings for him… and the rest of the movie follows a familiar trajectory. It was funny, though the best jokes came in the first half. Amy Schumer wrote the script, so, basically, she was playing herself, or, rather, the character she’s created for her stand-up act. I’d give the film 6/10: not bad, but it could have been a lot funnier…

Just found that Penrith now has free wifi throughout the town; it seems to be a growing trend. In a few years we won’t go looking for free wifi; it’ll just be there. Had home-made pie and chips - with gravy on top - from the Angel Lane Chippy: scrumptuous.

Sunshine and showers today - my favourite weather forcast - with a breeze to blow the clouds across the sky. The light is changing minute by minute, which makes it worthwhile to stay in one place, set up a shot and wait to see what happens.

Long Meg and her Daughters, a stone circle in the Eden Valley…