Vinny and Casper

Here is an old painting by an artist Casper David Freidrich called "Traveller Looking Over a Sea of Fog", and an ingeniously Photoshopped picture of Vincent on Ben More in Scotland made to look suspiciously similar

Me

Also, so I don't feel left out, here is a piccy of me

Grace and Iona

Just so they don't feel left out, here is a picture of Grace and Iona taken in St Ives last year. They look surprisingly cheerful. This was taken on the last night of our holiday, following our outdoor harbour-front meal, so we had that fed-up end-of-hols feeling.

Cool Vinny

Here is a picture of Vin looking cool during his skiing trip to Italy

While staying up with David we had a good trip circumnavigating the Cairngorm mountains, staying in Inverness overnight. Circumnavigation was carried out strictly by various forms of motor transport, not on foot. We hired a nice little Vauxhall Corsa, which wizzed up and over the various mountain passes very well. It was particularly satisfying (from a personal point of view) to visit the three ski resorts in the Cairngorms (not to ski of course), and to go up the new (opened in 2002) mountain railway up Cairngorm itself, where it is possible to have a civilized cup of tea at just over 1000 metres. It's really nice to be up in the hub-bub of all the skiers.

We also had a drive along by Loch Ness (no monster unfortunately) down to Foyers where there is a very impressive waterfall.

A few days in Scotland

Here are a few photos of Edinburgh. I had a good time staying up with David. One day I borrowed his bike and cycled down to Leith on an old railway track, now a cycle way. I came back along the Water of Leith, which goes through Dean Village, a very attractive area down in a deep ravine and with loads of different, unusual buildings. I also had a walk through the Pentland Hills, going from Flotterstone by Glencorse reservoir over to Ballerno. The excellent bus service in Edinburgh makes walks like that really easy.

Here are another couple of photos of Langstrothdale. One is taken from near the top of Buckden Pike, and shows Cray down below with Raisgill Common in the distance. What is satisfying about this photo is that since last May virtually all of the land you can see, apart from the small hay meadows near Cray, are now open land to walk on. Previuosly anyone wanting to walk through here was restricted to public rights-of-way.

The other is looking over from above Yockenthwaite towards Raisgill. I think it sums up a typical dales landscape really well.

I use these shots quite often if I ever do illustrated talks.

I'm getting carried away now with all this blogging. Here is a view of the Scafell range taken from the Coniston Fells. I took it a couple of days into the New Year and the weather was superb, as you can see.


Here is Pixie back in the summer, when all was green and verdant, rather than a sea of mud, which it now is, particularly since the hard frozen ground thawed. It didn't help yesterday that we had a stampede of sheep through the garden, breaking the surface up.

Vin and Iona

Here are a couple of photos of Vin and Iona.

Iona's is taken with the web cam.

Vin's was taken just as he was setting off for his skiing holiday.

Where I live

Here are a few photos of where I live, up in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. I went out yesterday to take some photos specifically for this but it was too cold to get the camera working. Either that or my finger was too fat and unfeeling to turn the camera on. So I'm afraid they are old piccys. This winter we have had a couple of spells of snow, but nothing of any depth, although there was enough to go XC skiing at Christmas.