Malham

I had a leisurely breakfast followed by more coffee while I browsed Google Maps for my next photo location. Mind you, had I not downloaded the north of England into my phone (the map, not the entire entity known as Northern England) I wouldn't be doing much browsing because the 4G signal in this area is intermittent to dodgy at best. Luckily, I also have a guide book for the Yorkshire Dales which lists ideal photo locations, so I was browsing that too and I could see two potential spots within a radius of three miles or so. On that basis I decided to sit things out and hope things would improve as had been implied by the weather forecast and yes, the rain stopped a little after 11am even though the heavy mist remained. "Okay", I thought, "It's now or never."

Finally then, I got my single tree photo and from different viewpoints too - looking north, south and west. The single photo in this footprint, captured on my phone of course, is side-on to the way the limestone rocks run and gives a general idea of what I was trying to achieve. Yes I know it is a single tree but it is also a black & white photo and not something you see me do all that often.

As always, time passed quickly and especially because of the amount of time waiting for the mist/fog to clear so I could actually see what I was trying to photograph. By the time I returned to the van it was definitely time for a sandwich before moving on to my second location: Janet's Foss, a nearby waterfall. Then the phone rang and all my plans changed.

After spending well over an hour on the phone trying to decide why a whole section of a school had no access to their servers, It was agreed the best course of action was to return home and cancel my photography in the Yorkshire Dales. This meant the rest of the day was spent driving whilst trying to decide if the expenses I was being paid to return were any consolation. The best discovery whilst driving home however, was that I could talk to Google and ask for virtually any piece of music to be streamed from my YouTube Premium account into the sound system in the van. How good is that?

There will now be a break in the time sequence while I fix IT systems and then restart my travels Thursday lunchtime, when I drive up for the Goth Festival in Whitby and the odd walk or two with my friend who lives in Goathland, not far from Whitby. Rumour has it this may well be the last Goth Festival there, so perhaps it is fortunate I am visiting this year.

[I'm actually writing this footprint on Wednesday evening from my living room, having successfully fixed the problems at the school and left them working and happy. I've already sent the invoice!]Read more