Geograph - photograph every grid square

Wow, didn't meant to slip this late. My usual is one blog a month or so. Things have been a little slow recently but now I'm just about caught up, a few more to upload but I'll get on with those later. So my last blog left off in December, I was writing about my plans to visit the Great Central Railway gala. I spent two days up on the line, the first was a Friday and two wheels was the mode of transport. The plan was to treat it as a geographing trip so I got in a few extra sites like the...

Undaunted by the experience of the rain the same weekend five years ago, I signed up for a weekend field trip with the Highland Geological Society to see something of the famous geology of the Isle of Rùm. Most of the group were to arrive on the ferry leaving Mallaig at 7.30 on the Saturday morning, but I reckoned that would mean getting up far too early, and I thought I'd go over on the Thursday and, weather permitting, walk to Harris and back on Friday. But the best laid plans .... I...

Sunday the 22nd saw me go back to Newbury to find the final bit of the jigsaw that is the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton railway. My wife came along with our young dog to give him some time out to get used to a different place and water. We parked at Newbury Parkway shopping centre which gave me a chance to update some photos of the new John Lewis store Photo before setting off along the Kennet Photo. As I had not been along this section it was all new to me and seeing all...

I was excited as I set off on the day's plan C. Plan A had been abandoned as it was just too photogenic a day to go to a certain village on Islay which I won't mention for fear of insulting the hundreds of folks (!) who read these blogs! Plan B had been abandoned after driving 15 miles to Ardbeg in the thickening cloud which turned into heavy rain and which was no doubt a retribution for rejecting Plan A. So Plan C had to be put into operation. But first to devise Plan C as it wasn't in...

As always, I had scrutinised the weather forecast for days before deciding to head up Giùr-bheinn on Wednesday, 18th April 2012. As always, the forecast was not quite accurate, but at least I didn't end up getting drenched as our church party did on their walk on the same day on the Rhinns (my symapthies to them of course!) Giùr-bheinn is a fascinating, if diminutive, mountain. Viewed from the east, as it generally is, it appears as a gentle mound, hardly noticeable in mountain terms. From...

Sunday the 8th was one of those fill in days for me. I never had any plans to go anywhere so thought I’d fill in a few of the places on my Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway map. I had go as far as Shaw near Newbury and now needed to trace the route over the two water courses and onto the main railway. Stopping off at Shaw I parked up near the River Lambourn and walked along the path to see if any of the bridge remained. On getting near I noticed a footbridge had been built near where...

A group of Geograph-ers met again the morning after the Geograph conference to walk the Loxley valley from Malin Bridge to Stacey Bank. Alan Murray-Rust had prepared a map and factsheet for each participant showing the locations of all the former mills along the way. Setting off from the tram stop, we soon left the road and followed a footpath along the river, seeing the sites of Wisewood Photo rolling mill and forge on the way. The rolling mill at Little Matlock Photo is...

On the Tue afternoon before the Geograph conference, a group of Geograph-ers met at Meadowall South / Tinsley tram stop for a walk along the canal to its terminus at Sheffield Canal Basin on the edge of the city centre. The walk passes a flight of locks at the Tinsley end Photo to take the canal up towards industrial Attercliffe Photo. The canal then runs in a fairly deep trench, with the tram and several foot and road bridges crossing it at considerable height...

It wasn't the first time it had happened. XC Weather had got it wrong before. 8% cloud at 10 am had really meant 80% on at least one other occasion. Feeling slightly hard done to, and exchanging my favoured polariser filter for a regular skylight filter, I decided to go for it anyway. Those squares on the east coast of Islay had been waiting long enough! The poor lighting meant at least I got further quicker, stopping only to take the requisite photos, and rarely for any additional 'bonus'...

My 6 year old Olympus compact digital has known limits, and if I keep within them (shots at night, moving objects etc) I get perfectly good results. But about two years ago it (OK, I had dropped it a while before) it froze during a little film I was making and had to format the card. Ever since it's done the same about twice a year, but each fault was different, and my father offered the obvious solution to carry a spare card which I now do. It's previously lost (initially) all my takings...