Lockdown story

Geograph Blog ::

Lockdown story

I usually make plans for each year for the photo season, roughly when the clocks go forward till when they go back, based on new map records and areas. The easiest new record was going to be my 20th myriad, SH in mid Wales. Then came the lockdown when we couldn't go out for more than about an hour, so on local duties. I covered every area I'd rarely visited , and as a result of the added time managed a couple of POTY nominations . Then came the free travel, except to Wales. As a collector of pre-Worboys signs , I decided instead to scour the country for them, first deciding Shropshire was a goldmine, where I'd never been at all, so went around Bridgnorth (one I knew of wasn't apparent till I spotted it on Google when checking the others), which added me quite a few I'd never even have considered getting before. Then I Streetviewed everywhere within around 100 miles, as a result picking up beauties in Blandford Forum , Daventry and rural Northants I may not have thought of looking for before. None are here as there are no other pictures of them online and many vanish when locations are offered, but they are all on Flickr pre-Worboys group.

Then I went back to filling space on my map, working round the compass points covering places like Rochford , Spalding , Kettering , Dereham and Leicester , one of the only large towns in England I'd never been to before. I also moved up to 15th on the personal point leaderboard as a result, which took precisely 14 1/2 years of digital photography and getting on for 50,000 photos. But the map can never be finished, and with a reluctance to stay in strange places overnight nowadays my scope is also limited, although I had planned an overnight trip as well which also got postponed by 12 months. With the nights drawing in I have just started planning next year's trips, SH myriad of course, and other places in yawning gaps on the map mainly in the midlands. Also I may manage a second trip to the Channel Islands (after 57 years) which would begin a profile on another Geograph site if so.