Geograph - photograph every grid square

Time for some audience participation here, how many times do we get a gridsquare we really feel we don't deserve somehow, especially one in a crucial and hard to get position? Besides losing them by apparent inches, which can happen to anyone, and far worse a faulty camera (my latest new experience), I do sometimes feel a little naughty when something I either thought was the other side or was so poor but the only one I could take on a busy road. The latest and pretty good example is here,...

Following on from The Taking of the Last of the Machars on the 8th May 2011 it became clear that additional land had been sighted (land ahoy!) on the improved mapping now used by Geograph resulting in two new additional grid squares being added to NX33 Link. NX3539 Link and NX3638 Link to outward appearances look to be “all at sea” however closer inspection of OS 1:25000 mapping...

Resistance melted away. Thrift went out of the window. I blew my pocket money on an iPad2, didn't I? Photo (spot the Apple store). So I had to put it through its paces in the service of Geograph - with mixed results. I visit south Devon from time to time. Sometimes I rediscover places I knew in my teens but more often I'm discovering places I didn't know existed when it was home in the 1950s Photo. Geographing is ticklish: not only have some distinguished contributors crawled...

A short blog to tell you about the mills weekend. I had originally planned to bring my motorbike up for a month to Uni and use it to get to various Leicestershire mills. My dad needed to be in the area for the Monday so it was decided that my parents would come up for the weekend. I was left to do the planning so decided to do Whissendine and Wymondham for the Saturday then Shepshed, Hough and Little Kibworth for the Sunday. Ullesthorpe was a possibility but thankfully I never bothered, the...

The Machars also known as the Plains of Galloway is a peninsula in South West Scotland roughly extending from Glenluce in the west to Newton Stewart in the east and all points south of the A75 to the Isle of Whithorn. The word is derived from the Gaelic word Machair meaning low lying or level land. Although there are no high peaks in the Machars, it is not flat and would best be described as undulating or rolling. The North Atlantic Drift or Gulf Stream creates a mild climate in which...

I’m well overdue for another blog but other things and Bank holidays have taken over and my backlog of photos just got bigger. I decided to go back to the river Kennet and find a few more pillboxes before the spring growth finally put pay to my treks to look for them. On the last walk I’d got as far as Towney Bridge but had checked out the next area I wanted to visit which was Aldermaston Wharf Photo. I thought I had found a good place to park but found the place packed so went to...

Sorry for a lack of blogs, I have been very busy having submitted 513 pictures since my last blog. Thanks to the excellent weather the list of targets has many more black crossings out. First of all was a geology trip out to Edale on the 19th April, this was to examine the south Pennine Orefield. An early train was caught to Sheffield before a change onto a local service. From Edale station I hiked over Hollin's cross to Odin mine (lead) before heading onto Castleton. In the town I tried to...

This is a favourite walk of mine on Islay. I had completed it once before and, when friends agreed to accompany me, meaning we had more than one car available, I readily jumped at the chance of completing the walk again. We drove to Kintra and left one car there before driving to the head of Glen Astle and commencing our walk to the accompanying tune of the Grasshopper Warbler. Photo This part of the walk is easy, being along a track which runs to the twin lochs of Glenastle and...

Although I claimed the bashing of NX35 Link in January this year, when I checked the grid squares, one of them had been completed in the early days of Geograph (2005) and a first agreed for a shot of Wood Hill in NX3755 Link (Subject) taken from the Torhouse Stones in NX3856 Link (Photographer) which I raised as a query. Lo and behold it became green again so off I trotted on the...

After capturing some difficult firsts to complete two hectads this year so far, the challenge just got a wee bit harder for my next completed hectad NX46 Link. Photo There are several routes into this grid square and I decided to take in a long circular walk to get here. Starting at the car park near Cairnsmore Stables and following the path to the top of Cairnsmore of Fleet, the route back down was via a cairn on the Knee of Cairnsmore and...

... and after a short pause of two weeks Andy bounces back with another competed hectad NX35 Link ... is there no stopping this 2011 hectad bagging onslaught? Photo Probably yes, they just seem to be getting harder and harder for me. In order to complete this hectad two firsts were required both on Craigeach Moor in NX3455 Link and NX3355 Link. After getting permission...

The sublime and the ridiculous. It's not very often that I get welcomed to an elite class/club by a Grandturzel and invited to make a contribution to a discussion thread (as Groucho Marx said "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" or perhaps "I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it") but I digress. So hectad finishers, my first completed hectad has already been documented on the 18th May 2010 for NX44 Link...