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...and finally.

Isle of Skye.  I am sorry for the delay in posting this blog...but I am back at home now, the journey is done, and it's taken a while to begin to know what that means.

I took the last picture out north west a few hours after this one  on the left and from that moment on there has been a creeping realisation that the warm sense of propsect that I have been carrying around is gone. Sure there is much to do; printing the pictures, talking with publishers and making the show as big as I can, but there are no longer pictures to add; there's no chance of a moment tomorrow with the camera that is so strong it could shift the sense of this series. I am done. My bed is made.

Getting Stuck In.

The Kyle of Lochalsh. Very nearly there now and as I get closer to taking the final picture the responsibility has become something I'm unused to. What should it be? Without or within? Should the final photograph act as some kind of full stop or rather contain, as I am inclined, a sense of prospect; an open endedness that is somehow the distillation of all the photographs that have been?

Leave me alone, I'm only small

The Solway Firth  8 O'clock in the morning. The van windows are steamed up and the rain is loud on the roof like I'm not sure it's ever been this loud. I'm a bit sweaty actually as I had to run across the marsh here when I saw the sun go in and it all turned dark. I am on the north side of the Solway Firth and the radio had said that there was rain ahead, but it has been a beautiful dawn and the light had a cracked gold quality which happens so often before it goes miserable. I took a picture with the big camera and the one above, then reckoned I had about ten minutes to get back.

A Point on a Map

Cumbria; One of the things I'm having to do now is load up all the information for each photograph so that the publishers can begin to see how it will look on the page. My preference is to see it all without words. This is a visual thing and words, no matter how matter of fact, begin to look like captions and somehow put a full stop at the end of the photograph thereby limiting the depth to which you can engage.

Coiled up Snoring

River Trent; Drove around too much looking for it all around the Vale of Belvoir and the River Trent. There's a point when driving becomes mindless and I get this idea that the further you push it the better will be the result. It's like purposefully coiling up a spring to the point it can coil no more, and I found myself parked up for the night in a car park beside a pub, tired and unsure about everything. I woke up in the morning to find myself right beside the Trent that flowed languidly past a few jetties with willow trees, ducks and a thick mist.

A Hot Evening the Dahlias

The Fens: Spent a hot and dusty day in the wind driving past dykes, ditches, drains and more vegetables than you can imagine. I settled in the evening at a small-holding near Manae near the Old Bedford River where pumpkins and squashes were being sold beside the road and a bright row of jewel-like dahlias stood out in the evening sun against the hazy expanse a fenland.

Blowing on Good Embers

The Fens - On the road again and apart from putting a drawing pin deep into my thumb 30 seconds ago...it feels good.

I am moving slowly up through the country for the next few weeks and to draw this journey to a close sometime later in October. I am alone this time and have shed the trailer with all its summer camp necessities and the van seems so empty that I feel I must have left something behind.

Back home...for a while

North Norfolk. The expectation as we came through ever more familiar landscape, back towards our Norfolk home was overwhelming...and now that we are here, with these 4 walls, cooker, bath and all the delights of modern domestic life...we are all confused. What was that?  I had hoped to post a picture of us all outside the house but the children have all scattered themselves out amongst their friends and we have yet to be here all at the same time.

Dropped a Stitch

Medway. Last weekend we headed up over the Thames Estuary into Essex. I had felt happy with the way everything had worked in Sussex, with photographs of the Downs crumbling into the sea and the hot weather pictures amongst the chalk and the butterflies. But with the shift north came some different weather and the family found themselves on West Mersea beside the Blackwater with a Dad who reckoned he had done a jump too far.

Imaginary Sleeper near the Downs

Glynde; The South Downs. I rely on a small dongle. It's the tiny USB plug that goes into the laptop and lets me send emails through the telephone and I lost it. It's quite an easy thing to lose being so small and all, and its little bit of sticky velcro that keeps it next to the pens in my van just drops off in this heat and then all hell breaks loose. '