I’m often asked on the path — usually by someone balancing a camera and a wind-blown jacket on a cliff-top — which lens they should bring for “dramatic cliff portraits.” There’s a deceptively simple short answer (bring what you can handle), but the practical truth is richer and rooted in how different focal lengths shape perspective, subject-background relationships, and the way a...
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I spend a lot of time on long, mixed-terrain day hikes — coastal cliffs, heathered peat, stony upland tracks and...
When I set out for a day on Britain's wild edges I expect three seasons in a single walk: a wet morning, a bright but...
I often think of fieldcraft as the quieter half of photography — the set of small, patient skills that let you...
I spend a lot of time on peat and heather — the flat, lumpy, wind-bent places where lapwings, curlews and golden plovers feel most at home. Often these birds are heard before they're seen, or gone altogether except for the subtle signatures they leave behind: a half‑moon of footprints in soft...
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I remember the first time I came across a red deer rut on a windswept Scottish ridge: a raw, rasping chorus of stag calls rolling across peat and rock, a thunder of hooves as stags clashed for dominance. It felt like stepping into a different world — intimate yet public, thrilling yet fragile....
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When I plan a cliff walk on the Northumberland coast I do it with two goals in mind: to experience the drama of the edge and to leave the place no worse than I found it. The coast here is a study in contrasts — long sandy bays, jagged sandstone stacks, grassy headlands and soft, erodible cliffs...
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Every few miles on a long Borderhike route I find myself sinking into that soft, sodden world of heather and peat — boots disappearing, water seeping in from some cunning breach I didn't even notice. Choosing the right walking boots for wet heather and blanket bog is more than a gear checklist:...
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Fog on a border ridge is a peculiar thing: it swallows the crags I know by heart, turns fences into ghost-lines and reduces the coastline to a memory. I've learned that the moments when visibility collapses are exactly when a compass and an Ordnance Survey map become not just useful, but...
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I’ve spent many mornings standing on Solway Firth’s sands watching tide lines retreat and return, learning the rhythms that make this coastline beautiful — and potentially dangerous. Planning a safe coastal crossing here starts with one thing: understanding the tide timetable and how it...
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Coastal grasslands and shingle strands are some of my favourite places to walk: a thin, wind‑scoured band where sea, salt, and soil meet. They feel fragile because they are — thin soils, specialised plants and birds that depend on open, disturbance‑free spaces. Over the years I’ve learned...
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