NEWS

Posted December 2008

Two of my three new books - 'Hadrian’s Wall' & 'The Roads to Santiago' are now in the bookshops and 'Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk' follows hot on their heels in February 2009!

Finally, after two and a half years of planning and research, many exhausting (and frequently frustrating) photographic expeditions and months spent writing tens of thousands of words of text, ‘Hadrian’s Wall’, ‘Roads to Santiago’ and ‘Coast to Coast with Wainwright’ are all being published between July 2008 and February 2009.

The completion and publication of Hadrian's Wall was brought forward to coincide with the British Museum’s major exhibition on the Roman emperor. That revised schedule caused a good deal of angst and anxiety as I struggled to get all the pictures and complete the manuscript in time but it all worked out and I am thrilled with the outcome. I was obviously no stranger to Hadrian’s Wall, having already photographed sections of it for other books such as Wainwright on the Pennine Way and Living the Past; comparatively brief encounters that generated a deeper interest in the Wall’s history and architecture. Taking the photographs for this project involved countless trips over many months to and from my North Yorkshire home in an effort to combat the fickle micro-climates of Cumbria and Northumberland. The most dramatic central sections following the line of the Whin Sill escarpment are a photographer's paradise at any time of the year, but especially so during the bleak winter months. Trouble is, one can never just conjure up snow to order and even when it did snow, it was usually accompanied by grey, dismal conditions that rendered good photography quite impossible. On this occasion, I did have to delve into my archive and although I do try to photograph every book as a completely fresh entity, nature does not always cooperate.

Fortunately, the weather in France and Spain is consistently more benign than northern England, a factor that enabled me to keep pressing forwards when photographing ‘Roads to Santiago’. Although I was fortunate in not having to do any backtracking for re-shoots, I had not fully appreciated just how much traveling would be involved when initiating the book! My publisher welcomed the suggestion that we should encompass the four routes through France in addition to the Camino Frances across Spain and although it developed into something of a marathon, it was a challenge that I relished and am immensely proud of the outcome. When studied on a normal map, France does not look that big a country but upon closer inspection, the distances between major conurbations appear quite daunting. Driving in kilometers rather than miles does make progress towards one’s destination seem much quicker and France’s diverse landscapes, magnificent churches and cathedrals provided ample compensation for so many long days on the road. We are very excited that the book has been translated into several European languages and until receiving my advance copies, had not realized that the German equivalent of ‘Roads to Santiago’ is ‘Der Jakobsweg’! .

Back on more familiar home territory (and with traditional Lake District weather), I also spent several months shooting fresh material for a revised edition of Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk, from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. On one hand it seems like only yesterday that I was working on the original version back in 1986, but my creaking knees and other joints bear testimony to the fact that many rough miles have been walked and climbed during the intervening two decades. This is the second revised edition of some of my earlier collaborations with Alfred Wainwright, the first having been Fellwalking with Wainwright (also published by Frances Lincoln). AW’s original text and drawings have been retained, although I have had to rewrite a few pages where route changes have taken place since he first created what has become one of Britain’s best-loved long distance walks.

I am currently writing and photographing a book on the River Thames, although as I compile this news page, the summer and autumn of 2008 felt as though they were suitable for the river’s ducks and swans than successful landscape photography. However, watch this space as I am resolutely determined to overcome whatever the elements throw at me and come deadline day in 2009 (for publication during 2010), I will hopefully have amassed a sufficiently large portfolio of images to create a visually beautiful book on England’s longest and most famous river.

One-to-One Tuition with Flexible Date
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Go to my WORKSHOPS page for more details.