You’ll be relieved to know there’s no long, rambling blog from me today before I cut to the chase and post a picture.. Well, there might be a little one. There’s so much to write about but so few hours to fit it in to. This morning was spent in a ‘Zoom’ call judging three categories in this year’s Community Rail Awards. Myself and my other august judges, plus Sarah from Community Rail Network (who very capably did the behind the scenes stuff with spreadsheets, despite being drafted in at the last moment) agreed the winners for three of the categories in this year’s awards. Obviously, I’m not going to spill any beans but what I will say is that the winners were never really in dispute between the four of us – and we individually marked them without reference to each other. That said, the standard of entries was amazing and and choosing the shortlisted entries was really tough. Despite the pandemic, the world of community rail has been doing some brilliant stuff. The results will be announced in December when the awards themselves will be held in Southampton – having been postponed from the same location in 2020. There’s some fantastic projects that’ll be recognised, but for now my lips are sealed…

Judging done I’ve cracked on with other projects and picture editing in the hope I can escape for the day with the camera tomorrow – weather permitting, although this will entail an early start – hence the shortness of this blog. Which brings me on to the picture of the day…

I took this shot one morning in January, 1998. It’s the view from outside the hostel we were staying in at the hill station of Kodikanal in Tamil Nadu in Southern India.

Kodaikanal is 2133 metres above sea level. It’s quite a journey to get there by bus from the plains of Tamil Nadu below. There’s a heck of a temperature change in either direction. But, imagine waking up in the morning and stepping outside your room to a view like this, because this is exactly what we saw when we did…

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Thank you!

It’s an early picture of the day today as we’re off to a wedding this afternoon which makes blogging this evening look very unlikely – for obvious reasons! It’s been an interesting and varied week that’s highlighted the fact the world is slowly returning to normal after the chaos caused by Covid. Sadly for our friends who’re getting married today, the one thing they’ve absolutely no control over (the weather) hasn’t played ball. Here in the Calder Valley the hilltops are submerged underneath thunderous looking low cloud and misted by rain. The wedding’s in Denby Dale/Huddersfield but I doubt the conditions will be any different. Even so, we hope Hazel and Paul have a fabulous day and their spirits aren’t dampened. We’ll certainly be doing our best to make it enjoyable for them.

The wedding will be the climax of a very sociable week – another indicator we’re recovering from the pandemic. We’ve felt a bit like hermits over the past 18 months. Now the vaccination programme’s reached such a level and Covid cases appear to be manageable the idea of socialising with friends (and strangers) seems a lot less intimidating. That doesn’t mean Dawn and I have thrown caution to the wind – far from it. We both still wear masks when out shopping, on public transport or when we feel the situation merits them but we’re allowing ourselves some optimism and certainly more freedom. Judging by the number of people I’ve experienced returning to the railways we’re not alone in those feelings. What we both want now is to be able to have a holiday, preferably somewhere sunny, but right now, we’re still being cautious on international travel.

Sadly, that means I’m not likely to be seeing sights like today’s picture until 2022. This is one of the latest batch of old slides that I’ve been scanning and it comes from the 18 month long round the world trip Lynn and I took in 1997-99. I took this picture in Hampi, Karnataka, India in December 1997…

Ever seen an elephant stables before? No, neither had I until we visited the ruins of Hampi, which is a UNESCO world heritage site and former capital of the Vijayanagara Empire. It’s a remarkable and rather surreal place which has laid abandoned since it was destroyed by sultanate armies in 1565. Don’t expect to explore it all in a day, the ruins cover over 16 sq miles!

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!