Intro to the UK - A Trip with Andrew

If you read the post dated July 14, 2017 on this blog, you know what a James Herriot fan I've been through adulthood.  The man was just amazing, and his back story as interesting as his books.  I've read the Creatures Great and Small series through three times, and ever since the first have wanted to visit the country where he lived, practiced, and described so vividly and fondly...a bucket list item, if you will.

The chance finally came.  About two years ago my son Andrew went with some friends to the Lake District National Park in the UK.  After returning he gushed on and on about how beautiful the place was, and that I need to go there to take some pictures.  Just my kind of place, he said - it's picturesque all around and the primary pastime is walking the hundreds of trails in the area.  Didn't take long for the idea to strike that, "Hey, why don't we go together and you can show me around?"  Meanwhile, Andrew became engaged to be married in the spring, providing the catalyst to do it sooner rather than later.  This was it - time to make plans!

Discovering that the Lake District is an easy drive from where Herriot lived and worked made it a no-brainer to include a little time there.  We settled on Windermere in the Lake District for the first four nights, two nights in Kirbymoorside near Thirsk, and the last in Manchester before flying from there back to Houston.  But the upcoming posts will not appear in that order, for reasons that will become obvious tomorrow.

Proper planning was done to make this a great trip, with the exception of one thing - I ended up with only ONE CHARGED BATTERY for the Bigger Cahoona, and no charger to rejuvenate it once depleted.  Fortunately it was at 100%, but I had to ration its use on a per-day basis, shooting, say, 10% on a given day but 15% the next because of where we were going to be.  The system worked fine, yielding 1,670 captures more/less evenly spread through the trip, with 7% left at the end of our stay in the UK.  But I wasn't worked up about it either way, photography being the secondary - not the primary - purpose of the journey.  Any keepers brought home were be pure gravy...