Month: December 2022

My favourite photos of the year: 2022
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My favourite photos of the year: 2022

To mark the year’s passing I’ve picked one photo from each month looking back over the year so will hope to show the passage of the seasons. In some months I took few photos … which is why September’s picture is a bit “meh”. One photo is a complete cheat because it’s not from the walks here, but from north-west Scotland! I think my favourites are the final two of the year: Underriver view and Lullingstone in the snow, although the sharpness of that Cudham shot in remarkably clear July air does a lot for me.

I don’t rate myself as any kind of photographer, and I’m sure a true pro could do a lot better, but I do enjoy capturing an atmosphere or certain aesthetic. If others like them too, even better!

Happy Christmas to all who visit and use this website and best wishes for 2023.

  • false sunset at Ide Hill
    A cloud layer produces a false sunset at Ide Hill, January
  • Downe walk, February
  • Flooded woods, Bough Beech
    Flooded woods, Bough Beech, March
  • Bluebells in Emmetts Garden/Scord's Wood, 2022
    Bluebells in Emmetts Garden/Scord’s Wood, April 2022
  • View over Summer Isles
    View over Summer Isles from Ben Mor Coigach, near Ullapool, May.
  • Pyramidal orchid
    Pyramidal orchid in the Andrews Wood-Meenfield Wood gap, June
  • Cudham walk, July, between point 2 and 3, the field short cut
  • View from Romney Street
    View from Romney Street, August, Fackenden Down walk
  • Fackenden Down solitary birch tree, September
  • Knole stag, October
    Knole stag, October
  • Underriver, Sevenoaks
    View on Underriver walk, November
  • Lullingstone, 17 December, 2022
    Lullingstone, 17 December, 2022
Chilled at Lullingstone
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Chilled at Lullingstone

Lullingstone park is a great place to feel the winter vibes in the North Downs, with sweeping views of the Darent valley, big skies, mists swirling down by the river and a variety of terrain: from grassy expanses to rich beech and oak woods. Some walkers in Kent on Saturday saw a double sun – a trick of the light in which the sun seems to appear twice. It’s also called a sun dog, and is a type of halo. We weren’t so lucky, but the atmosphere was superb – wispy cloud, patches of cobalt sky, a low sun and a light mist. Small flocks of linnets were feeding in scrubby fields at the start of our route, up by the golf course entrance. It was the last day of this week of snow and freezing temperatures so we wanted to make the most of it, taking a 4-mile route around the park. A very deep frost had formed on top of the snow, producing some incredible branch-like crystal structures. It was a truly memorable stroll.

See an Ordnance Survey map of the route we took across Lullingstone – with GPX.

A winter’s trail
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A winter’s trail

Two very cold but contrasting days at the weekend just gone. Bright sunshine and rich colour on Saturday, fog, frost and monochrome tones on Sunday after a largely clear night. We walked near Shoreham on the North Downs then, on Sunday, at Ide Hill near Sevenoaks on the Greensand Ridge. I tried to keep an eye open for birds and saw a yellowhammer flying away from along the line of hedgerows beneath Fackenden Down plus several fieldfare. At Ide Hill we saw a brambling among a mixed bunch of chaffinches and great and blue tits (there may have been a female bullfinch among them too) on the eastern edge of Emmett’s Garden and later some greenfinches popped out of a hedgerow. At Ide Hill, as we had hoped, we were ‘above the cloud’ with a layer of fog obscuring the low weald below and little pinnacles of ridges further south poking up through the murk. The best frost was seen en route around the woods and heaths of Hayes and Keston Common – very beautiful. And then came the snow …

Anyone with time free over the next couple of days should try to get out on the walks to experience the snow at places like Knole and on the hill tops at Fackenden and Polhill. It can be spectacular. (See photos from 2021.)

If you haven’t seen it, please check out my piece for The Guardian on a Darent Valley walk ending at the Samuel Palmer, one of Guardian Saturday’s pub walk series. And on 31 December the paper is running a piece I wrote about birding while walking – describing walks at Underriver and on Handa Island in NW Scotland.

Pictured: elderberry, rosehips and views in the winter sun on Fackenden Down; fog and murk on the Low Weald from Ide Hill