Andrew Wardlow Images

The landscapes, lights and moods of the area around Elterwater in the Langdale Valley are magical. It’s perhaps my favourite known place in England. I can’t get enough of it. I take hundreds of photographs, always trying to capture what the eye can see and sense in a moment. But you never quite can because it’s not just about what you can see. So you get, at best, part of it if you’re lucky. You have to imagine the rest. Which is why you have to go back. Damp stone walls, rocky paths, rushing streams, stretching fells, brooding crags and lingering mist, mingled with peeps and shafts of sunlight. It is landscape, weather and life in spades.

This trip was over the new year period 2018/19.

A few days around and about Paignton, Brixham, Salcombe and Hope. This is a great stretch of coast with rocky shores and sandy coves below green clifftops, and coastal towns and villages. Highlights include Brixham's busy harbour and Hope Cove which came with the bonus of a decent sunset. The south-west coastal path provides it all on foot.

A first visit to north Norfolk around Wells-Next-The-Sea in November 2016. I was blown away by the landscape and space. 

A jewel of a place on the north coast of Wales.  More time is needed to re-discover the area and further west. 

The iconic harbour at Lyme Regis in Dorset on a great, grey day in 2016. No sign of a French lieutenant or his woman. But lots of damp and mood.

Many trees in Windsor Great Park remain upright but are without life. They are majestic, particularly when the sun is lowering. And their uncluttered branches twist and turn to the sky. Rooted and reaching.

This place is a favourite. The small harbour is gritty and magical, and a reason to get up early, even after a late night in one of the best pubs in England.

Brighton's West Pier - closed in 1975, largely destroyed by fire in 2003 and since battered by storms - is a dying beast. A further section has recently collapsed. There's beauty in the beast.

Hove seafront is a gem. It sits aside Brighton, one becoming the other in a step somewhere or other. It has both a superior and inferior feel to its brassy and cocky sibling. It thinks it's better looking and classier but knows the other end of the seafront has more buzz and charisma. You can enjoy them both. It doesn't do to be all the same. 

A white and grey March day in Windsor Great Park and around the castle.

France's northern coast between the Belgium border down to Picardie is a great stretch of sand and dunes and the odd cliff. I am there regularly, staying at Stella Plage, near Le Touquet.  These shots are there and at Le Crotoy on the Baie de Somme.

Swans 'on' a pond in Windsor Great Park.

It's impossible to choose a favourite spot in the English Lake District in Cumbria. A stunning landscape that requires endless time. Around Buttermere would be a contender for me.  I was back on its shores in 2017 after a gap of around 35 years. Different camera but essentially the same photos. Bliss.

Just a few miles outside Slough on a fine November day.

A great stretch of shore which absorbs the brutal concrete pier.

New Year's Eve beach walk 2017. A wet one.