After a summer break, I’ve found myself drifting back to doing some watercolours as the evenings start closing in. It seems to have become a bit of a seasonal ritual: the clocks go back, the kettle goes on, and suddenly a block of Arches and a fresh Geoff Kersey tutorial begin to look very inviting. This time the subject was Farm near St John’s in the Vale, Cumbria—a quietly beautiful scene with that mix of soft light and rural texture Geoff does so well. His guidance eased me back into the swing of things, even if the first few washes felt a little rusty after a hiatus.

This small collection of images comes from a handful of heritage railways I’ve visited in England, the US and France. The engines may be the main attraction, but I’ve always been just as interested in the people who keep everything running. I’m not a proper train spotter by any stretch. Put me next to a locomotive and I’m far more likely to notice the light catching the metalwork than confidently announce whether it’s a Pacific or simply “the red one that goes chuff.”

The new National Geographic documentary 'Love+War' focuses on the life of award-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario. Addario and David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee join Morning Jo...

The “Côte des Légendes” — or, sometimes more poetically, the Pagan Coast — sounds like something from a Breton ballad, and in many ways it feels that way. Stretching along the north of Brittany between Meneham and Amiets-Plage, this rugged stretch of shoreline is a place where granite and myth share equal billing, and where the weather seems to have a mind entirely of its own. The skies here are gloriously indecisive. One moment, a heavy overcast flattens sea and stone into a study in greys; the next, sunlight bursts through in sudden, brilliant shafts, turning the granite outcrops into sculptures of light.

A day trip to Blue Hill, Maine and the Jud Hartmann studio

Honfleur has a way of reeling you in. It’s not just the postcard harbour or the light on the water — though that helps — it’s the tangle of cobbled lanes, the crooked timbered houses, and the sense that it’s still a proper working port beneath all the charm. We stopped off there on the way back along the coast after a week in Brittany. Just a short wander through the old streets — enough to stretch the legs and build an appetite — before heading to our favourite restaurant. The place was already packed, …

I don’t often venture into colour, in fact this is the first colour post on this resurrected version of my blog. Most of the time I’m quite content in the company of blacks, whites, and the greys in between. But every now and then a place insists on being seen in colour, and Holme Fen in Autumn, tucked away in Cambridgeshire, was one of those places. It was a cool autumn day when we stopped off last Tuesday, the sort that sits on the edge of something wilder — the next named storm was already swirling its way across the forecasts.

I’d known about the Cimetière de Bateaux de Rostellec long before our recent trip to Brittany — one of those places that quietly lodges in the back of your mind. Weathered timbers, a name that sounds like a photograph — it had been on my list for a while. The more I read about its history, the more it intrigued me. It’s been photographed countless times, yet its story — at least in English — is rarely told. I began to wonder if I could share some of that history while trying to capture something of what still remains.

Brittany has long been a magnet for artists and photographers — the meeting of sea and sky, the rugged beauty, shifting light, and the drama of storms rolling in from the Atlantic. Among those who have captured its spirit are Jean Guichard, best known for his images of the La Jument lighthouse during storms, where waves crash and human scale is utterly dwarfed by nature, and Philip Plisson, whose work celebrates the gentler side of the Breton seascape — lighthouses, changing light, and enduring maritime traditions. Together, their work defines much of how we see the Breton coast: dramatic yet deeply human, shaped by both weather and memory.

YouTube video by John Wildgoose

Something I don't usually do is to share an old post, this one is from 2010. However, as this week's monochrome-madness challenge, set by Sarah from Travel with me is "ruins" and as I have an entire portfolio on abandoned buildings I thought I'd pick out one of my favourite locations visited back in 2010 and add a few more images to it. The farmhouse in these images has now fallen into even more disrepair, the roof having collapsed some years ago. We’d been aware of Trinant for a while—a derelict farmhouse and its corrugated barn tucked into Mynydd-du Commin near Rosebush in Pembrokeshire.

Last friday was one of those real f/5.6 days – flat light, barely a breath of wind, the kind of weather that inspires about as much enthusiasm as a 1970s British Rail sandwich. Still, it felt good enough to get back to the canal project, so I set my sights on Shardlow, long regarded as one of the UK’s most complete canal ports, where the Trent and Mersey Canal meets the River Trent. Olympus OM-1N, F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f1.8, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, Ilfotec DD-X It’s strange to think of it now, but this quiet Derbyshire village was once nicknamed the “Rural Rotterdam.” At its peak in the early 19th century, more than fifty warehouses and yards crowded the water’s edge.