Surprisingly there is no mobile network in this town, the second largest we will visit along the walk, and I doubt there will be until Inverness. It’s unusual not to see people yapping on their phones or typing away their text messages. Fort William is tiny though - we’ve walked through it six times already and haven’t yet checked into the B&B! Weather is great though and we are after a shower we’ll go for a few hours walking in the Glen Nevis forested valley.

Tomorrow we walk to north Spean Bridge.

In a few hours we will be on a sleeper train to Fort William and will walk swarmed by midges up to Inverness. The Great Glen Way walk will take nine days for us, though more adventurous people might do it in 3-5 days.

I will endeavour to shoot a photographic diary of the trip and post the tales here on the blog afterwards. I expect we will see many kilts worn properly with a sporran. In fact I may be tempted to purchase a caseload of sporrans for all the men I know. So the question is, what will you use your sporran for?

Last week I bought a lovely bicycle, and however tempted I was to go with the ‘Princess’ bike with the front wicker basket, I chose this more practical ride made for city commuters. This London summer has so far been dogged by outbursts of rain, but I’ve managed to avoid the bad weather and have been riding regularly. I still need to get lights for front and back for night visibility, and Matt strongly suggets I get a helmet too. Where will I find a subtle helmet that doesn’t appear to be made for either Tour de France riders or for use at the roller derby?

To be cautious I have tried to ease into the experience of riding in major traffic, especially as I need to learn how to properly ride in the left side of the road. If I’m unsure of what to do I just cross through junctions as a pedestrian and start pedaling again when I’m comfortable. In reality I have adjusted quite well and have no trouble cycling to and from home via Commercial Road, even with its multiple unexpected obstacles including impatient motorcyclists who weave round cars at high speeds, and of course the mad lorry drivers! Cyclists share the bus lanes here so there’s more room for safe travel.

Traveling across Tower Bridge on a cycle is especially lovely, though the two-way skinny lanes make crossing a bit squeezy and I have possibly already felt the brush of a side-mirror on my arm. Drivers do seem to be aware and courteous of the numerous cyclists in the roads though, which is good.

Now we just need some sunny days so I can take leisurely 20-mile rides west to Richmond…

As I believe I mentioned before, I am a member of the London Independent Photography organisation. Apart from participating in a few workshops with the group I also design and maintain the organisation’s website and am part of the committee. The website work comes in spurts but is quite involved and fun to do.

To satisfy my entrepreneurial spirit I have so far turned out to sell prints at market three times - twice at Spitalfields and once at Greenwich. It takes some practice and hard work to perfect presentation at a market stall, since they are rented either as very bare-boned, unsightly tables or weather-beaten standup display panels. Thankfully I have been working with a partner and two minds solve these challenges better than one! Our two Fridays at Spitalfields were very slow for trade but allowed us to work out most of the display glitches that we needed to.

Our Greenwich Market experience was phenomenally fun, busy and fruitful and the satisfaction of selling a print makes up for all troubles that come with being a market vendor! We will be back at Greenwich on the next two Sundays and prepared better than ever to make sales…. currently the second bedroom at home resembles an assembly line / inventory warehouse ;)

My market partner and I also have a small exhibition hanging on a lovely brick wall in a cafe in Clerkenwell at the moment. It’s an especially nice spot considering the busy clientele of graphic designers and media people working in the area. We hung the pieces Sunday and by Monday morning my partner had already made a sale, so it was a fine start indeed.

Other random stuff going on: The LIP annual group exhibition is approaching fast and I will need to work out my submissions for that shortly; I am revamping my own website to function more as a portfolio, including some fashion portrait images; I have been assisting another photographer to edit his book about London’s West End which has 80ish photographs.

Now I just need to get out and take more pictures…

This weekend we finished setting up the shelving in the living room, all that flatpack goodness brought to us by Ikea. It looks quite good and best of all having surplus shelving is something we desperately need, as storage space here is very limited. The cardboard box mountain that formed from the move, these shelves and also the bedroom furniture flatpack, has now been bundled up and placed into the brilliant new recycling bin that arrived outside our building today.

The presence of that recycling bin means we no longer will trek bagloads up the road for 15 minutes each time we recycle. Fantastic news!

You may have noticed the absence of proper seating furniture in this room. We are still waiting for the sofa to arrive, which will be at least another two weeks. Also we are ordering one more wardrobe for the bedroom, but after that we will officially be ’settled in’.

There isn’t much storage space, so until we get some serious shelving set up (an entire wall in the livingroom) some boxes remain packed with books and things.

The waiting wouldn’t seem such a hassle if we didn’t have visitors showing up today for a two-week stay! Such is life.

The flat is great though! Overlooking the cemetary is fantastic, like a bit of paradise actually, especially compared to our last location on a major roadway. Now the prevailing sounds include chirping robins, the intermittent powering-up of the boiler in the kitchen, and an occasional airplane coming into city airport.

Which means we are moving house. There’s all the packing to do, transfer of utilities to manage, removal logistics to arrange, furniture to order, etcetera… For some reason that stuff doesn’t seem pressing since we have two further weeks to vacate our current flat, but it’s just a week until we turn the key.

The neighbourhood is getting stranger every day. The Spitz is a local restaurant, gallery and music venue at Spitalfields Market that has been an institution for arts and culture for 12 years (though I can only speak for nearly 18 months of that time), and it’s now under threat of closure.

The facts are that The Spitz has been given six months notice to quit its current site in Old Spitalfields Market by its landlords Ballymore Properties. This means in a worst case scenario The Spitz would cease to exist by the end of September this year.

Currently there’s a Save the Spitz campaign underway, though few details are offered to explain what’s going on.

Travel is something I’ve developed patience for in London. Going places by tube can be time-consuming, but I no longer consider distance as a factor in deciding if I want to go someplace. If the tube stops near a destination then there’s no good excuse whatsoever not to go. I will happily, and now regularly do, travel across the city to meet someone or just go see something that I haven’t seen before.

Walking is also just a requirement of living in a large urban environment. A quick walk ‘around the corner’ might take 15 minutes, while a ‘long’ walk in the city is likely to take two hours or more. Walking a different way each time out is a fun way to discover such an intricately laid-out city, and to realise new things about what’s familiar in the well-trod routes. I appreciate seeing unexpected views of the architectural landscape from snickleways, and take pictures of them with my mind (or often in camera too).

Patience is easy to cultivate when you keep your eyes and mind open, with interest. The journey is the destination.

Visitor season is in full swing now at our flat! The Aerobed hasn’t even been packed up, it’s still in the livingroom awaiting the next guest arrival :D

This is a picture of a military helicopter flying around Stonehenge. It’s incredible that this ancient monument has highways on two sides about a hundred feet away maybe. Fields of sheep make up the other nearby space.

Some of you may have visited the blog last week and discovered strange-looking advertisements in its place. That’s because I accidently let my domain name expire and nearly lost it after four years! I’m pleased to have been able to sort out the problem within a day or so, and things move along.