The Lowry Outlet Mall, Salford Quays...

I’d planned to spend the day at Old Trafford football ground, attending seminars about ‘website optimisation’ and ‘developing an online presence’. But the moment I arrived, and collected my delegate’s badge, I felt out of place amongst the stands offering hi-tech ‘business to business solutions’. Plan B was to escape from Old Trafford and spend a few hours photographing Salford Quays instead.

Signs point the way - to the Lowry Centre, the Imperial War Museum North, the Lowry Outlet Mall, etc - though I’d swear that one or two of the signs were pointing the wrong way. No matter... you can see these iconic buildings from wherever you are.

The only people who might get disorientated are those who used to live and work around Salford Docks... which is what The Quays used to be until this grandiose scheme was planned and realised. This is urban regeneration on a vast scale, though the docks haven’t been regenerated - building-by-building, or street-by-street - so much as re-imagined entirely. Salford Docks were wiped clean off the map, leaving just the Manchester Ship Canal, along with its spurs and canal basins. The rebuilding began in 1985.

According to their effusive website (written, no doubt, by people who’ve attended seminars on writing online ‘copy’), the Quays create a “wonderful mix of culture, retail and leisure around a continually evolving waterfront destination”. ‘Retail‘ and ‘leisure‘ are almost synonymous in this brave new world of waterfront living and “world class” urban regeneration. However you won’t find anything as common as a shop at Salford Quays, just the sprawling ‘outlet mall’.

It’s a soulless place, as most of these grand urban gestures tend to be; even on a sunny day in May there were few people about. ‘Signature’ buildings overlook windswept concourses, offering ‘exclusive waterside apartments‘ for well-heeled people prepared to pay a premium to live in close proximity to the Manchester Ship Canal. Like the stately homes of previous centuries, they are meant to be admired... and viewed from afar.

The effect of wandering around this “leisure destination” was curiously uninvolving. I wondered what L S Lowry (whose name was requisitioned for the project) would make of it all. He would have painted it, I’m sure. Instead of being dwarfed by the old mills of Salford, belching smoke from mill chimneys, his stick figures would scuttle around The Quays, being dwarfed by office blocks, retail outlets and city lofts.

Having wandered around taking pictures, I fancied a pint and a sit down. As the website suggests (“from smart restaurants to trendy cafes and friendly bars”) there’s nothing as common as a pub at The Quays either. I settled for a glass of Stella in a ‘diner and bar‘ offering a panoramic view of cranes and building sites. I realised what the euphemistic phrase “continually evolving” actually meant: “it looks like a building site”.

Access is never straightforward in these private/public places. As I was photographing the Victoria Harbour Building, my tripod-mounted camera attracted the attention of a ‘community policeman’. He mentioned “privacy laws” and said “they” weren’t too keen on photographers wandering around the Quays, without specifying who “they” might be. I suggested he should wait until I’d broken an actual law, and not just a fantasy law he’d made up.

The official line seems rather different: on the website’s home page is a photographic competition called Capturing The Quays. Winners will get "an ‘all expenses paid for’ weekend at The Quays and the opportunity for their image to be used to promote The Quays around the world"...

The Brown Horse, Winster... in happier times...

With the World Cup just a month away, the flags of St George are starting to appear, like a red and white rash. Pubs are usually the first to fly the flag - informing their customers, in a simple, graphic way, that 1) the football will be shown live on Sky, and 2) that racism, nationalism and rampant xenophobia will be tolerated - even encouraged - for the duration of the competition. And beyond...

I’ve never been a big fan of what Pele called “the beautiful game”. For every moment of beauty and drama (Gazza’s exquisite goal, say, against Scotland at Euro ‘96) there are hours of cheating, diving, time-wasting, passing the ball sideways across the park, booting the ball into the stands, making cynical, career-threatening tackles, claiming the ball, for a throw-in or corner, every time it goes out of play, arguing with the referee about every decision that goes against them, and a sustained level of boorishness and aggression that makes football hard for me to watch with much pleasure.

I’ve tried, at various times, to get involved in the game... especially when the big international competitions come around. On a warm sunny day, four years ago, during the World Cup in Germany, I walked over the fells to a pub that was showing one of the games. England v Portugal, I think it was. Usually a tranquil haven (as evidenced by my photo), the village pub was packed: mostly big guys with abbreviated necks, wearing rugby shirts, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a massive TV screen. I fought my way to the bar, bought a beer and found somewhere to stand.

The football itself seemed cagey and unexceptional, as big, important games so often are. No-one wants to lose, of course, but all too often it looks like no-one really wants to win either. What I do remember was the relentless fusilage of racist abuse aimed at the Portugese players. I looked around me, at these red-faced buffoons shouting at a TV screen in a pub in the Cumbrian countryside; then I looked out of the window at the countryside itself. I drained my glass, squeezed through the scrum of people and made my escape. I carried on walking, through the beautiful Winster valley, and never looked back.

I don’t have any photographs of football... just the pub.

When you phone a big company these days, you’re lost before you start. You’re presented with half a dozen options, but not the one you want: which is to talk to a fellow human being about whatever’s on your mind. It seems like there’s no way into the organisation... only a labyrinth of corridors and connecting doors, which allow you to be shunted from one place to another without actually getting anywhere. You get a couple of minutes of tinny music, before an unseen hand pulls the plug. You’re cast adrift once again, left holding a phone that’s connecting you to nobody. If there’s no way into the organisation, there’s certainly a way out...

The strategy seems to be ‘customer disorientation’. Phoning a business these days is like being blindfolded by Mafia hoodlums and driven to some secret destination. Big business wants to practise ‘customer care’ - managers go to seminars and everything - but few of them know what customer care actually means. I know what it doesn’t mean: being connected to someone in a call centre in Mumbai.

I went to see Dave today. He’s a garage mechanic who works for himself and by himself, in a lock-up workshop. I can call in for a quick chat about whatever’s wrong with my car (my dismal record of maintenance ensures there’s always something). He may be under a car on the ramp, or down in the inspection pit, or, as yesterday, catching up with his paperwork in his tiny ‘office’. Before I’d even described what was the problem with the car, he’d noticed that one of my brake lights had gone, taken out the dud bulb and put in a new one. “That front tyre needs some air”, he said, so he pumped it up as he talked.

I needed a new exhaust too: something that I had worked out for myself, since my Vauxhall Astra sounded like a sports car... but without the corresponding surge of sports car performance.

There are hundreds of garages closer to my home than Dave’s. Dave works in town, but it’s not my home town any more. It’s two hours drive away. I take my car to Dave because he’s cheerful and he doesn’t give me a hard time for letting my car get into such a state; I trust him to replace only the parts that need replacing and charge what the job is worth. Best of all, he says what you want to hear: “I can fix it. Come back at five o’clock”. And when the dread day approaches, when the repairs are costing more than the car is worth, he’ll try to stop you throwing good money after bad, and suggest you keep an eye on the ‘Cars for sale’ section of the local newspaper. “Truthfully?”, he’ll say, if pressed, “Your car is fucked”.

Dave has no baffling phone system to make customers weep in impotent frustration. If he’s near the phone, he’ll pick it up; if he’s down the inspection pit, he won’t... and you’ll have to phone back a bit later. But you don’t have to speak to some bored receptionist, or listen while a disembodied voice gives you a long list of options, and numbers to press. You get Dave himself, a damn good mechanic who wipes the grease from his hands before he picks up the phone. “I can do the job Tuesday”, he’ll say.

Or you can call round and he’ll be there... unless he’s nipped out for a sandwich. The modern world has passed him by, some might say (there’s no concession to comfort in the creative chaos of his workshop), but he’s right up-to-date with his notions of ‘customer care’. Except that it isn’t ‘customer care’ at all. I don’t imagine he’s attended any seminars on the subject; he’s just available, during the advertised hours, to the people who want to get their car fixed, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a smile on his face.

You’re not lost, after all. You know where you are with Dave.

Windermere from Wansfell...

When I’m out walking there are two, apparently contradictory, impulses at work: the perfectly rational desire to get away from other people, and the equally rational desire to socialise. Walking beyond the walled packets of land, out onto the breezy tops, I enjoy the silence and the solitude. But I also enjoy the special smiles that people share when they meet in the open air.

They’re sharing the landscape too, perhaps a favourite view. Now, I know what you’re thinking: it’s not hard to share something you don’t actually own. Nevertheless, it’s good to get away from the proprietorial attitude that rules our everyday lives, that “this is mine” and “that is yours”. On the fells we make no demands of one another; up here, above the tree line, there’s neither guest nor host. No-one’s trying to sell you anything (with the exception of the bedraggled Jehovah’s Witness, on the summit of Great Gable, who tried to thrust a soggy pamphlet into my hand).

Walking is democratic. When walkers meet, it’s as equals. It doesn’t matter whether they came by car or took the bus. It doesn’t matter what they do to make a living. Walking does little to promote social status; the folk who want to make a big impression stay closer to the lake, where their boats and cars will attract more envious glances. The people we meet on the hills may have little in common beyond a love of walking and the outdoor life, but, for the purpose of striking up a conversation, that’s enough.

Wainman's Pinnacle...

There’s a folly, on a rocky outcrop in Yorkshire, that has sentimental value for me. Each time I pass Wainman’s Pinnacle, my thoughts turn to my dad, a down-to-earth Yorkshire patrician not normally given to flights of fancy. It was he who engendered in me a love of walking and wildlife, even though that came about almost by accident.

As a wee lad I used to grub around in the garden for whatever treasures I could find: stones, snails, worms, dung and the like. Amongst the more salubrious items were birds' feathers. With the optimism of youth, I would present them to my father for identification. Hoping to maintain his facade of all-knowing omnipotence for as long as possible, he would put down the Yorkshire Post at every time of asking and give me his undivided attention. Not bad for a man who, to avoid joining in a conversation at meal-times, would concentrate intently on reading the back of a Worcester Sauce bottle.

Knowing I would label the feathers for my collection, he tried to ascribe a different bird's name to each one. After the roster of sparrows and finches, however, he found it an increasingly difficult task. Which is why my little museum featured feathers that had come from such unlikely species as the Scarlet Ibis and Wandering Albatross. No matter. His feats of inspired guesswork left me with a lifelong interest in birds.

In terms of imparting fatherly wisdom, this was only the beginning. I must have been seven or eight years old when he first took me to see the folly. We stood on the rocks and gazed at the view. “From here”, he announced, portentiously, “you can get to anywhere in the world”. I was stunned: "What? Anywhere, dad?" "Anywhere", he confirmed.

The implications were staggering to a boy whose experience of life extended little further than house, garden and the nearby woods that witnessed so many games and adventures. I wasn't a street-wise child. Even when I decided to run away from home, piqued by a parental telling-off, my progress was halted by the main road that I wasn't allowed to cross. But this view seemed to suggest an infinity of possibilities. The world opened up, like the petals of a flower, as my youthful imagination took flight.

The Lancaster Canal at Garstang...

England’s canal network may be the last technology that everybody could understand... as well as marking the moment in our history when we abandoned the notion of self-reliance and put our faith in ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’ instead. It’s amazing to think of the time, effort and money expended, mostly during the 18th century, to create two thousand miles of man-made waterways. They were the future of bulk transport... for a while.

Canals made commercial sense: a barge, pulled by a single horse and carrying a typical payload of, say, 30 tons, could do the work of a hundred packhorses. By the end of the 18th century, though, the canal-building boom was almost over, and wealthy entrepreneurs were looking to invest in the railways. With few exceptions the canals went into an irreversible decline. Lock gates rotted away; the waterways silted up; when land was needed for building, sections of canal were filled in.

So it’s good to see canals being renovated, and brought back into use... even though it’s only non-urgent cargo that’s carried by barge these days, such as tax refunds and publishers’ royalty cheques. The bargees of old would recognise the canals as they are today, though they’d be nonplussed to discover that what they did to earn a living is now being done for recreation and relaxation. There are more boats on British canals now - nearly all for recreation - than there ever were during the heyday of commercial traffic.

For us the canals represent a benign fantasy: the freedom to enjoy a slower, less hectic pace of life. People buy a narrowboat and talk, in excitable tones, about the pleasures of being able to take off whenever they want. They can cast off, and explore the entire canal system. That’s the theory, anyway. The truth, alas, is more prosaic: they find a mooring, somewhere between the abattoir and the glue factory, and never go anywhere.

Never mind... everybody loves canals. They bring a smile to our faces, in the way that barrel organs and steam trains do, as we negotiate the locks and travel through the landscape at walking pace, before tying up at a waterside pub and dreaming the day away.

Dale End, Duddon Valley...

Will a week without planes make us reconsider our attitudes towards air travel? Probably not. In the space of a few years we’ve come to regard foreign holidays as a right, not a privilege. First it was one holiday each year, then two, then three. We’ll no doubt carry on flying to exotic locations, staying in the air-conditioned luxury of ‘international’ hotels, enjoying a week of sun, sand, sea and sangria. We’ll meet a few locals, of course - carrying our bags, serving us drinks - but mostly we’ll stay by the pool.

The experience of foreign holidays, though relaxing, leaves many people curiously unmoved. I’ve asked friends, on their return: “How was it?”, expecting to hear of adventures in faraway places, or, at the very least, some amusing anecdotes. Most people can only manage a shrug of the shoulders. “The hotel was good”, they’ll admit, while struggling to find anything else to say. They’d jetted off to a place that, until recently, had seemed achingly distant and exotic - more of a mirage than a holiday destination - and returned with little to show for the experience except for a tan acquired rather too quickly for comfort. It was just a holiday...

It must be about five years since I last got my passport stamped. It’s not that I’ve stopped travelling; it’s just that I’ve just been travelling in smaller circles. My ‘patch’ is the North of England. Now, the ‘North of England‘ isn’t an area you’ll find on any map. It’s not a county, or an administrative district, and whole books are written about what it is and what it means, usually accompanied by an attempt to define its boundaries. It’s a pointless exercise. The North of England is not a geographic area, it’s a state of mind. For Londoners it begins somewhere about Watford Gap services on the M1 and might as well be coloured an unrelieved brown on the map, with the legend ‘Here be dragons’. There are Geordies who look down on Yorkshire folk as “soft Southern bed-wetters”, and Yorkshiremen who insist they’re living in ‘God’s own County’.

My ‘North’ is a rather amorphous area; it expands and contracts, like a rubber band stretched between the fingers of both hands. To the north there’s the obvious boundary of Hadrian’s Wall, though I make occasional foreys into the Borders. To the east is the North Sea, to the west, the Irish Sea. To the South it’s more complicated, and my choices more whimsical. I include the Peak National Park, but not Lincolnshire. Cheshire reminds me of footballers‘ wives; it doesn’t say ‘North‘ to me.

Fortunately, none of this matters. My personal map of the North can continue to expand and contract. But what is important is to keep exploring. Yesterday I had a pint in a wonderful little pub I had never visited, in Broughton Mills, which, though sounding like a West Yorkshire textile town, is actually a tiny community of scattered farms in the middle of nowhere (well, the Duddon Valley). Whenever I think I know the North of England quite well, I am gently reminded that I barely know it at all. I will be happy to keep travelling - not outwards but inwards - for the rest of my days.

I have a favourite quote; it’s quite perceptive, which suggests it’s not an original thought of mine. But, having googled it, I can’t find any other attribution. Never mind: if you get to know one area well, your horizons are limitless...

Outhgill Church, in Mallerstang, Cumbria...

From the moment I lifted the latch of the churchyard gate, a sense of peace enveloped me. It was a combination of factors, I suppose. St Mary’s is an old church in an out-of-the-way place, which has occupied its little patch of ground since it was built, in the first years of the 14th century. In 1663, finding the church “ruinous and decayed”, the redoubtable Lady Anne Clifford set about repairing it, as she repaired most of the other properties she inherited. She recorded the fact on a stone plaque above the door.

Also, it felt like the first day of spring... and, after such a long and hard winter, not before time. The grass was greening up, the sun was shining and the fields were full of new-born lambs. Here and there, in the churchyard, were little clumps of daffodils, which a couple of days of sunshine had brought into flower. Before the day was out I’d seen the first swallows, house martins and sand martins of the year, and heard the cadence of the first willow warbler (as well as having a wasp trying to drown itself in my beer). A buzzard wheeled lazily overhead... almost a metaphor for time passing slowly.

By my reckoning (and, yes, you have to wonder about the priorities of a man who bothers to keep a record of such things) the swallows usually return about April 21, so April 10 is very early. Some mechanism compelled the swallows, wintering in sub-Saharan Africa, to begin their long flight north, back to their breeding grounds in rural Cumbria... and to set off ten days early. What do the swallows know that we don’t?

I’m amazed by the mysteries of bird migration. I’m amazed, too, by the strength of faith that built this small, squat church about 700 years ago. And I enjoyed that peaceful feeling as I strolled around the churchyard with the warmth of the sun on my back, looking for camera angles and reading the inscriptions on the gravestones... while taking care not to tread on the daffodils. Even on my own, in a country churchyard, I have the distinct feeling I’m being watched...

Buttermere...

We’re all looking for meaning in our lives, with varying degrees of success. There’s a big difference, however, between ‘looking’ and ‘looking for’. When we look for our mislaid car-keys we are seeking a known quantity. Knowing what we’re looking for, we can immediately discount anything that isn’t key-shaped. We look for spiritual enlightenment too, and, if we search long enough and hard enough, we will probably come up with something that matches our expectations. It will, however, be in the realm of what we already know; we only know we’ve found something because we recognise it.

But when we are simply looking, we are not constrained by the need to find. Saying “I don’t know”, honestly and openly, frees us up to new experiences. I’m not looking for the right answers; I’ll happily settle, instead, for asking the right questions.

By the age of 25 most of us have assembled a portfolio of beliefs and opinions, which, if left unchallenged, will last us a lifetime. We develop political affiliations; we may come to identify with a particular religion (most likely the one we grew up with) or reject religion altogether. Once our beliefs, opinions and, yes, prejudices, are firmly in place, we have the intellectual wherewithal to meet every new situation with an appropriate response. We know where we stand on the pressing issues of the day, which cuts out a good deal of thinking and soul-searching.

We may be ‘good people’, regular church-goers and well-regarded members of society, but at some point in our lives most of us stop looking and listening. We develop a coherent and consistent view of the world, and our place in it, precisely so that we don’t need to ‘waste’ time and effort in looking afresh. Our beliefs are the only ones worth having, our opinions are those held by “all right-thinking people”. We make sense of our lives, and our increasingly blinkered view, by being 'right'. Questioning our beliefs and opinions might make us doubt everything we hold dear... and then where would we be?

Whatever bolsters these opinions is gathered up; whatever challenges them is cast aside. We buy the newspaper that promotes our beliefs, opinions and prejudices; we choose our friends based on how closely their views coincide with ours. Our equilibrium is threatened by those who choose to live their lives in a different way. We don’t want to discover anything new; we just want the opinions we have already to be confirmed.

At moments of doubt, we default to what we already know. We collude in the process of making ourselves more unhappy today than we were yesterday. The pattern is set. We become old... in attitude, if not in years. We stop looking; we stop listening; in the game of life, we’re just ‘playing out time’.

Ford, River Winster and (out of picture) one pissed-off 4x4 driver...

Do kids still play ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ at parties? It seems unlikely. I remember being blindfolded and spun around till I was dizzy, then being pointed vaguely in the direction of the donkey. It was about as much fun as it sounds. The adult equivalent is trying to negotiate a complicated road system and getting hopelessly lost.

We carry in our minds a map of our surroundings - whether that’s a detailed topography, a compass bearing or just a big empty space with tumbleweed and a sign reading ‘Here be dragons’. As we drive along a road, we upgrade our mental map - automatically, continually, unconsciously - by the position of the sun and our innate awareness of the direction we’re travelling. With every junction and bend in the road we make the appropriate adjustments to our position on the map, so at any one moment we have a pretty good idea whether we’re headed North, South, East or West. Even if we can’t pin the tail on the donkey, we have a pretty good idea whether the donkey’s over here or over there.

This kind of mental map has served us well over the centuries, helping us to find our way across unfamiliar terrain. However, all it takes is a complex motorway junction, or a convoluted one-way system in town, to wipe our map clean of useful information. We’re confused, we quickly ‘lose our bearings’’. We have to rely on signs and instructions; without them we’re lost.

One option, of course, is to wind a window down and ask a local for directions. We’re likely to get a long list of instructions (we’ll remember the first two, typically, and forget the rest). The stranger’s directions always end the same way, with a smile and “you can’t miss it”. Well, yes, we can miss it; we’re lost. A few minutes later we’re asking someone else, and then someone else after that: a procedure complicated by a few other factors. The person we ask may know the way, but is wilfully misdirecting us (I’ve done it; I'm not proud of the fact. I’m sure other people do it too). The person we ask may be lost too, but doesn’t want to admit it. The person we ask may be a helpful soul, who would rather offer misleading directions than no directions at all. One way and another, by trial and error, we’ll find our way to where we want to be: frazzled, fed up and half an hour late for our scheduled meeting.

Instead of cultivating our innate sense of direction, we’re delegating our route-finding responsibilities to a small computer screen perched on the dashboard. Having tapped a postcode into the SatNav we can generally get to our destination without mishap. A disembodied voice (male or female, depending on choice) tells us where to go. Not a long list of “lefts” and “rights” and “straight aheads” to forget (and no cheery “you can’t miss it” either), but just calm, measured instructions, delivered in plenty of time for you to indicate and change lanes. We arrive at our meeting ten minutes early: cool, calm and collected. For the return journey we simply tap in our own postcode and follow the instructions. The technology is amazing. What can possibly go wrong?

Well, maybe we’re relying too much on a gadget which, though rich in data, is short on common sense. Lorry drivers drive down narrow country lanes, quite unsuitable for HGVs, for no better reason that their SatNav told them to. Terrified motorists find themselves teetering on clifftops and river-banks, or stranded in a ford that the SatNav neglected to say was a bit too deep, following heavy rain. One man tried to drive along railways tracks, having followed SatNav instructions rather too literally as he was negotiating a level crossing. A cab driver taking Earl Spencer’s daughter to a Chelsea match ended up 146 miles off course, in the picturesque North Yorkshire village of Stamford Bridge. Add your own choice of (possibly apocryphal) SatNav horror stories here...

A SatNav encourages us to dispense with our mental map altogether. We don’t bother to reorientate our internal compass. Even if we still have a road-map in the car, we’ve probably forgotten how to use it. So when the temperamental technology of a SatNav lets us down, we’re not merely lost... we’re completely lost, geographically and psychologically lost, to an extent we couldn’t have imagined before our capricious computers started telling us where to go.

Crummock Water...

I became a trespasser by accident, not design. Feeling that walkers were uninvited guests on other people’s land, I used to play the game. I kept rigorously to rights of way, following the pecked lines on the Ordnance Survey map, and the tracks ‘on the ground’. And, mostly, I still do: not wanting to come up against an impassable obstacle, I aim for stiles rather than climbing over barbed-wire fences and dry stone walls. I don’t want to do any damage (though even the most anti-social walker is a mere beginner in doing mischief to the countryside, compared to the professional desecrators of our treasured landscapes. Oh, don’t get me started...).

What stirs me to action is the plethora of signs, particularly around the Lake District, telling me where I can and cannot wander. Even in my more anarchic moments I have no intention of marching across anyone’s garden, scattering lawn chairs and bellowing “All property is theft” at the startled residents. But when I see an empty landscape, and a sign telling me to go away, I take exception.

I don’t question the ownership of these tracts of land. I know that wherever I wander, on this small and overcrowded island, I am on somebody else's property. But I don’t want the deeds to the land and I don’t want to build a house; I just want to be able to walk there, that’s all. And, in doing so, I don’t think I am asking too much.

‘No Access’ signs establish the idea, in the public imagination, that ownership of land can be used to deny every other person on the planet the view that the owner enjoys. That plot of land is, in essence, removed from the map. And that can’t be right. So these days I trespass regularly, routinely, whenever the spirit moves me, with a light heart and a clear conscience.

I have a pretty little speech prepared, on the subject of trespass, and how it’s a civil rather than a criminal offence. “Phone the police? Go ahead”, I will say, while striking a pose, suggesting that the threat of prosecution is a rather empty one. However, despite having the speech ready for my next encounter with an angry landowner, I’ve yet to deliver it. There’s never anyone around, you see. Landowners are generally elsewhere, making more money so they can buy more land, while most walkers take the ‘No Access’ signs at face value (“Can you do that?”, a fellow walker asked, incredulously, as I ignored another ‘Private’ sign and clambered inelegantly over a locked gate. “Watch me”, I replied). It means, ironically, that I mostly have these landscapes to myself.

Palace How Farm and Grasmoor...

“Wainwrights? I’ve done them all”, he bragged. I waited to hear a few choice anecdotes about his peak-bagging exploits. I waited in vain. A few words of encouragement seemed in order. “That’s a great achievement”, I lied. “You must have so many stories”. Well, apparently he hadn’t. Instead of providing a few memorable moments, the climbing of AW’s peaks – all 214 of them – had left him with no tales worth the telling. Imagine going to all that trouble, and having so little to show for it. “It’ll be something to tell the grandchildren”, he said, unconvincingly, suggesting that climbing the Wainwights isn’t something to do; it’s something to have done. The pleasure comes only in retrospective.

Peak bagging is something I don’t really understand. But there are so many other things that I don’t understand (mobile phone tariffs, double entry book-keeping, our seemingly endless fascination with the fluctuating fortunes of Marks & Spencer... the list is long, and getting longer) that one more barely registers on my personal Richter scale of incomprehension.

When we walk we have the opportunity to question – perhaps even undermine – the work ethic that rules so many aspects of our lives. Work implies order, efficiency, time & motion, making the best use of the time available to maximise profits and minimise costs. But so ingrained is this work ethic that we bring it onto the fells too. Looking to make most productive use of our free time, we give ourselves targets to achieve and ‘personal bests’ to be bettered. Miles must be logged, peaks must be bagged, boxes must be ticked; this isn’t recreation, it’s accountancy.

I certainly don’t understand the urge to climb every lakeland mountain, then tick a box, then bag another peak, then tick another box, and carry on like this until you’ve run out of summits, or boxes, or both. Once you’re a fully paid-up member of the peak-baggers’ club, and ticked off all the Wainwrights, what do you do next? Head north to tackle the Munroes? Start climbing the Wainwrights again from scratch? Or retire to a comfy chair by the fireside, and wait optimistically for the grandchildren to show even the tiniest flicker of interest in your fell-walking exploits of so very long ago?

Coniston...

There are many kinds of silence. There's the embarrassed silence you find during breakfast in a lakeland boarding house, which makes the tinkling of tea-cups seem deafening by comparison. There's the blissful silence when a migraine-inducing car alarm finally drains the battery and whines to a merciful stop. There's the brooding silence at the heart of a marriage when love has died. But best of all are those moments when the chatter of the mind abates, when memories, ambitions and everyday worries evaporate like puddles on a hot pavement, and - however briefly - you are blessed with stillness.

The world seems to have been washed clean by overnight rain, leaving Coniston looking its best. There are a few precious days each year when the leaves on the trees glow with hypnotic shades of green, as though lit from within. When the swallows, swifts and martins race and scream over the lake, seemingly for the sheer joy of scything effortlessly through the sky. When almost anything seems possible. And today is one of them.

It's June, early summer, and there's no better time of the year to skive, loaf, dawdle, dally, hang loose, take things easy, stand and stare, shoot the breeze, twiddle our thumbs, kick our heels, and generally let the grass grow under our feet. Yes, here in lakeland we’ve learned the lexicon of leisure.

Sulphur-yellow wagtails chase each other along the water-margins. Startled moorhens skitter into the reeds. Dragonflies flash by: vivid blurs of electric greens and blues. The air is still and soporific. Let your problems melt away; there’ll be time enough to deal with them later on. Slip into that silence, with the same ease as a dipper, leaving barely a ripple.

We lead our lives at such a lick; no wonder we’re stressed out most of the time. We complain there aren’t enough hours in the day, and then settle down for an evening in front of the TV, watching celebrities eating grubs in the jungle. Being over-stimulated - like kids who quaff too much fizzy pop - we need bigger and bigger doses of eye-popping sensation. If we are to respond to the quiet lure of the countryside, where excitements are subtle rather than blatant, we need to take stock and recalibrate our senses.

Windermere at Waterhead...

A sour-faced man poked his head out from the cabin of his brand new sailing boat and gave me a glare. “It’s private”, he pronounced, before ducking back inside.

On a gorgeous summer evening, calm and untroubled, I was taking a leisurely stroll around the marina, hopefully doing nothing to disturb the tranquility of the scene. The guy could have smiled. He could have said “Hello”. He could have rhapsodised about how good it was to be alive and well and in control of his faculties, able to enjoy some quality leisure time on Windermere, rather than, say, working late at the office or being stuck in a stationary queue of traffic on the M6.

The English language is the perfect medium to express nuances of pleasure: the warmth of the evening and the pride of new yacht ownership. He could have pointed out the silky, ever-changing reflections in the water as a blood-red ball of a sun dipped down towards the familiar silhouette of the Langdale Pikes beyond the northern reaches of the lake. Conversations can spin into an infinity of possibliities, if you have a convivial nature and time to spare.

But no. He was neither convivial nor conversational. And the merest glimpse of a photographer - obviously not a member, unless the club had abandoned its dress code - was enough to darken his mood. “It’s private” were only two words he could muster, on this fine summer’s evening.

He was right, of course. I was trespassing: in a thoughtful, principled way, I like to think, but trespassing all the same. The marina is a private club for well-heeled folk, with a hefty annual fee securing a berth for their floating gin palaces. Members can enjoy the company of like-minded people, without having to rub shoulders with riff-raff like me. And, once or twice a year, who knows, they may even find the time to rig their yachts and go for a sail.

While I see the the lakeland landscape as a wonderful resource for everyone to share, for some people it’s a commodity, a reward for their success in the world of business. Once they’ve bought up their Cumbrian Camelots, with panoramic lakeside views, they try to pull up the drawbridge after them. It’s never quite enough to look at a beautifiul view; the pleasure’s not complete until that view is denied to others. A bleak sort of pleasure, you might think.

Up go the walls, the fences, the fast-growing leylandi hedges and a plethora of signs to keep the riff-raff out. Why do landowners deny access to walkers? Because they can, that’s why. Wherever you look around the Lake District, there are signs that say ‘Private’. There’s ‘Strictly Private’ too, raising the stakes for those visitors who might otherwise imagine that ‘Private’, unqualified, means “Come on in, old friend, put your feet up, have a beer, make yourself at home”.

The conservation movement has a splendid slogan: “Not ours, but ours to look after”. The preponderance of prohibitive signs delivers a rather different message: “It’s not your land, it’s mine. Now clear off, sharpish, before I set the dogs on you”…

Getting lost is like forgetting: you only need to do it once. You don’t have to keep forgetting where you left your car keys. Once is enough. You don’t keep getting lost; one wrong turning, in a moment of distraction, is enough.

While taking photographs for a book on the Pennine Way, I walked to the top of Bleaklow, in Derbyshire’s ‘Dark Peak’. Maybe I became disorientated by the peat hags, or the fact that the top of Bleaklow is an extensive, rocky plateau rather than a well-defined summit, so that when I tried to retrace my steps I took the wrong path. Since I always carry on Ordnance Survey, I shouldn’t have made the mistake at all, or, having made it, I should have realised quite quickly that something was amiss. But I misread the landmarks I saw, trying to make them conform to what I saw on the map. Wanting to believe I was on the right path, I reconfigured the landscape to match my preconceptions until, suddenly, the construction of my imaginary landscape fell apart, like a house of cards, and I realised I was lost.

Bleaklow is well-named. During the winter months it can be very bleak indeed. Plenty of walkers have trudged over the top, in wind or rain or snow, and decided that if this is what long distance walking was all about, they’d rather give it a miss. Fortunately, the weather on this day was surprising mild. I was walking through a moorland landscape which, if not quite featureless, was hard to ‘read’. There were no stone walls, no fences, no farms, no barns; I looked ahead, I looked left, I looked right, and saw nothing that seemed familiar. But I had to do something, so I decided to walk in a straight line downhill and see where I ended up. Seeing no other walkers, even on a Saturday, I shared the moorland landscape with skylarks and curlews and a few insouciant sheep which looked up, briefly, and returned to the more important matter of chewing the coarse moorland grass.

Walking was easy, with the peat and heather dry underfoot. The sky was blue, with cumulus clouds stacked up like scatter cushions, and, once I‘d stopped scolding myself for getting lost, I relaxed into the moment and started to enjoy my surroundings. When I came across a small stream, I followed it down into a grassy, steep-sided valley.

I remember the sun being hot on my back; in my memory it was midsummer, but memory plays tricks. Thanks to the miracle that is digital photography, and the way that metadata is ‘welded’ to every image that comes out of my camera, I can be pedantically accurate. It was April 7, 2007. I sat by the stream, watching the clear water bubble over the rocks. I lay down on dry grass, letting the song of the skylark recede as the bird climbed ever higher in the sky. I was still lost.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep.