Although this spot has spawned many of my pics of the day, including last year's 'white Christmas' shot I’ve never shot it from this angle before and really today it’s only a foil for the wonderful sky and distant hills.

Again we’ve been walking the hills at lunchtime and feeling lucky to be here. I still find it hard to imagine that I can leave my own front door and be amongst all of this within moments from home. I feel hugely lucky although I dispute that the only reason for us being here is luck. The rest of it is pure, hard slog. I am starting to feel proud of seeing a goal and then working towards it, putting all of the nuts and bolts in place gradually over the course of a year. Somehow, even though we didn’t realise we could pull it off, suddenly it’s here and we have. It’s a fantastic feeling and one I want to relish for a bit.

This is a winding down to a quiet time. I’m finishing my pre-Christmas work commitments gradually, I’ve knocked a couple more things off my list today and the rest will get finished tomorrow. Then that’s it for me until mid-January. I can’t believe that I’m actually going to get about three weeks off. Given the frenetic pace of the rest of this year, I think I’m going to find it very strange to stop. I’ll bet I catch a cold or the flu – that’s what normally happens when I stop for a bit.

I need to conserve my energy for the last of the three weeks when our lives go upside-down again….so until then I intend to do as little as possible other than what I need to do to keep us warm, well-fed and exercised.

Bliss.

Last year I was so excited about my calendar - this year's ones are in a box upstairs and I've not even looked at them....the novelty value of seeing my work in print certainly had a very short shelf-life. The year before, I was shooting boats on the Thames on my way to footie.