Origins
There was a time when this website might have been a bit short on soul with its photo gallery and its visitor information directory. Of course, the best solution to this state of affairs to add content that is infused with a dash of your own writing style. That has been what I have been doing with my blog and it is the intention of this newer part of the website too. After all, website listings look very barer and we all can use Google. As well as fleshing out the visitor dossiers that preceded it, I have been adding full articles as well. Eventually, I hope that it will be the writing that shines with any hyperlinks sending you to selected places where you can learn more after having your appetite whetted. Reaching that situation remains a work in progress but what website isn't evolving over time?
That's not to say that there wasn't another reason for creating the miscellany and it may have influenced how it got created. When I started the blog for the principal purpose of logging site news such as the addition of new photos to the gallery and other such developments, some unrelated content found its way in there too. I suppose that I was treating it as a bucket for different bits and pieces before it got shaped by the visitors that it attracted. Reports on trips that I had undertaken changed from being a teaser for putative gallery updates to being the main attraction all of themselves. Most regulars share my interest in hillwalking but I have no intention of excluding cycling outings either. With a fine tuning of the blog's content, a few articles became displaced and needed somewhere to go and you'll find them here along with the other things.
In the middle of that refinement, I began to ponder the purpose of the website and that's what brought home to me how broad and diverse everything had become. The photo gallery contained photos from urban and rural jaunts, and it still does, so it couldn't be branded as an exclusively outdoor activities website. Public transport musings had found their way into the blog and didn't sit so easily there so they have been redirected to On Trains and Buses, a very busy place during the spell of arctic weather that ended 2009 and started 2010.
If I was to try and capture what you find here in a nutshell, I would say that most content on the site is inspired by my travels throughout Britain and Ireland, urban as well as rural. That is the situation that allowed me to keep on the original directories but I began to feel that there was gap between urban photography and outdoors musings that needed filling and it is in that space that this miscellany. There may be a temptation to use it like a big bucket into which anything can go but I want to try to keep under better control than that.
Even so, it has become a place to take in content from the blog that didn't fit in there and allowed me to share insights from travels of a less than rural nature. Articles containing a little history fall into the former category and examples include a short history of my family name along with that of Scotland's Parliament. Given that my outings usually allow me to come away with photos of my own making, my having an interest in photography should be too surprising and that's why I have shared the website addresses of fellow practitioners, many of whom are better than my own self.
Latest Additions
Over time, new articles continue to appear and the scope has expanded beyond its original remit a little though not in spirit. There are pieces on Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man that wouldn't have sat easily into the original scheme of things. Other places can come to be included now that the organisational structure is open to them.
The old website listings are being reworked into articles sharing some of my knowledge of relevant subjects while highlighting some other places on the web where you can learn much more. This has allowed me to add in mentions of island exploration in Ireland along more on getting too and from the Irish mainland. Subjects like the local authority structure of Cheshire and Cumbria's relationship with the Lake District can be tackled on here now and it's the sort of thing of which I plan to add more.
More recently, I have started to think about sharing something of the attraction of Britain and Ireland for those coming from afar. My own online and offline explorations may feed more into this topic area so it could be interesting to see how it develops. That reminds of my own desire to see more of Ireland and that, like everything else, is every bit a work in progress.
