Save for a day out at the start of May that threw up a surprise capping of snow on the mountains, I’ve not been to the Lake District for a while. Well, there’s been a pandemic that put paid to a lot of traveling about and socialising for a start… The weather was uncharacteristic, you might think, but it came at the end of a spell that had lasted weeks on end where the overnight temperatures had plunged to freezing. In fact much of the previous few months had been cold but dry. This week certainly wasn’t cold though, in fact it was quite the opposite.

It’s been a long time since Louise and I have had a day trip to the Lakes so we got Thursday in the diary a few weeks ago and watched in the lead up as the temperatures soared. It was the hottest day of the year so far, and it felt like it too.

I had in mind this water mill in Borrowdale to start the day that for quite some time was secretly guarded by anyone that knew the location, but suddenly I’d worked out where it was – and it wasn’t all that far from the nearby car park. The National Trust’s pay and display machine however doesn’t accept Apple Pay, or bank notes, or give change… and who in the world carries change these days anyway? The man opposite had observed this over some time and cannily advertises his own property for parking at a simple £5 a go, so we parked up and parted with a fiver.

It was 28 degrees already but the walk wasn’t long, and after a blink-and-you’d-miss-it meander though some trees, there it was. I climbed over the rocks to find a composition while Louise sat and enjoyed the peaceful surroundings.

It wasn’t easy to shoot backlit by the summer sun, and the green tones of the trees, the mossy rocks and the stone of the mill itself blended together like an impressionist painting. Even the foreground river had dried up so the resultant image isn’t what I had envisaged, but I quite like it. And in any case I know where it is now if I want to go back.

The rest of the day was spent flying the drone round Thirlmere, then trying to stay out of the sun. Lunch under a parasol at an old haunt near Ambleside, the gingerbread shop, and traversing a garden centre looking at slate sheep in the now oppressive 33 degree heat, before ice cream at Bowness-on-Windermere.

It was an easy day, and nice to be out and about again.