We are Dave and Edith Brown and live in Heysham on the outskirts of Morecambe in Lancashire. From the promenade at Morecambe we have what I consider to be some of the most fantastic views in the country. As we look across Morecambe Bay the views from left to right take in Black Combe to the south, the Coniston Fells, the Central Fells , the Eastern and Far Eastern Fells. Continuing round the bay the hills of the Western Dales come into view with Ingleborough in particular standing out.
Dave was 63 in February 2007 and Edith turned 60 in the same month. We have been married 38 years, have 2 children and 3 granddaughters.
We have been walking mainly in Lakeland and the Yorkshire Dales for many years and up till September 1990 never gave any thought to doing the 214 Fells identified by Wainwright although we did have the seven Pictorial Guides for reference. It was in September 1990 that we decided to have a go at walking/climbing the 214 fells that Wainwright listed in the seven guides. We decided to start with a clean sheet so any previous visits to summits were disregarded.
We started with Wansfell and finished a week short of 3 years later on the summit of Haystacks. For those interested in statistics it took us 74 individual walks which embraced 763 miles of walking and approximately 200,000 feet of ascent. I did keep a record of all these walks in my walking diaries but it wasn't until after we finished that I actually thought how good it would have been to have taken a camera for photographic memories.
After we had completed the 214 we carried on fellwalking as we had before, just going wherever took our fancy, we even had a two year spell away from Lakeland just concentrating on the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgill Fells. I did say at the time we completed them that I would never want to do them all again as I believed and still do that some of the fells were not really worthy of inclusion in AW's guides. However, time fades the memory and in September 2006 with Edith and I having both finished working and with the two eldest granddaughters now at school we made the decision to have another go.
This time I wanted to capture our walks on camera so that we could look back at them when the time comes that we no longer can get onto the higher fells. I also decide that I would like to share these walks with others who may be interested so I started a journal or weblog on AOL my Internet Servive Provider. I was most surprised at the interest shown in this journal, we had over 2700 hits in a 6 month period, but was never happy at the format in which it was shown. I had looked at a number of websites dedicated to walking the Lakeland Fells with great admiration and decided to have a go at doing something similar. I am well aware that the presentation on this site isn't as professional as many others but my aim is primarily to display my pictures. At this point I would like to thank Sean McMahon for all the help he as given me in getting this off the ground.
The camera I am currently using is a Fuji FinePix S5500. I believe that it is a 4MP camera and that is about the limit of my knowledge although I do hope to learn more. On an "average" walk I will take in the region of 80 - 120 pictures which after downloading to my PC will be filtered down to about 30 for posting on here. I hold no claim to being anything but the most amateur of photographers, all the pictures are taken using either the "Auto" or "Landscape" settings.
The walk distances and ascents are from Memory-Map OS Edition 2004 which I use for planning walks. I do not use a GPS on my walks, being an ex-seaman and fisherman in my younger days I prefer to use the traditional compass, map and watch but that is not to say that I am against GPS in any way provided that the user is competent in the use of a map and compass as a fallback.
If you have any comments or wish to contact me please use the Guestbook or e-mail me the address below;
djbrown1944@aol.com and I will do my best to answer