Michael Leo Parker

This page will be a photo diary, in no order, of some places I have been to around Britain. Mostly of these are of walks and hikes but also include city breaks and other meanders. While the birthplace retains deep affection, sometimes not, in the heart of the individual, Britain presents a solid argument for being the best country to be in. I hope to provide evidence for this argument with what I have seen so far and hope to see in the future.

The Lake District

The first and still the most impactful memory is the view over Windermere from the main approach road. I have been to all parts of the district many times since and I have lived and worked there, but still that view tells you with certainty that wherever you are from you are now somewhere else, somewhere very special. The cover photograph is an old one taken on a hike around High Street when I stayed in a log cabin near Kirkstone. The first few photos are a selection from the Lake District top ten mountains.

First Stay in the Lakes : April 2002

Also the first time I saw the view from the main road into Windermere, the best view in the Lakes. We – I visited with a couple of friends – stayed in a guest house in Ambleside and on the first day did the walk up and around Loughrig. The weather was perfect and each step I put down felt right, like this is the thing I should be doing. The views were all new to me then, virginal, and I can remember them like it was an hour ago.

Fishing : 1970 – present

My father left home, or was kicked out, when I was three years old. Eventually my mother moved in round the corner from where we were living with a man who was the father of three children, Andrew, Deborah and Mark. I used to play out with Andrew when I was eight or nine although the others were to0 young, Mark being the youngest at about three. His wife left him and took the kids and my mother moved into 26 Linnet Street with him. Only two aspects I see as beneficial growing up in that environment, firstly they left me alone and secondly my mothers husband took me fishing. He was well practised in mediocrity never winning a match, or even coming close, at the fishing club he was in but, nevertheless, he did take me and he did teach me the basics of the skill. He fished for little fish and thought that the men who caught more, or who caught the bigger ones were better than him, and he convinced me that they were too. It has taken me a long time, a lot of soul-searching, and a great deal of effort to work through that blockage. His children lived only a few miles away from us but he chose not be involved with them. I believe my mother thought less of him than I did of her. I caught my first Tench shortly after my divorce. A lad from where I was working suggested a lake on the way to Chorley and, contrary to my normal response, I said I would try it. Again I remember it like yesterday. I began fishing for small fish like every other time and caught plenty of them, then I began to think about catching something bigger. The tench – tinca tinca – was a fish that other people caught, never us, we just weren’t good enough. Well I got myself good. I have the picture of the first one I caught somewhere and I will put it on when I find it. One glorious summer morning, early just after sunrise, I baited a swim in the margin and caught seven superb specimens up to six pounds, I felt good about that. I don’t even care much about what I catch now, I have caught all the fish that I was made to believe I couldn’t, bream, carp, pike, tench, big roach, chub, barbel, so now I can catch a three ounce perch, see some wildlife and be thankful for a day well spent.

Started fishing the Lancaster Canal again after many years of super light tackle and catching mini-tiddlers. It has changed, or I have, or both, who knows. I had a day in the middle of winter, freezing cold, almost the worst conditions you could choose for a water like that, and fishing worm and bread too. But I still caught which was encouraging. Then I had a few hours a week or so later with a shad lure, and I hooked a pike (see below) I was so busy trying to take a picture that I lost tension and it jumped out of the water and away. Not my thing though lure fishing. Anyway, when the weather got a little warmer in early March I had two brilliant sessions at Salwick basin on the pole catching decent skimmers and fair stamp roach. I was just getting excited for the bigger bream to start moving when the lockdown hit, oh well its nearly May now and I reckon another two weeks and I’ll be back on.

Wales : 1998

I had almost forgotten about this. It was a holiday in north Wales at a campsite in, I think, Pwhelli. The boys must have been about a year old and I don’t think they came with us, in fact it would have been unlikely as I wouldn’t have been able to do very much while they were still pram bound. I do remember the campsite had a bit of a fairground on it which I took Katie on and which she cried her way around the bigger rides. We went swimming a lot too but not in the sea as the photograph suggests.

Stratford and Oxford 2018

Short trip to a couple of places I’ve not visited before, there are lots of these which, hopefully, will become many less over time. Oxford was great, of course it’s full of tourists – I’m one – but the intellectual heritage within such a concentration of buildings is overwhelming. Shakespeare’s birth and death place feels false, like a Disney version of the writer, part of this must be that hardly anyone really reads his stuff – I do – but mostly it is received literature. Still, as they say, been there and done that.