Peak District life

Moving home

I’d had a dream for some time to move out to a rural village location.

To me, with a passion for landscape photography, the notion of living in the countryside felt like a natural next step in my life.

Long story short, a sequence of unrelated events, an alignment in the stars and a dollop of good luck and timing, resulted in me moving home to a little village in the Peak District, in October 2024.

It didn't happen overnight, I had been planning the move for two and a half years, giving up on the idea as a lost cause on multiple occasions during that period.

Now that the move has happened, what better reason to resurrect the blog part of A Little Notebook and add a few notes on my ‘closer to home’ experiences as I settle in to a new rural life in a quaint village, where I am most certainly the new kid on the block.

Using the medium of writing when sharing my more homely experiences feels more appropriate - a bit like a journal.

Vlogging would feel rather self centred and give the impression of self importance. Rest assured, my life is not that interesting and I'd much prefer writing about the people, cultures and places that I meet.

When I create photography and video content, I am much more relaxed about doing so when the subject matter is about something other than me, for example, a journey or photo location.

First winter

I am experiencing my first season and winter here. Christmas and New Year have just passed. My residency has just crept over the three month mark.

My house, built in 1760, is in generally good order. Much of my old furniture had been in storage and went up in smoke due to an arson attack on the storage facility in 2022. So during my first months I was slowly making my home feel like home. The usual activities of getting new furniture and decorating took up much of my spare time.

Incidentally, I have not as yet set up a room as a studio for my photography, but that's my next project. I've already committed the study for this purpose.

Videos and photo trips

Fortunately, I also had some spare time to edit photos and video from my recent photo trips. I’ve just uploaded to You Tube parts 1 and 2 from my trip to Slovenia. I probably have material for a further eight videos from trips already completed, including Norway and the Arctic Circle.

My first weekend of 2025

On Saturday, I took delivery of a large supply of logs and smokeless coal just before the snow and deep freeze arrived.

My upbeat mood that morning was somewhat deflated when my neighbour appeared, announcing that he was departing to get petrol for his electricity generator.

"Here", he said, "when it snows, it snows!". With some urgency, I nervously shuffled off to check my wine supplies.

After a busier than usual morning organising fuel, i spent the afternoon faffing around and video editing, before drinking a delicious but strong Armenian wine.

A wintery afternoon

After an afternoon of gossip and laughter with no less than ten locals today, I got stuck into clearing the snow.

A farmer with a snow plough had helpfully cleared the road this morning, only to pile it up along any unsuspecting car parked on the side.

Here's what the village looked like last night.

Here is what it looked like this afternoon at 3pm. That's my rental car.

More snow coming

There is a slight thaw at the moment, but freezing temperatures are expected later with heavy snow for four hours, starting 5am. That's followed by several days of temperatures dropping to minus 7° Celsius.

Guests are often frustrated at my reluctance to start the fire before an evening. But for the second time since moving to the Peak District, I'm burning logs and coal already at 3pm, like a pro arsonist. It's cold here.

By 10pm, we'd had an unexpected and very heavy downpour of rain and was forecast to continue until 5am. A stream ran down what had been the village road. Temperatures were 1 or 2°Celsius above freezing, but that's would change.

From 5am, 0° Celsius was forecast, along with heavy snow for a few hours, then continued light snow throughout the remainder of the freezing day.

Snow upon ice.