As part of my PhD research I plan to walk ‘the Line’, a 15 mile transept from Pelstone Cross Quarry up the hill from my house in Oltey to Coldstones Quarry at Greenhow Hill in North Yorkshire. It is a route I’ve cycled several times on the look out for the small wildflower, Geum Rivale.

On Friday 30 May I got a lift up to Greenhow Hill, walked up to The Coldstones Cut, a monumental land art sculpture which gives amazing views over the quarry. From that very windy viewpoint I then set off to walk home. It turns out to be 22 miles on foot, the route being less direct than by road, but it was superb. Really good footpaths, though the signage for the Six Dales Trail which I picked up above Pateley Bridge was a bit patchy. As were a few fields of cows and bulls.

There are no refreshment points on route (apart from a very welcome ice cream van at Fewston Reservoir) so I had to carry all the water and food I needed for the day.

I also took with me a Lomography ‘Simple Use Reloadable Camera’ which I loaded with a 24 frame Kodak ColorPlus 200 ISO film. I took one photograph at the start and end points of the walk and at one mile intervals in between. I simply took a picture of the view that was in front on me.

Really pleased with the results. The aesthetic of these prints, traditional 6 x 4 inches with a white border, is so reminiscent of my childhood. In a way, it plays with that notion of the ‘green and pleasant land’, of our ‘unspoilt countryside’, unchanged in my lifetime. But we know that is a lie. The landscape is full of hidden stories, hidden histories, an archive of the anthropological past. From quarries excavating millions of years of geological history, to flooded valleys consuming abandoned villages to supply our drinking water, to cricket grounds on the sites of old flax mills that employed child labour shipped to the North Yorkshire moors from London and the southeast.

But that is also what makes the landscape so fascinating to walk through.