England,  Finland,  Gardens,  Svalbard,  The Changing Seasons,  Themed galleries

Gallery: an August selection (2025)

September 1, 2025 / 52 Comments

Why then do we feel this strange attraction for these Polar Regions, a feeling so powerful and lasting, that when we return home we forget the mental and physical hardships, and want nothing more than to return to them?

Jean-Baptiste Charcot

A powerful and lasting feeling indeed. Having spent the first half of August on an expedition cruise in Svalbard, I spent much of the second half wanting, like Charcot, to return!

But any return will have to wait, and meanwhile within a week of getting home we were off again, on our annual trip to Yorkshire to meet up with family friends in Grinton, the village where my father in law was evacuated. We stayed in a comfortable Airbnb in Masham and were blessed with good weather. So we took advantage of this to visit two lovely gardens in the area. Firstly, Thorp Perrow Arboretum, where as well as late summer flowers and beautiful trees we enjoyed an owl flying display. And then the Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park, with a huge collection of sculptures dotted around the beautiful valley gardens.

I will probably share more photos of these gardens one day, perhaps when I’ve worked through the large number I inevitable took in the Arctic, but meanwhile I’ve included some below. I’ve also included a handful of Svalbard shots and a couple from Helsinki where we spent a day on our way home. This should give you a flavour of some of our experiences while waiting for my more comprehensive Arctic diary posts.

Meanwhile at home …

With so much travelling there are, unusually for me, no photos taken closer to home this month. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t get out at all! There was just time between the two trips for a cinema visit to see The Materialists (formulaic but well done), and at the end of the month we also saw The Roses. I’d recommend the latter over the former if I had to pick! I met up with a friend, a former work colleague, for drinks one evening. Finally, I went to an interesting U3A talk about the women widowed by Scott’s failed Antarctic expedition. And so we come full circle to those Polar Regions!

Technical notes

Most of the photos from our Arctic trip were taken on my Panasonic Lumix bridge camera, apart from the first one below and the feature photo which were taken on my other point and shoot Lumix. The Helsinki and Yorkshire shots were also taken with that compact camera.

Most have been at least a little edited with Photoshop Elements and some more heavily edited with Nik Color Efex.

As always I am linking my selection to Ju-Lyn’s and Brian’s Changing Seasons challenge. Use the arrows to navigate the slideshow if you want to see all the images.

My feature photo was taken from a zodiac in Fjortende Julibukta on our Svalbard expedition cruise



52 Comments

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