Before

"Call yourself a photographer! You walk all that way, you take your photos and then you realise the camera was set to 1600 ASA!"

"I know. It is unpardonable. Especially on such a sunny day. I could have gone back and retaken the photos. But life is too short."

Anyway, this panorama is for reference just in case we get lots of snow. I will retake it then.

Geographically we are at the edge of the Vale of York, looking towards the Wolds rising to the East. The formally hedged landscape of the Wolds hides the prehistoric divisions that are marked by earthwork banks and ditches. Within fields there are prehistoric burial mounds some of which were systematically excavated towards the end of the 1800s. Others were protected from invasion by trees and they remain untouched to this day.

Symbolically, in this photo, I face towards prehistory and away from the predominance of everything Roman as represented by York's history. There is a continuity there that was severed at the start of historic times. There is so much that is outside the grasp of our understanding.

In our own back garden we have evidence that rural Ironagers continued their lives unchanged by the Romanisation that surrounded them. But they lacked a voice.