I’m a big fan of North Yorkshire. I have walked the Cleveland Way national trail twice which crosses 109 miles of the North York Moors and finest Yorkshire coastline, however i’ve never taken the camera there.

The opportunity arose to get up there for a weekend late July, so I set off on the 100 mile drive on a Friday afternoon (along with all of the families heading for their school summer holidays!) and a reasonable weather forecast.

Now, i’m not one for doing much forward planning with my photography. I’m more interested in subject matter these days than where the sun rises and sets. Good light is a bonus, but not a deal breaker for me and I find photography a lot more enjoyable as a result.

I arrived at my base location a few miles outside of Filey, unloaded the car and set off on a walk along the coastal path into Filey in search of fish and chips and a few photo opportunities.

Hope the owner of this tractor has a parking permit! I did wonder if the couple had just stepped out to admire the sea

Friday nights planning consisted of looking at my Ordnance Survey map to find a suitable walking route for Saturday. I settled on Goathland which is a lovely little village in the heart of the North York Moors and famous for being a filming location for the UK TV series, Heartbeat.

Quite a characterful village too where the sheep just roam the streets. Definitely a place where you have to watch where you put your feet!

So, off I set on what turned out to be a 22 mile photo walk. I’ve always loved hiking, in particular long distance walks. Taking a camera with me to capture things of interest seemed a natural progression. Turns out I did see quite a few things worth photographing as I passed through Grosmont just as the steam train was passing through. As they only pass through every couple of hours, it was definitely one to put down to a bit of good fortune as I don’t plan these things as i’ve already mentioned!

A man who seemed to enjoy his job. He certainly looked the part

The rest of the 22 miles was just about enjoying the landscapes across the moors with some views over to Whitby Abbey. I did follow the Coast to Coast route down to Falling Foss waterfall which I decided to check out. That was harder than it should have been as it isn’t the easiest to locate with quite a bit of river hopping and having to wait an age for others to take their selfies. I don’t normally photograph waterfalls as I don’t like lugging a tripod around on long walks, but fortunately i’d taken my Fujifilm X100vi with me which has a built in ND filter and good image stabilisation so I managed to get a few images.

Falling Foss waterfall with a photobombing dog!

On the Sunday, I decided to pay another visit to the coast and one of my favourites places, Robin Hoods Bay. I decided to get there early and grab some photos before the crowds. I love the narrow streets, interesting shops and bright colours of the bay. It’s a must visit place if you are in Yorkshire, as are all of the coastal villages. I stuck around as the holiday makers started rolling in after 10am as I always enjoy including people in my images. The highlight though was watching a tractor drive onto the beach and a guy get out and paddle his little boat out to sea. I’ve no idea why he was heading out there, although he was clearly expected back as his mate just sat in the tractor waiting for him to return.

The lonely tractor driver waiting for his mate to return. I do like images like this as they provide more questions than answers.

My final stop was the Hole of Horcum on the way home for a short 5 mile walk which brought a fab weekend to an end. I’ll definitely be back there in the Autumn as it looks an ideal location when those Autumn colours start to appear.

I’ve created a gallery of some of my other favourite images from the weekend which you can find on my website..

A weekend of photography in North Yorkshire

How the Fujifilm X100vi has changed my photography