Salute and the Pennine Way 2024
May 11, 2024Life goes on, and occasionally the blog as well! For the first time in a long while I felt like typing something here, so here goes. Nothing dramatic as usual, busy with life things and all that. What follows is a description of my latest trip!
Salute 2024
I went, I helped BunnyBadger games put on participation games (and painted up a zombiefied Joe Biden and a glittery Taylor Swift for the Trumpocalypse game), I enjoyed the atmosphere, walked with Emmi around the show, met friends…the usual! My Salute purchases have been dwindling year after year, this year I got a bunch of brushes for both myself and Emmi for her craft hobbies. Ironically, some years after my long “only pirates for me thanks” miniaturing period has come to a close (for now at least), the theme of Salute was pirates. Oh well!
In addition to the brushes, I picked up some lovely, characterful futuristic law enforcers from Die Hard Miniatures. I put these together and cleaned them up last night, and I remembered how much work there is working with metal compared to resin casts and prints.
Photo © Die Hard Miniatures
In addition to the miniatures, I bought the Sci-fi Backdrops picture book by Jon Hodgson, published by Handiwork Games. I was silly enough not to get in on the Kickstarter, but conveniently got this through Bad Squiddo. I had to quickly try it out, and I can safely say this is one of the must fun miniature-related things I have bought in years! As you probably know from reading this book, I game very little, but I do enjoy the storytelling aspect of miniaturing, so this is perfect stuff for me. I lined up a few scifi models for demonstration purposes.
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
The Pennine Way
If you’re a long-time reader of the blog, you might remember that five years ago Emmi and I did about a hundred miles of the Pennine Way national trail in the UK as our honeymoon. The trip was excellent and left us hungry for more, so we decided to do the whole thing of 268 miles. What followed was three weeks of beautiful views, bog (and more and more bog), quaint villages, friendly people, tiny lambs, and an amazing feeling of freedom in the walking bubble. While it was a physically strenuous trip, I guess getting to the blog after a long, long break is evidence that it was a welcome recharge of energy, creative included. I have about a million photos, but I’ll just share some choice ones below. If this feels tempting, I’m happy to provide advice!
It genuinely feels nice to be writing the blog after such a long break! Who knows, this might become a thing again. Anyway, I’m still alive and well and playing with my toy soldiers! How is everyone else doing?
Dawn of the Lead 
Love the scenes you have set up with the backgrops very cool.
My parents don’t live too far away from a section of the Pennine Way- which bits have walked?
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! The backdrops certainly amp the photos up.
This time we walked the whole thing from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, last time we did Malham to Alston. Whereabouts do your parents live?
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Meltham so very close to the dark peak areas. The bit of the Pennine way near Blsck Hill is somewhere I’ve walked a lot too.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Oh brilliant! Some amazing scenery thereabouts, and great walking obviously.
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Glad you enjoyed Salute and the walking! 🙂 Some nice pictures there, so thanks for sharing! It was a bit of a chilly, wet April so not surprised at the boggy bits, but you also got some nice weather! A long time ago, in what seems like another world, I used to travel frequently from the North East of England to South West Scotland – on return trips I’d nearly always drive back along the military road (it’s a public road) so that I could see Hadrian’s Wall and enjoy the scenery!
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Thanks John! Apparently it’s been a super wet year, I think that showed. The scenery was beautiful though, and the weather was very decent throughout – especially compared to Finland that had a backlash of winter for a large part of our trip…
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I bought that backdrop book too! I was enticed by some blogger showing off nice pictures. Welcome back to the blog, take a break but come back periodically!
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Glad you enjoyed the hike mate – it’s on my bucket list for sure! I think I’ll try it on a dryer year though 😂
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Not a bad idea at all – to be honest though, getting your feet wet is very much a Pennine Way thing 😀
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