STORIES

Returning

North Wales, August 2026

I went back to Snowdonia after almost 3 years. I had been here many times before, but never alone. Previous visits were shared with my partner, and over the years certain places had become part of our own small routines - familiar roads, walks, cafés and stops along the way. This time she couldn’t travel with me. The landscape was familiar but being here felt different.

Welcome to Wales.

I returned to many of the same places. Black Rock Sands early in the morning. A pint at Plas y Brenin. Betws-y-Coed. The mountain paths and valleys I remembered from previous visits. They were still there, much as I remembered them, but the memories attached to them made me conscious of what had changed.

For five days I photographed as I moved through North Wales. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I photographed quiet mornings around the farm where I was staying - people I encountered, roads, villages, cafés, mountains and small moments that caught my attention.

There was no need to make sense of everything.

For part of the journey a friend joined me. Plans changed constantly.

One of our walks was abandoned because there was nowhere to park. Another, intended to be short, unexpectedly became more than four hours in the mountains and took us over Devil’s Kitchen and Y Garn. Along the Watkin Path we came across a baptism taking place in the cold, clear mountain water.

We walked, ate, drank, talked and changed plans as we went. Then he packed his tent, we said goodbye and I was alone again.

One evening ended with me watching shepherds and their dogs working sheep in a field beside the farm.

I began to realise that this trip wasn’t really unfolding as I had imagined it.

Perhaps very little does.

We make plans and expect things to follow a certain direction. Then circumstances change. We stop, think, adapt and continue. Sometimes the change is disappointing. Sometimes it takes us somewhere we hadn’t considered.

On my final morning I took the same short walk around the farm that had become my routine during the previous days. I packed the car and began the journey home, stopping once more at some of the familiar places along the way.

There was no dramatic ending. It was simply time to leave.

I had travelled to North Wales expecting to photograph a familiar landscape. Instead, I found myself thinking about memory, change and the uncertainty of what comes next.

The mountains had changed very little.

I had.