To celebrate eight years of publishing Ernest, we ask contributors to share their memories of journeys undertaken for the journal, from breaking bread at a Greenlandic kaffemik to floating with jellyfish in the Salish Sea. Here, writer Joly Braime reminisces on seeking moody landscapes in the misty North York Moors with photographer Daniel Alford for issue six.
Images by Daniel Alford
“This is like the barrow-wights scene out of The Lord of the Rings,” said Daniel with delight as we picked our way through Bronze Age burial mounds rising dimly out of the thick hill fog.
My first job for Ernest was a piece called ‘Yorkshire’s Last Vikings’ in December 2016. Art director Tina wanted to base the artwork around moody shots of the North York Moors, so landscape photographer (and Ernie regular) Daniel Alford gamely boarded a six-hour train from Cardiff with instructions to look for a bespectacled man and a small black poodle on the platform at Scarborough.
As luck would have it, my other article for issue six of Ernest had involved brewing 40 pints of 7.5% Burton ale, so we cracked open a bottle or two that evening as we sat by the fire at my cottage poring over OS maps, my dog snoozing disloyally in Daniel’s lap.
Our dawn shoot at Danby Beacon was wispy and atmospheric, but we spent the rest of the day in a proper pea-souper of a moorland fog. We inched my old Volvo blindly along single-track roads then ditched it in a lay-by and struck out on foot to seek out abandoned buildings, ancient burial sites and exposed ridges where we hoped we might catch the mist swirling in the dales below.
Daniel was the first of several remarkable photographers, illustrators and designers who’ve brought my words to life. There’s such pleasure in watching talented people pick up your ideas and run with them, and the article that lands on my doormat is always more than the sum of its parts.
