# 2023 in a Nutshell 2023 has been an eventful year for me! In this blog post I'll summarise my hobbies and goals this year and share some key statistics. ## Adventuring Adventuring is an umbrella term I use for hobbies that take me to adventurous destinations. regardless of why I'm there. I typically break this up further into: holidays, hiking, day trips, and travelling for work. - Holidays - Defined as 2+ consecutive days away from home. - 16 total holidays - 13x Scotland, 2x Wales, 1x England. - 26 days of work leave used on holidays (only made possible through changing jobs). - 3 days of remote working while on holiday. - 10 different people I adventured with, not including solo adventuring. - Day trips - 5 visits to the [Cairngorm Reindeer Herd](https://www.cairngormreindeer.co.uk/), 4 as part of holidays. - 5 concerts. - 3 aurora sightings. - 3 steam train sightings. - Work - 5 days out from work for scheduled medical treatment. - 3 work events across 2 companies. Photos related to each of my trips this year can be found on [my trips page](../../trips). This year I set myself a goal to go on holiday every month in 2023, which I achieved. The most holidays I went on in a calendar month was 2. I also set myself a goal to go outdoors each weekend, somewhere different, for at least 1 hour. Picking up hiking as a hobby and getting into photography typically made this trivial, though there were 2 technical successes along the way and 2 of my weekends in December lacked outdoor activities. In all 50/52 is a strong result and has had the desired effect: building a habit of casual adventuring over sitting indoors.

## Hiking In February I set myself the goal of hiking all 214 [Wainwrights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wainwrights) over 4 years, averaging at 54 per year. I set myself goals for this year as I started building fitness, scrambling skills, and habit: - **Hike all of Wainwright's Book 7** (33 summits) **before a self-imposed summer break:** completed on 1st July with [Great Borne & Starling Dodd](../../gallery?trip=2023-07-01-great-borne-starling-dodd). - **Summit 50 Wainwrights in 2023:** I have summitted 51 Wainwrights this year. Summit 50 was Wandope on 11th November. [This view of my photo gallery](../../gallery?tag=wainwright&year=2023&order=oldest) contains one photo of each Wainwright summit that I made this year. Across all my hikes this year I covered 307km and ascended 17.7km.

## Photography This year I pursued photography as a hobby as fully as I could. In June I bought a Sony ɑ7r V mirrorless camera as a significant upgrade to my iPhone 14 Pro Max. Since then, my lens collection has grown, and I've began to pursue astrophotography. Some numbers: - 29,000 photos taken: - *iPhone 14 Pro Max:* 15,000. - *Sony ɑ7r V:* 13,700. - *Sony ɑ550:* 230. - 12,665 photos kept (44%). - 1,163 photos [added to my gallery](../../gallery?year=2023&order=oldest). - 122 photos [selected for my annual shortlist](../../gallery?tag=annual-shortlist&year=2023&order=oldest). This list is the best way to flick through the best of my year. ## Rankings What's a retrospective without a list or two? ### Top 10 Holidays of 2023 I ranked all 16 of my holidays on the following criteria: travel, accommodation, scenery, activities, and company. - 10: 🦌 [Cairngorms & Loch Rannoch](../../gallery?trip=2023-01-06-cairngorms-loch-rannoch) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 January - 9: 🌄 [Isle of Skye](../../gallery?trip=2023-05-19-isle-of-skye) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 May - 8: 🦌 [Cairngorms & Aberfeldy](../../gallery?trip=2023-12-01-cairngorms-aberfeldy) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 December - 7: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 [Wales](../../gallery?trip=2023-09-02-wales) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 September - 6: 🌌 [Durness](../../gallery?trip=2023-10-13-durness) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 October - 5: 🦦 [Isle of Mull](../../gallery?trip=2023-05-11-isle-of-mull) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 May - 4: 🛥️ [Skye, Raasay & St Kilda](../../gallery?trip=2023-08-09-skye-raasay-st-kilda) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 August - 3: 🏔️ [Glen Etive Schoolhouse](../../gallery?trip=2023-02-18-glen-etive-schoolhouse) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 February - 2: 🏖️ [Outer Hebrides](../../gallery?trip=2023-06-03-outer-hebrides) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 June - 1: 🚗 [North Coast 500](../../gallery?trip=2023-04-14-north-coast-500) • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 April ## Top 10 Photos of 2023 From my shortlist I've selected my favourite 10 photos of the year. These were ranked on the following criteria: technique, composition, subject, timing, and emotion. Click each photo to find out more about when and where it was taken, or to view similar/related photos. Alternatively, view [this year's top 10 (unordered) in my gallery](../../gallery?tag=annual-top-10&year=2023). ### 10: Machair Bliss

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