Perhaps it was, truly (if I am to be honest with myself), more of the case that I would continue to have lessons with a certain girl who shall remain nameless, rather than any academic prowess, but Geography was always my favourite class: through both O (yes, that dates me) and A levels. And always, the lure of The Field Trip.

From odd afternoons scrutinising the local landscapes of North Yorkshire -- oh! the hanging valleys, glacial erratics, and alluvial flood plains -- to tracing the people and maths mash-up of Christaller's Central Place Theory in and around the Leeds conurbation... the sneaky pint at a back-street pub and potted-meat sandwiches eaten out of tin foil on Brimham Rocks... there was nothing quite like the Geography Field Trip. The expectation and anticipation. The butterflies.

The reward for several terms worth of map-referencing and endless study of the Australian coal industry was the week-long trip to Kettlewell, which took place -- for me -- in March 1982. For many of us it was the first full week away from our parents, and if you add in the heady cocktail of hormones and cheap cider, it's not too much of a push to recognise it as one of defining moments of my adolescence. Aside form all the bum-fluff stuff about Growing Up however, some other, equally important, memories remain which, over the rather rambling course of the past thirty years, have wound themselves into my DNA to the extent I cannot now recall a time when these truths which I hold to be self-evident, were not "me".

Kettlewell sits plum in the Yorkshire Dales. I haven't been there since, so I have no idea if it has changed much -- probably a few more coffee shops and outdoorsy/bike rentals places I'd guess -- but I assume it hasn't. We were camped in the Outward Bounds centre -- "the out of bounds" we oh so amusingly labelled it -- and were ferried hither and thither by mini-bus. Up a hill to study the watershed one day, following the old lime industry's boom and decay the next. We were taken pot-holing -- which has left an indelible mark upon my soul -- and were allowed to swim in the river on one surprisingly warm afternoon, it was March don't forget. Even thinking about that now it feels, sounds, like a different life. 

But there is one photograph I have -- mentally and physically -- that left its mark in more ways than one. It's nothing spectacular, but somehow quite important to me. We were on a mountain-side, I cannot recall eactly why now, digging down a small cross-section of earth... through the moss and sod, mud and scree... until we found the remains of some trees which couldn't, shouldn't, possibly have existed on that desolate hillside. But the suggestion was clear: there was a time when the landscape, the environment and climate, were very different froom that we were experiencing in our present. I think it was the first time I ever had a sense of vertigo -- in the sense of Time, rather than physical.

This little experience led me into studying archaeology at university (until I realised the cool kids did English, and changed) -- and that sense of vertigo has never left me. It's a feeling I get from time to time from the smallest things. That Proustian madeleine moment. Old watches and coins. Worn steps. Hand-rails. The unseen witnesses of time, memory and people. Rooms.

But back to the field trip. That thrill and excitement continues, too. No more so than when I am preparing for a shoot, as I am now. Next week, our Art Director and myself are flying out to Portugal (surprise, surprise it's the Alentejo) to shoot material for our new campaign for Inntravel. It's a consciously lo-fi shoot. A bit old school you could say. We're shooting on film using a Holga, and yesterday I had to re-learn how to load a camera), but in these HD times we're also taking a GoPro Hero and an Olympus PEN, as well as using our iPhones for Hispstamatics...

We have an itinerary. We have a fixer. We have our potted-meat sandwiches.

And I have those little butterflies. 

The other thing I remember very clearly about that field trip to Kettlewell: we were on our way back to Tadcaster when the news came on the radio that the Argentinian army had invaded somewhere called The Falklands. 

That's in Scotland isn't it? said the girl who shall remain nameless.