So where in the world are we? This snap taken a couple of days ago should qualify as one of those quiz pics. Answers on a postcard please. There’s something of the Wild West about it - the light, the pines, the distant bare ridges. And the answer is… Morecambe Bay, more precisely Arnside, in Lancashire. Trains regularly cross the estuary at low tide, eventually head west to Barrow then turn right to trundle north to Carlisle. OK, that’s enough for the train-spotting chapter.

Arnside itself is a low-key seaside village boasting one pub with views and one great landmark - the Knott. Not a knot of nets, but a rather large knoll scattered with wild scrub and wind-swept trees. At the summit, fabulous views sweep across the vast bay down to Morecambe, site of the tragedy a few years ago when 21 Chinese cockle-pickers died, caught unawares by the treacherous tides. So the view has a bitter-sweet taste to it.

The best is inland, by far. The Cote d’Azur had its heyday a few decades ago, and now it feels distinctly stuck-in-a-bling-rut. Over-bronzed Bardot lookalikes with taught lifted faces are still, somehow, the norm. Even the boutiques of Cannes’ rue d’Antibes seem to cater for a particular kind of fussy glitz that (luckily) doesn’t exist anywhere else. Yet nothing can change the spectacular topography, however many neo-Provençal villas dot the hillside and apartment blocks rim the towns, and if you’re lucky enough to find that perfect restaurant with a view, it’s close to heaven.

It happens again and again - a country that just can’t seem to crawl out from under. I wrote a post about Burma only last autumn during the horrendous crackdown on demonstrating monks. All they wanted was freedom of expression, and above all freedom from the military junta. For a few weeks world headlines channelled our attention on them and calculated (hopelessly) the murders at the hands of the regime - then there was silence.