When I signed off on my last annual round-up blog, I never expected the following year to turn out quite as it did. It's been a strange one for everyone, myself included, both good and bad. I certainly didn't expect to be indoors so much and see my family so little.

I had intended to blog more often this year but due to travel restrictions, I felt like I had nothing interesting to write about. Therefore, I channelled my energies into other projects. So please keep scrolling if you would like to see what I got up to over the last twelve months during various lockdowns (we're currently on number three) and tier restrictions.

I'll start with our traditional New Year's walk. It was our biggest crowd yet. Fourteen of us (plus two doggos) met mid-morning in the Llyn y Fan Fach car park. Some more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed then others. The Brecon Beacons has been a favourite hiking spot for us for many years now. It never fails to surprise us each time due to the ever-changing Welsh landscape and weather conditions. The hike started off overcast as we made our way along the path and after an hour or so, as we climbed higher, the thick fog rolled in. We could only see a few metres in front of us, trudging through marshland that one of our friends had led us into and for which others were not prepared for. So we turned back and regrouped in the car park for some hot chocolate.

You may remember, that at the end of my last annual review we had just exchange on our first home. Well... we got the keys on January 27th and set to work updating the place ready for us to move in. The house was built in 2005 and so still fairly new but the decor was very dated. Luckily we didn't have any ghastly wallpaper to deal with, in fact, on first glance it looked like a blank canvas. We started by getting a plasterer in to skim the Artex ceilings that unfortunately covered every room in the house and then we whitewashed the whole thing. We had two weeks before we were due to move in so we wanted to make as much headway as we could before all our earthly belongings filled every nook and cranny.

I didn't anticipate how long it would take to pack up the old rental property. It seems that after five years of living in a three-bed property, you accumulate a lot of crap. I took some time off from work to move and we finally got round to interning my Dad's ashes at a cemetery in my hometown. It was a beautiful spring morning with dappled post-shower sunlight and birds chirping in the trees.

February 14th (which I'm not sure we even noticed was Valentines Day at the time) was a tiresome day of cleaning but we said our goodbyes and were out of the dusty Victorian rental and living full-time in our first home. I had become pretty ill with the stress of a house move and all the dust we kicked up in the process. We now had new worktops in the kitchen, new flooring in two of the rooms upstairs and our bed was built and ready for us to collapse onto.

In March we celebrated our friend Jame's 30th birthday with a big surprise party and then my 32nd birthday on the 10th. We took a day trip to the the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Dan surprised me with a pizza party that evening. Little did we know, that this would be the last big gathering for the best part of a year. If we had, I think we would have savoured it a lot longer. Three days after my birthday, a pandemic in the UK had become so bad that my employer sent us home to work remotely instead.

I must admit that, at the time, I thought it would be for month max and even that felt absurd. There are still things sat on my desk now, which I have not used in almost a year! Colleagues I email every week but haven't seen in the flesh for that same time.

Shortly after, a nationwide lockdown came into place and I got furloughed (a scheme where I was not working but still paid 80% of my salary). I'm very fortunate to have benefitted from this scheme, especially as all of Dan's travel film-making work had disappeared overnight. For new homeowners, this was pretty unsettling for both of us. We also couldn't order any furniture or get our broadband installed for six months. In the grand scheme of things, this wasn't a big deal but we were running out of boxsets to watch and walls to paint.

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In the end, I was furloughed until August, so I poured all of my energy into modernising and decorating our house. I used my personal Instagram account (@clairelatchem) to document the progress. It helped me keep busy and not lose my mind. I've included some before and after photos of the rooms in this blog, roughly in the order they were done.

In April I bought an old Raleigh step-through bike of off Marketplace and refurbed it into the black and tan beauty it is now. This is still one of my greatest lockdown achievements.

In May we celebrated seven years together by decorating mail-order doughnuts by Doughnuttime and then scoffing them both on the same day and regretting it afterwards.

I baked banana bread four times, Dan got into baking cookies and making banana pancakes for brekkie (it's really no surprise that we've both put on weight this last year) and we watched pretty much everything Netflix had to offer. We discovered some local walks and Dan started going out on early morning cycles along the river.

When lockdown lifted, I especially, was much more cautious. I wanted to get outdoors again but not around too many people. We went for a walk/picnic around the Pensford Viaduct area and took a drive to Woolacombe for a surf. We made sure we were distanced from everyone else but I cannot tell you how good it felt to be back out in the water.

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Things regarding the pandemic seemed to get better for a short while. We celebrated my best friend's non-wedding (the date she would have been married had it not been cancelled due to the pandemic) and we even managed to squeeze in a camping trip to Penzance with some close friends.

I had one of the best days of 2020 on that trip. We made our way down along the rugged coastal path to Porthchapel Beach. It was home to some the clearest, turquoise water I've ever seen and definitely one of the most beautiful beaches I've had the pleasure of visiting. It was forecast to be miserable all weekend and yet somehow we had sunny skies the whole time we were on that beach. We spent hours diving off the rocks and swimming in the sea and later returned to the campsite for hot showers, cold ciders and a delicious bbq dinner.

I decided to rebrand this website, moving away from the 'Superfex' moniker I had used since 2007, to make it more in-line with the nature of my travel/outdoor photography. Thus, Tall Peaks and High Tides was formed along with a new visual identity. The website is still a work in progress but I feel much happier about this new direction.

The New Tall Peaks and Hight Tides Brand Identity

August, and now back in full swing at work, I felt creative again. I dabbled with Procreate on my iPad some more, taking advantage of a ‘Skillshare’ free trial. I made my first few 'reels' on Instagram, shot a new self-portrait with my plants and produced an awesome tissue paper design for Dark Matters (an independent vegan brownie baker here in Bristol).

Last Christmas my brother gave myself and Dan a gift voucher for ‘The Wave’, a new artificial surfing pool opening in Bristol. Due to the pandemic, we weren't able to use it when it had opened until September when I had another best day of 2020. I took part in a beginner class, as I had heard the next step up was quite a big leap. The class was great and it's always good to refresh the basics but it was a bit easy. Since then they've brought out a couple of other options including a ‘Waikiki’ session, which sounds right up my street. I haven't had the chance to try it yet but hopefully by summer, I will have. The Wave is on the expensive side but they've had a tough year and for a landlocked (what water we do have is not fit for surfing) water baby such as myself, it's worth the cash. We also celebrated our friend Lottie's 30th here by turning up with gifts and cheering her on whilst she had a surf lesson.

I installed some wood panelling in Dan's music room/office, which instantly transformed it and my Mum came to stay during half term for a few days. We were supposed to spend it in an Airbnb on the Pembrokeshire coast but had to cancel as Wales went into lockdown that week. It rained the entire time she visited, except for a three-hour window where we happened to have tickets to Westonbirt Arboretum, catching the last of it’s Autumn colour palette. We snuggled on the sofa and binge-watched 'The Crown' together.

A week after Wales went into lockdown, the rest of the UK followed. This lockdown was harder. All of the same restrictions as before but working this time and with less daylight. We’d had a taste of freedom and lost it again. So we decided to start walking a lot more, exploring our local area and getting some much needed exercise.

We found lush parks near our house and rekindled our love for Nightingale Valley and St Anne's Wood, which are both on our doorstep. We discovered Greenbank Cemetery and went for muddy dog walks around Leigh Woods. Most importantly, I was moving again and taking photos.

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December came as a breath of fresh air. I work as a Graphic Designer for a retail company so October to December is always hectic. That being said, I love the ramp-up to Christmas more than the day itself. Picking a sustainable tree and attaching it to my roof-rack before trundling on home. Decorating it whilst listening to my dogeared 1966 pressing of Frank Sinatra's greatest Christmas hits and Netflix's fake fireplace plays on the TV. That day might be my favourite day of the whole season and another top day for 2020, despite the national fairy light shortage.

I won't go on about our Christmas too much as it was a bit of a mess. With sudden restrictions put in place just days before, we had to scrap our plans like most people I know. It was still a nice time but nothing near what we had anticipated.

So that concludes my 2020 blog. I'll leave you with some of my favourite consumables from this past year and wish you all a happy, healthy and hopeful New Year!