As my plane back to New York was leaving the U.K., I looked down and noticed that we were flying over the area where I grew up. Until I was 5 years old I lived on Walney Island, a long, narrow island shaped roughly like a square bracket "[" off the town of Barrow-in-Furness. I don't normally take photos from planes (they seldom come out well) but I decided this was too good an opportunity to miss. The distinctive shape of Walney Island is clearly visible in the photos.

As we continued north, we also passed the village of Seascale, where I lived from the ages of 5 to 17, and the infamous nuclear facility at Sellafield.