England – Page 20 – Where is Phil now?

Central London, a walking tour

Sunday 04 June 2017 – London.

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from Martha, a very old friend in NZ letting me know she was coming over to London for a conference for a few days and would I be free to do a catch up and a walk around some of the highlights of central London. Of course!

Yesterday, was perhaps not the best day to arrive in London, last night there was a terror incident in London Bridge which resulted in the deaths of 8 poor souls just going about enjoying themselves. London Bridge was on my planned walking route, but I was more concerned that Martha may not want to walk randomly about London, or that London may not be itself wonderful self after such an awful event, fortunately no.

I met Martha at Holborn station at 10:00 with a loose plan in mind to see as many of the key spots as was possible on foot in the next three hours.

Our first stop was Covent Garden Market, I used to work very close to here, so am familiar with the location. I only ever came here at lunch time or after work so was not used to seeing it so quiet, it had nothing to do with the incident last night, none of the shops were open so it was too early for tourists.

I haven’t played tourist for ages, so it was very enjoyable to walk around the city, taking a few photos as I went. We did walk down through Covent Garden and the back of Soho to Trafalgar Square, where I completely forgot to take any photos of either the National Gallery or Nelson’s column. There were quite a few tourists here, clambering over the lions and taking selfies, so me being me I got the hump with them getting in my photo and didn’t take one.

We passed New Zealand House on Haymarket, once voted the west end of London’s ugliest building – a very fair call in my mind!

Walking up to Piccaddilly Circus and it’s famous Eros statue, we were reminded by the banners that nothing shuts London down (contrary to then nutjob ‘alt-right’ press in America ) and that London is a welcoming and open city.

I subtly steered Martha along Piccadilly to Green Park station. I will hopefully start a new job in July and Green Park is the nearest station on the Victoria Line to where my new office will be, and I wanted to get a rough idea how long the walk would be. More on the new job once it is finalised, though I am quite excited about it!

I do not go to this side of London very often, so rarely walk through the royal parks any more, a situation I aim to remedy come July, they are such a lovely part of London. When I stayed in Shepherds Bush for 3 months at the end of 2012 I used to walk through Kensington Gardens, Hyde, Green and St James Park quite regularly. The empty deck chairs laid out in Green Park waiting to be rented remind me of grave stones.

Though good fortune rather than good planning we arrived at Buckingham Palace just as the changing of the guard was on, the Mall was closed so we had to wait for a few minutes to cross over in to St James Park. The area around Buck Palace was very crowded, which was good to see. There were a few police around, mainly controlling pedestrian traffic. I was surprised that there were not more, and I only saw one armed policeman during the entire walk, so pleasing to see.

St James Park is my favourite of the royal parks, it is small and the lake is great, and it has a pretty good cafe as well, always a bonus when out walking. There are great views, back towards Buckingham Palace,

and forward to Whitehall, where we will next walk; and close to where I hope to be working in July.

We had to stop for some obligatory photos of Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament. Taken at a slightly weird angle 🙂

Crossing over Westminster Bridge to the South Bank, where the crowds of tourists seem to be pretty normal, frustratingly normal when you are trying to pass through them. Good to see London standing up as normal, calm, considerate and a bit too crowded. I am a big fan of French street artist Invader and have not seen this little space invader near Blackfriars Bridge, nice!

Next stop was for one of my favourite London views; St Pauls from the outside of Tate Modern, with added bonus of bubbles from one of the many buskers.

Crossing over the Millennium Bridge we passed the cathedral before heading up Fleet St back towards where we started, we took a detour down one of the side streets and into the Temple area. I love this bit of London, especially on a Sunday, when it is almost deserted. I have never seen Temple Church before, stunning. One of the things I enjoy about the Temple is that it is a bit of a warren, I have been here a few times, yet I have never found this bit; and it is hardly a small bit !

Queen Victoria outside the Royal Courts of Justice.

Our final stop was at Somerset House, where we met El for lunch and a glass of rose. We love Somerset House in summer, a glass of wine in a beautiful courtyard just off of the mad busy Strand, wonderful.

That was the end of my brief walking tour of London for Martha. Three hours of walking and chatting and catching up on life back in New Zealand. A great day out, and a reminder that I do love this city!

On the good ship Bessie Ellen.

Monday 24 April 2017 – Cornwall.

John, a good friend of ours, had his 60th birthday at the end of last year, with winter not being the best time of year to have a nautical party, the celebration was not held until this weekend. John and his wife Deborah organised, and paid for a group of us to go to Fowey in Cornwall and then spend two nights on board the gaff rigged ketch, the Bessie Ellen. Wow !

We left London early on Friday morning, 13 of us in a rented van. Over the past month we have all been watching the weather forecast and it had been looking decidedly average for most of the month, taking a turn for the better the week before we left. It was going to be cold, but not wet. Our first stop was a Little Chef, I have always wanted to stop at one of the (in)famous road side cafes but have never been brave enough. This one on the A303 is a Little Chef with a difference, it featured in a 2008 TV series when celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal revamped the menu and the decor. Though Little Chef have dropped his menu now. The food was fine, the coffee was a bit meh though.

We arrived in Fowey mid-afternoon and were soon heading out on the charming water taxi (“DON’T STAND ON THE SEATS” !!!!) to our home for the next two nights, The Bessie Ellen. We were welcomed on board by owner and skipper Nicki and her small crew.

The majority of us were sleeping in the main cabin, which had 12 small bunks along the sides, they were quite snug. I was very glad I had remembered to bring ear-plugs with me, 12 people in their fifties were likely to form an informal middle of the night snoring chorus.

Once we had dumped our gear below decks and had a welcome cup of coffee and some cake we were split into three groups and, in my group’s case, literally shown the ropes. My group were shown how to raise the mizzen sail – the sail at the back of the boat. There are no fancy rope pullers here, only human power. The Bessie Ellen was built in 1904 to ferry clay over to Holland, and other freight around coastal UK and Europe. Originally she was not built for comfort, and there have only been a small amount of luxury added since! One of the other groups were taught about map reading and navigation, and El’s group were shown how to raise, and lower, the foresail and the three jibs, the small sails the front.

Once the sails we were up, we were on our way out of Fowey and into the channel. Magic !

There was not a lot of wind, enough to get a little bit of wind in the sails, but we were also using the motor to keep forward momentum. The group who were taught about navigation before we left were given the task to sail us to our first destination.

As we approached Charlestown, our destination for the night, it was all hands to the decks to drop and tie up the sails.

We were offered the opportunity to go ashore for an hour or so, and all took the chance to go for a short walk, and to sit in the sun and sup on a couple of pints in one of the many bars in this small village with its gorgeous tiny walled harbour.

Dinner was prepared for us by Pete the Chef. We guests were involved in working the ship, but the kitchen and cleanup duties were all cared for by the crew. We got to drink wine and beer and chat about the day while the work was all being done in the tiny kitchen. It was a really nice meal as was the evening drinks and chat!

After a ‘varied’ night’s sleep El and were up on deck reasonably early to watch a very nice but not spectacular sunrise, though there were some great clouds for me to photograph.

After breakfast it was all hands on deck with mops and swabs to clean the decks, sadly I arrived to late and missed out on this chore.

Very soon it was back to the sails again, and we were off for another sail/motor along the Cornish coast towards the west.

It was a gentle trip, the sea was dead flat calm so there was a lot of chat and a lot of gazing towards the land.

We stopped off the coast at Portscatho; where we all disembarked for a long afternoon walk over to St Mawes, where we will be picked up again for some afternoon sailing – hopefully with more wind.

It was a really nice walk, back on my beloved South West Coast Path to Towan Beach, where there was a small discussion at a signpost, before we headed inland and off the path.

We found a lovely little tea truck on the way, which we pretty much took over.

We walked inland to the estuary, though a lovely forested section of track toward St Anthony, where we caught a very expensive small ferry over to St Mawes. There just happened to be a very nice pub here, so it would have been rude to not stop for a drink.

Soon enough we were back on the boat, and with a decent breeze we were sail up and for the first time on the journey the motor was off and we moving fully under sail. It was lovely. Almost peaceful; just the creak of rope, or rope on wood, the sails crackling in the wind and the rush of the sea on the hull. There is not much like it!

Soon enough we in the Helford River, our home for the night. Lobster was served on the deck as a pre-dinner snack, and with a glass of bubbly at hand and good friends it was perfect.

The sunset was pretty decent as well !

Sunday morning was glorious, very very sunny, with a lovely crisp blue sky, it was also quite cold! After breakfast we were sail up again and off out of the Helford River, sadly to sail back to Fowey. Once out of the river I was given charge of the tiller, we were under sail , but the wind was really not doing us any favours so we were back on the motor as well. I quite enjoyed myself though !

There was quite a swell on the sea and some of the crew were feeling it a bit. Nicki, our skipper decided to give us a short break in the lovely hamlet of Polkerris. unsurprisingly there was a pub there as well, so yeah it would have been rude not to.

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A pint of lager in the sun, in a pub almost on the beach. Nothing wrong with that at all. There was nothing wrong with lunch back on the boat either!

Another hour of motoring against the wind saw us back in Fowey late in the afternoon, our sailing trip was sadly over. We had a great time on the boat, memories I will cherish, I love this bit of England and seeing it from the sea for the first time just added to the magic.

We had dinner in Fowey, and a fairly early night. I think we were all pretty tired from sleeping in a single room on the boat. Having our own rooms in a hotel, and the chance for a hot shower (there was one of the boat!) meant some very solid sleep. After breakfast on Monday we had an hour to look around Fowey before we had to jump back into the van for the drive back to London. I really liked the bits of Fowey I saw. There is a castle, which we discovered was private (boo) and some nice old fishing cottages. The village felt good, and having nice weather certainly helped…

Far too soon we were all piling into the van for the six or so hour drive back home, I had a stint of driving for a couple of hours, mainly on the motorway. The van is easy to drive, it doesn’t feel that big, and it handled well. The only issue was it was restricted to 62 MPH, which is kind weird when you are accelerating and then all of a sudden you are not accelerating any more, and over taking was a slow process!

I had some really good news about a couple of jobs I had applied for while I was away, one of which I was really excited about it. More news on that another day…

It was an amazing weekend away, and I feel lucky to be welcomed into such a great group of people.

The bluebells of Danbury

Sunday 16 April 2017 – Danbury, Essex.

It has been a while since I last posted, as usual it is because I haven’t really done much of interest. Though there are a few activities coming up that I know I will be taking a camera along to, so expect more posts soon. I really do not want to let this blog languish if I can avoid it.

It is coming up to bluebell season in the UK, the best time is usually the end of April / beginning of May, but I am away for the weekends around that time. With winter being pretty dry and warm I was hoping for some early blooms and took a drive out in to rural Essex to have a look see.

A FaceBook associate had posted some photos of bluebells near Danbury so rather than visit the usual spot in Wanstead Park I took a chance and took the 30 minute drive. Plus it was good to get the car out of the city for a while.

The drive out was pretty good; once I got out of the city and in to some country roads it was window down and music up. I love English country lanes. I was looking for the forest I had been told about when I came across a small strip of trees between the road and a golf course that had a nice display of bluebells. I pulled the car over and jumped the barbed wire fence for a quick look. It was worth it.

I love the little skull, I am guessing it is from a young fox.

When I arrived at the forest I was told about I met a couple of people walking dogs, asking them about the bluebells I learnt about Blakes Wood, a ten minute drive away and supposedly spectacular. I took a walk around this small forest and found another nice little field of bluebells under the trees.

One of my aims for this trip was to try and take some pictures that were different to the usual broad sweep of the bluebell field that I have done in the past, I was going to try some close ups and some good old fashioned panned blurry shots.

The forest was edged on one side by a rape field, it is such a wonderfully colourful time of year in Britain, I was hoping to find some bluebells rubbing up against the rape, but that was not to be. No clash of colours this time round.

I found Blakes Wood pretty easily, I was told it would be really busy and they were right, the small car park was full and there were cars up and down the narrow road. I squeezed my car into a small spot and headed off for an explore.

It is quite a big site, a number of people had maps, but I had none and was a bit blind. I wandered off down a path that looked likely, but in the end it wasn’t. At the end I looped back up a different path that was sort of heading back to where I started and soon came across a field of devastation. All the trees had been cut down and dropped on to a field of bluebells, truck tyres had dug them or quashed them flat. I was pretty gutted, thinking this was it. What looked to have been a large section of bluebells flatted by foresters. There were not many left standing.

I took another path back in what I hoped was the direction of the car park and came across a sort of Essexian bluebell nirvana. I took a lot of pictures, including some wavy blurry shots, ‘intentional camera movement’ (ICM) as it is now called. It was called impressionist photography when I was last doing 8 or 9 years ago. I am trying to let loose the inner Monet here.

The same field with the camera on a tripod!

The area is quite large, so there are quite a few angles and views to make images from. Given the number of people in the forest this area was very empty and I only saw one other photographer while I was there. Must be too late in the day for the real pros 🙂

I really enjoyed Blakes Wood, and will definitely go back there next year for bluebell season, now I know it is there I will aim to get up for dawn and get some better light, and if possible some magical glowing mist as well. Clichéd I know. I guess I could always make my mist with a bit of vertical panning.

Birmingham.

Saturday 18 March 2017 – Birmingham.

I have had a nasty head cold/virus thing for the past three or four weeks. It has not been bad enough to really lay me out, but it has been bad enough that over that period I had to take a couple of days off work. As a contractor on a day rate with no sick leave, that means no pay; so it was a pretty bad cold. It has also meant that El and I have not done a heck of a lot since the start of the year. It being winter hibernation time has not helped either.

The UK’s biggest photography show is at the NEC in Birmingham this weekend. As El had plans for both Friday night and Saturday morning that did not include me I decided I would go to Birmingham to have a look. I am trying to work out what to do with my photography at the moment, I know I want to do more of it; I am just not sure what that more is. Much as I would love to get a new camera, I wasn’t going to look at equipment, I was going with the hope of finding new inspiration.

I worked from home Friday morning and had booked a seat on the 14:13 train from Euston. It was a pretty good journey and I arrived in Birmingham late in the afternoon, just as the drizzle started! I had booked a hotel that was close to the station and headed straight there; after checking the direction on the map on my phone.

I crossed through Holloway Circus and stopped to take a photo of the Asian influenced statue in the middle, with two lovely English tower blocks in the background. My hotel was just on the other side of the circus. So far I was not overly impressed with Birmingham central, though it was living up to my expectations. The station was very modern, and there was a fairly new mall opposite it, but the walk to my hotel was a little ‘gritty’. Perhaps late afternoon on a rainy St Patrick’s Day is not the best time to visit an urban centre for the first time? The sky seemed to reflect the colour of the buildings below it.

When I got to the check-in desk at the hotel I discovered that at some point between checking the map on my phone and arriving I had lost my glasses. Naturally this was one trip away from home when I had not bought a spare. Sh*t! I checked in and headed back the way I came, but as expected, I found nothing. I bought a ‘cheap’ pair from Boots – I need to be able to read things or I will go bonkers. I have never lost a pair of glasses before, and it was a slightly disconcerting feeling. I can see to get around well enough, but I cannot read a thing without them.

It was still drizzling when I left Boots, so I went back to the hotel, and did not leave again until the morning when I left for a walk before heading out to the NEC centre for the opening of the Photography Show at 11:00. I didn’t really have a plan for walking around, though I wanted to see the building at the back of the shopping centre, ‘The Bullring’ building. A new and very futuristic looking construction.

It is a stunning piece of modern architecture and being right next to the church Saint Martin in the Bullring, it makes for a great old and new contrast.

I knew there must be some street art in the city, I had vague recollections of hearing some paint jams here, so was pleasantly surprised to walk past a Dan Kitchener hoarding nearby.

I had been walking toward what looked like some interesting old/derelict buildings and accidentally stumbled upon a major street art area.

Every street I walked down had art or graff on walls. Big pieces, some by artists I was very familiar with and some not so much, there was like a trail of art of leading me towards something, though I had no idea what. The chimney on this building was what originally led me here, there was a great view back up the street to The Bullring as well.

I was quite intrigued by this building as well, it turned out to be part of a college, in this section of the city there are not many tall buildings, so this one really stood out, I loved the water? tower. I am also a sucker for red brick and government issue green paint.

Following the trail onwards, I passed an Amara,

And something I liked by an unknown artist,

I crossed over a small canal, reminiscent of the canal we saw in York, tightly canyon-ed by the buildings on either side, and much narrower than the canal system in North London.

All of a sudden I found the pot of gold at the end of the street art trail, a couple of big car parks with walls covered in art works.

I recognised a Louis Masai, but not much else. There were a lot of other pieces around.

I think I stumbled into Birmingham’s answer to London’s Shoreditch. It is an area in need of gentle gentrification, more of a tidy than a complete make-over. There are a lot of neglected small factory, warehouse and office buildings, spaces that would make for great studio and gallery places. Though we know what happens when gentrification comes along, and it is not all good news. This little square had been gentrified and was very cool, and if I had seen it yesterday I would have been tempted to come down here last night for a meal and a drink.

I walked past a record fair. I was very very tempted to go in…. I also like the idea that a city is a work of art, and I think this area of the city has achieved that to a degree.

However, I was on a mission to go the Photography Show, so I left the street art and record fair behind and headed to the station to take the train from central Birmingham to the NEC centre, about 10 miles away. My feelings about Birmingham have been turned around and I really enjoyed my walk.

The train was absolutely rammed, with lots of (mostly) young people in costume. Arriving at the NEC I discovered that Comic Con was being held there as well as the Photography Show; and a couple of smaller expos as well. The place is huge. As was the photo expo, much bigger than I expected.

I really enjoyed the expo. I will definitely go back next year, but will plan to go with someone else, preferably someone interested in photography! Though I was not planning on spending time looking at the gear I would liked to have looked at the cameras and the other technology, discussing pros and cons of the different systems and innovations. It was interesting to look around anyway, plus I wanted to avoid the temptation of holding a Canon 5d Mk4 in my hands!

I wasn’t there for the tech though, I wanted to check out some of the talks. As I said at the start I need some inspiration, I am stuck in a bit of a photographic rut at the moment, hence the lack of blogs and photography. I have some ideas, but need a bit of a kick in the butt to get going.

I attended a talk in the Canon tent by the photographer Jeff Ascough, about how he developed his style and it was really informative and very helpful. I left with good ideas, some thoughts on direction, and a validation of some of my thinking.

I left soon after the talk and headed back to home. I felt good about the trip.

All the photos were taken on my phone, I did take the G16, but did not use it in the end. I am really impressed with the IQ of the Samsung S7.

Back on the bike !

Sunday 22 January 2017 – London.

A rather belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and welcome to my first post of 2017.

It has been a very long time since I have been on my mountain bike, November 2015 was the last time I rode in the UK. I had a quick and awful pedal on my last trip to New Zealand and have only ridden the commuter bike once or twice since 2015. I have been meaning to get out more, honest.

I am going to stick to my usual excuse, no point in making up another one now. I have been really busy since I returned from my trip. I was unexpectedly straight back in to work and have been working ever since. As my contract finished before I left for India I was not expecting to be working so soon on my return, but I have been back at the same place on a sort of week-by-week basis.

I have also started to look for a full time permanent job, back to working five days a week. It is time to replenish a much hammered savings account. Much as I have loved working four day weeks, I have not saved any penny in over a year and have churned through the money I saved when I was working a full five days. I have been taking job applications semi-seriously this time, I have fired off quick responses to a couple of agencies but most applications have taken considerable time to complete. Fingers crossed one of those applications will prove that all the work has been worth it.

The other reason I have not ridden is I have been lazy, very lazy…

Last weekend as I was walking home from the laundrette I saw a mud covered mountain biker waiting at the lights near the end of my street. He looked like he had had a lot fun and I was quite jealous. I decided that I would do something about it. Mid-week and out of the blue I had a message from someone I have ridden with before asking me if I wanted to take a slow pedal around the forest. Perfect timing!

Fortunately all my bike needed was some air in the tires and a bit of chain lube, a quick spin around the block yesterday morning to make it all worked and I was ready to ride.

What I wasn’t really ready for was riding in -1 degrees. It was cold when I got outside! It was however a glorious sunny day, there was no wind and once we got going I sort of warmed up a bit.

There was a lot of frost on the ground and on the roofs of the parked cars as I pedalled up to the meeting point on Beacontree Ave. I was first to arrive and with a couple of minutes to wait took the first photo of the day. Frosty grasses in a road side tub.

With little exercise in the last 12 months I knew it was going to be a slow and hard ride, I was lucky that my riding buddy today, Tom, was not in for a fast ride either. I told him that I would be wanting to take some photos on the way. This was not just an excuse for multiple breaks. It was stunning out there this morning! Our first stop was only a few minutes in, this could be a long ride.

The ground was incredibly hard, I have never ridden on frozen mud before, mud that crunches under tyres or does not yield when ridden on, the puddles were mostly iced over and very few were broken under our wheels. Our next stop was at Highams Park Lake, which appeared to be completely frozen. I know shooting into the sun is a photography no-no, but meh, I have been breaking photography rules for years. Flareage!

I loved these leaves trapped under the thin ice on the lake.

It was a bit of a slog up Pole Hill, my legs were starting to feel it and we had only been going for 30 or 40 minutes. While we rested I went for a quick explore, looking for some frost laden leaves.

There is a great view over towards the Shard and down to Canary Wharf on a fine day, but there was a little mist around so we just had to make do with the view down over Chingford.

The ride down Pole Hill through the trees next to the golf course is one of a very small number of tracks that actually go down hill in the forest. So naturally it is one of my favourite trails in the park. There is also a great piece of single track on the other side of the road, with solid ground under-wheel, rather than the usual mud it was even better than usual. Though we did come across a really nice fern grove. So I had to stop…

I loved the way the frost made the surface of the leaves so white and fragile.

I didn’t take any more photos. Too tired and I needed to concentrate on the riding. We rode up to the tea hut at High Beach, which is a regular stopping point for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. 2 pounds 10 for both. Wonderful, no wonder it is so popular with riders and walkers.

The ride back towards home starts off well with some really nice and mostly downhill single track, but as we leave the forest proper and meander through some smaller, but still forested parks it turns into a bit of a slog. At least today it was not muddy!

All up we were out for about three hours. It was damn good to be out and about on the bike again!

One week later. I went for another ride again today. There was no ice, but lots of mud and it was so much harder.

Not quite autumn

Sunday 23 October 2016 – Epping Forest.

This will be my last full weekend in London until December. Next Sunday I am off to Berlin for three days on a work trip and the day after I return to London I am back out to the airport and off on a month long holiday trip to India, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. I am looking forward to it, though pensively.

I haven’t travelled alone and to somewhere out of my comfort zone since the month in Sri Lanka back in early 2013. I am now a lot more settled than I was then and am happy with my life and with where I am in it. Plus I have gotten a little older, softer and greyer in the interim. There are nerves, but I am very excited by it. The planning is almost over and the trip will soon be under way.

I have been waiting for full autumn to arrive for a few weeks now. With a long and reasonably dry summer over later than normal the trees in Epping Forest have been holding on to their green colour further into October than expected. While I very much enjoyed the summer, I was also looking forward to seeing the season change. I don’t think I am going to see it.

With no more opportunities to see autumn in the forest this year I drove there this morning to go for a walk with my camera so I can see what colour had come out. Visually, it was largely disappointing, a little bit of yellow, but no dark orange and definitely no red. Yet. It will come I am sure, I just won’t be here to see it.

I took a few photos, not a lot as the colour wasn’t there and I wasn’t really feeling it either. So here are a few of them.

It was really nice to be outside in some (relatively) fresh air and take a walk among some lovely young and old trees, if they were refusing to show off their autumn colour.

The ‘YHA’ 2016 Weekend.

Sunday 09 October 2016 – Brancaster Staithe, Norfolk.

I have not been to the north Norfolk beaches before. As a child I visited family friends in Kings Lynn a few times, but as far as I recall I never made it to the coast. I was looking forward to this weekend away. My Walthamstow social group have been going together away once a year for many years, renting hostels or other large accommodations. This was to be my first year joining the ‘YHA’ weekend, and El’s first away for quite some time.

This year the National Trust Brancaster Activity Centre in Brancaster Staithe had been hired for the weekend.

As I do not work on Friday, El took the day off work and we left late morning to take a slow drive up to the coast. We have looked at North Norfolk a couple of times for weekends away but had never made it up there before. As we were in no rush to get there we took the long route and aimed for Cromer at the other end of the coast to Brancaster, we did get a bit mis-placed a couple of times on the way. After the second time I decided to get the map out of the glove box.

We arrived in Cromer early in the afternoon, and after taking a light lunch in a cliff top cafe decided to go for a walk around. Stupidly, and I still cannot believe this, both my camera batteries were flat. I had been looking forward to doing some photography this weekend, I had packed my DSLR, filters, lens, tripod, all the gear cleaned and ready to go. But I failed to charge my second battery and somehow must have knocked the power switch on when I put the camera in the bag this morning, and no charger either. I had even considered taking the other camera as well, but decided against it. 2^nd stupid mistake. I was not amused with myself as my phone has a lousy camera. All photos here are from my phone.

We didn’t go for a walk in Cromer, but here is a breakwater.

The drive to the hostel was really nice, there are some lovely little villages across north Norfolk, and they have their own style of building with a large pebble dash on the outside of the buildings. It was quite busy, even for a Friday, this particular stretch of coast is known as ‘Little Chelsea’ as it is full of Londoners’ second homes. There were a lot of London voices about.

We were the first to arrive in the hostel, and it is a lovely building, renovated recently after a high flood in 2013.

There was well over twenty of us including a reasonable size group of teens, no kids any more. Friday night was spent in, chatting over fish and chips and a couple of beers, though Paul and I snuck out for a pint at the nearby pub when the board games came out. Not our thing.

On Saturday the group hired bikes and went out for what turned out to be quite a mega-ride. El cannot ride a bike so we hopped back in the car and went out for a drive to visit some of the villages we passed through yesterday. Our first stop was Wells-next-the-Sea, a lovely village, definitely given over to tourism, embracing it and there were a lot of people visiting – and it had two shops with used vinyl as well. We will be back!

It was interesting to see a boat with a silver fern painted on the side, I wonder if this is owned by a Kiwi? Or maybe just someone who follows the All Blacks.

I loved this church in Burnham Deepdale. The tower is not one I have seen much of before, and I am guessing it is of Saxon origin. There are a few original looking churches on the coast, but I was still smarting from yesterday’s stupidity with camera batteries and was not really interested in taking photos.

After dinner on Saturday most people went for a drive and then a walk to the beach for a beach fire, we didn’t go in the end. The beach is quite a way from the hostel, this area is full of estuaries and small rivers and the area is a national reserve and a bird watchers paradise.

Sunday morning was all activity as we had to be out of the hostel by 10:00. Once the bulk of the cleaning had been completed and we waited for the stragglers to get organised I went for a walk out behind the hostel at the edge of the estuary. I was now used to the fact I had no camera, and went to take some photos with my phone, though regrets I had a few ! The light and clouds were brilliant, and I do love brilliant clouds, the DSLR would have loved it out there.

We arranged to all meet in the village of Blakeney Quay, before moving on to our activity for the day from the village of Morston Quay. I took one quick photo at Blakeney before we were back in the car and off again.

Caroline who had organised the weekend had booked us on a seal watching trip to Blakeney Point, were the estuary meets the North Sea. There are seals here all year round, both common and grey seals, with numbers of each type varying at different times of year.

The weather was not too bad for a boat ride, it was cold, but not too windy and there was no chop at all on the estuary, though there was some rain coming in. Which I was fascinated with all the way out to the point.

There were a few seals out on the point, common seals on the land and a couple of young grey seals playing in the water. I definitely missed having a camera here and the phone did not do justice to the occasion sadly. Lovely seeing the seals, they are such funny looking animals when they are on the land, yet so elegant in the water.

On the way back to land we stopped off for a brief walk around on the reserve, there are a number of small wooden huts in the low dunes, and they very much reminded me of New Zealand, the whole scene could have been uplifted and dumped ‘down under’ and nothing would have looked out of place.

Well, maybe the life boat house would have!

Back on dry land, we reconvened in Blakeney Quay for a quick pub lunch before jumping back in our cars and heading back to London.

It was a great weekend away, I feel very lucky to have been able to join in with such a long standing tradition. Thanks to all those who organised, shopped, cooked and kept the weekend going. Wonderful.

We will be back – and next time I will double check my camera batteries and then check them one more time!

Emptying the nest.

Sunday 11 September 2016 – Torquay and Exeter, Devon.

I am an empty-nester yet again.

I don’t talk on here about my family that often , and even less so about El’s, so I am not going to go into much detail now as I do not want to intrude into their privacy. El has two sons, Joe and Charlie. Joe has been away from home for four years, has completed a degree at Oxford and is starting his masters in Nottingham. Charlie finished his last term of school in July, got the excellent grades he was expecting and this weekend he too left for university, starting a history degree at Exeter.

Charlie is going down to Exeter with his dad and El and I are going to make our own way down and stay the night, slightly further into Devon, in Torquay. There is a music festival on in Exeter and with a lot of students turning up with their families to add the temporary population explosion there was no where to stay on Saturday night; and to be honest it is far nicer being by the sea!

We left Walthamstow about 8:30 on Saturday morning, I was expecting it to be a five hour drive, and I was not disappointed at all, or evenly pleasantly surprised. It took five and half hours to get to our hotel in Torquay.

We had a room with a view of the sea and down the coast path to Paington and Brixham; fabulous. I love seeing the sea, only a blue sky over it would have made this better 🙂

After unpacking we took to the roads and explored Torquay. It is an interesting town on the wider Torbay, and part of the ambitiously named ‘English Riviera’. I am guessing it is an old fishing town, that embraced tourism back in the 19^th century. The port is full of private yachts and motor boats now. It is part faded glory and part modern tourist spot. It took a while to warm into it, but we really liked it in the end.

I am not a big fan of the sight-seeing wheel that now seem to dominate the horizon in every town, though I liked the relationship this one had with the surrounding buildings and land.

I think this photo shows the changing fortunes of many a seaside town. The good old pavilion, ‘THE’ place to hang out for many decades, shuttered and closed and the money is spent going (slowly) round the wheel.

Though tourism has not quite fully replaced fishing – yet.

We had not banked on Torquay being so busy. We went out to look for dinner at 8:00, thinking we would walk in to anywhere we wanted, only to discover that most places were full. We ended up sparing no expense and having a small pizza each at Pizza Express, no complaints though, it was good pizza and the service was excellent. There appears to be lots of stag/hen type nights in town, lots of groups of blokes and women prowling the streets and filling the bars and restaurants, I think it is that sort of town now.

It does have a nice waterfront to walk along and the lights around the bay are lovely.

We didn’t linger in the hotel on Sunday and were on the road soon after breakfast, heading off on the slow road into Exeter. it was very nice being by the sea, I really miss it, and just being near it again does give me a real lift.

Charlie is staying in halls for the first year and had an arrival slot of 12:30-13:00 to unload his stuff into his room. El and I wanted to have a look around Exeter, so parked up and had a walk around the centre of town. Starting down by the really nice quay.

I have been here before, almost four years ago to the day, and explored all the historical places back then. Though we did pass a few on the way up to the cathedral, starting with the wonderful medieval bridge, crossing a piece of grass that is a hundred or so yards from the river.

We stopped for a coffee in the square, the church behind the cafe is the last church Saxon Church in England, consecrated in 1065, the year before the Norman invasion.

After coffee we walked up to the university area on the edge of town, I left El at Charlie’s home for the next year, to wait for his arrival and went off for a walk on my own.

I walked up past the remains of the castle walls.

A wonderful piece of street art, I am assuming by Vhils, it is in his unique style. He uses small amounts of explosive to blow out tiny sections of the wall, leaving behind a wonderful piece of art.

Passed an ancient alms house.

Ending up back at the cathedral again.

Soon after arriving in Cathedral Green I had a call from El to let me know that Charlie was settled in, so I went back to the car and drove up to the uni for a look around his room, before we all went for a late lunch in a nearby pub.

This lovely day out was followed by a less than nice five and half hour drive back to London and home. We arrived knackered at 8:30 and didn’t stay up much beyond that!

For the next wee while, during term anyway, El and I will be empty nesters. A new chapter in our life.

Advice wanted on Pushkar and camera bags. These things are not related!

Thursday 01 September 2016 – London

After a fairly busy period we have had, what seems to be, a quiet couple of weeks. It hasn’t been of course; it is summer and it feels like we have been fully occupied, making the most of warm and rain free days and nights. I have just not taken many photos worth sharing!

We did visit Tate Modern and explore the brilliant new wing, what a fantastic building it is, inside and out. With bonus great views in all directions.

We also went to a preview screening of ‘The curse of The Chills’ a film about one of my favourite New Zealand bands. Singer/songwriter/guitarist and main-stay Martin Phillips did a solo set after the screening which we both really enjoyed, he played a couple of my favourite Chills tracks, which is always a good thing.

Amongst all this busyness we have been planning a bunch of new activities and the next couple of months are crammed with things to do. We have trips away, concerts, dinners, parties, and all sorts of other stuff organised or semi-organised before I head off to India and New Zealand in November.

Planning for my trip is going well. I have all my flights booked, which means dates are now all confirmed. I have two weeks in India, followed by three days in Brisbane visiting my son, two weeks in New Zealand with family and then two final days in Dubai on the way back to London to break up the journey. If life was perfect then I would be able to spend more time in each of those locations, but I guess I have to pay for these trips somehow. I should not complain, my life is pretty near perfect!

For this trip I have finally decided to take my DSLR with me. It is an old and heavy beast and I have avoided taking it away for, probably, all the wrong reasons. With the exception of visiting my daughter in Mcleod Ganj in the far north of India I am going to spend my time in Rajastan. I have timed my visit to coincide with the annual Pushkar Camel Fair a major festival in India and one I am expecting to be a source of some great photographic opportunities. Visiting this major event has prompted me to take more than just my pocket sized Canon G16.

Have you been to the camel fair ? If so please come and say hi, let me know what I should expect, or better still send me a link to your story if you have it shared on the interweb.

I am going to buy a new camera bag for the trip, mine is just not robust enough. I want something practical for a large DSLR body and three lenses, plus a 13inch laptop. It needs to be easy to carry for long periods in hot and dusty conditions and would be my day bag so it must have room for all the bits you would carry on a day out – not just camera things. I would like something that does not scream ‘I have a really expensive camera in me!’ I am open to any recommendations, so hit me with some in the comments.

Thanks Smile

Bath and The Roman Baths

Friday 29 July 2016 – Bath.

Thursday morning was a bit grey and damp and the renovation work in the flat above us had started by 8:30 so we decided to leave one day early and stop in Bath on the way home for a night. We have been talking about going to Bath for ages, but there is always somewhere else to go. As we had to drive past it on the way home it just seemed like the right thing to do. We booked a hotel online, packed the car and drove off. Into the rain…

We arrived in Bath just before lunch time, the room in the hotel was not quite ready so we decided to dump the bags and go for a short walk. As we stepped outside it absolutely poured with rain, very un-English like rain as well, proper rain rain… We went back inside and had lunch until the room was available. Luckily that was the end of the rain for the day, the forecast was correct and we had a pretty good afternoon and evening.

I selected a hotel that was outside the immediate centre of town, I didn’t want to have to faff too much with the car, and a lot of the central hotels had no car parking. We were only a 10 minute walk from the centre, and it was a nice walk in.Like many Roman and medieval towns Bath is located on the side of a river, in this case the River Avon. We were staying on the far side of the river.

Bath is famous for two things, famous in my mind anyway. The Roman Baths and the Royal Crescent, and we visited both. On the way to the Royal Crescent we passed through The Circus, a roundabout surrounded by wonderful Georgian Terraces. I suspect that some of the pictures I have seen on the internet purporting to be the Royal Crescent, were actually taken here. I much preferred this to the nearby Royal. Crescent. The circus was built between 17544 and 1768 and the buildings are 318 feet from the centre of the circus – the same as Stonehenge. John Wood (the elder), the designer believed that ancient Bath was a centre for Druidism. I really like knowing (and then forgetting) these little snippets of local history!

The Royal Crescent was designed by John Wood (the younger), the son of the architect who designed The Circus, though it was built just prior. It is still magnificent, but a fair bit of it was covered in scaffold and there were too many cars parked outside to see it in all its glory. There were a lot of tourists here as well.

We took a walk around old Bath after leaving the Royal Crescent. Bath is a very old town, the Romans built their first spa here in 60-70AD but there are hints of a long history prior to the Romans coming to town. It is a World Heritage site and is well preserved and very nice. We would move here tomorrow ! Even though it is a tourist town and quite busy when we visited, there are plenty of places to wander to get away from the business. The centre had a nice feel to it.

One of the things I like about my travels and exploring is finding out little titbits of history, things so minor that they are totally irrelevant to almost everyone, but finding them can make a day. Today I found Sally Lunn’s house – the oldest house in Bath, but more importantly the home of the Sally Lunn bun. I loved Sally Lunns, a few years back I used to have one every day for morning tea from a bakery near work. I never knew they were actually named after a person!

We had booked ourselves an early dinner in a well know vegetarian cafe behind the cathedral so decided to just hang out in and around Bath for the rest of the afternoon, we crossed the Avon behind the train station and found this building with high river marks and dates up its side. There must have been some major floods here in the past, I was standing up right when I took this photo, so those marks are well above my head.

The river was very benevolent today though.

The vegetarian cafe was excellent, an imaginative and different menu and the food was excellent, as was the wine we had with our food. I am glad we had decided to go and visit the Spa after dinner, it gave us a good chance to walk the food off !

The Roman Baths are the main attraction in Bath, I have not been before, though El has visited a couple of times over the years and told me the museum just gets better and better. It is not particularly cheap to enter, but well worth the money. It is excellent – one of, if not, the best local museum I have been to. Even better was that it was open until 10:00pm in summer – which mean for a much smaller crowd early in the evening than the middle of the day.

The baths were built by the Romans between 60 and 70AD, probably on the site of a Celtish site dedicated to the god Sulis, known as Minerva by the Romans. There was a temple to Minerva here as well as the bathing area. The site was redeveloped many times up until the 5th century when the Romans left and the water ways silted up.

Nothing much happened again until the 12^th century when new buildings were erected, there was plenty of further redevelopment up until the 18^th century when the current building shell was finally built by the good old Woods – both father and son involved. I loved it, we both loved it.

As I said earlier, the museum is really good. Well spaced and paced and designed to cater for a lot of people. There are some interesting things to see and plenty of information both visually and through an audio guide. I took a lot of photos!

It really is a terrific place to relax on a relatively quiet evening.

The temple pediment and Gordons head, is a magnificent relic, probably 1^st century and the carving is stunning, remember this is 2000 years old! It was discovered in the 18^th century and no-one really knows what all the related carvings mean, there have been many interpretations over the years.

This gilt bronze head of Sulis Minerva was found in the 18^th century renovations, the statue would have stood in the temple near the baths.

There were a few statues and sculptures in the museum and stupidly I did not make note of the names.

It was mid-evening when we left and took a slow walk back to our hotel, the sun was setting over Great Pulteney St.

Arriving back at the hotel just as the sun was finally going down over the grounds at the front of the hotel.

As expected we really enjoyed Bath. Though we did not linger on Saturday morning, packing up the car and heading back to London. On a gloriously sunny day, of course!