Where is Phil now?

A street art walk around Fish Island.

Sunday 04 August 2013 – Fish Island, Hackney Wick, London.

It was another fine day and El’s last day off before she heads back to work, so a walk followed by lunch and a glass of rose were definitely in order. It was also the day of the big London bike ride, with thousands expected to turn out at Olympic Park for the start of the ride. Naturally we decided to walk around the canal at Hackney Wick, right next door to the Olympic stadium was in order. Neither of us had been there before and the canal tow paths are always great to walk on, plus I knew there was a load of street art to look at!

We left home sort of early, definitely before lunch anyway and seemed to miss the crowds at Olympic Park. All credit to the designers of the area as it just absorbs loads and loads of people seemingly with out crowding. The Olympic stadium itself is still closed though.

The canals at Hackney Wick are behind the stadium and the new Energy Centre, but away from where the bike ride was starting and it was fairly quite there, a nice place for a stroll.

We walked around Fish Island (which is not really an island at all !) for a while, watching this canal boat work its way through the locks up towards the Regents Canal. There are a huge number of boats on the canals at the moment, and I frequently see them moving around, but rarely through going the locks.

Some of the locks do not look that welcoming though – I definitely would not swim here…

I liked Fish Island, it is still a little rough, but you can see it is going to be all hipster posh and middle class sooner rather than later and there are loads of new apartments being built nearby. I could see myself living in a warehouse conversion like this though…

It was a great stroll around a part of London new to both of us, followed by a very nice lunch and rose back at Stratford.

There was of course loads of street art to look at too.

This wonderful new piece by Ekta has been the cause of some controversy…

Along with this new mural

Run

Sweet Toof

Malarky

I really liked this by Josh Jeavons, I haven’t seen any of his stuff before.

Broken Fingaz

Some unknown artists

I liked this painting on two wooden panels behind bars

I guess this sums it all up for some people 🙂

I find a small patch of heaven on the Isle of Wight.

Saturday 03 August 2013 – Isle of Wight.

It was the last couple of days of El’s holiday and she had arranged to visit someone who lived in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. I have memories of visiting the island from when I was a child and was keen to go back and have a look around. This plan was sort of taken over by new found need to go for a run so I planned on running while El did her visiting, a turned out to be a good plan !

A few weeks ago I had bought a new casual use day pack, but being the brand snob that I am I bought an expensive Osprey pack, one that also seemed to be quite good for running with…. I loaded it up with my running gear and a towel and we headed off to Waterloo station to catch the train down to the coast at Portsmouth. This weekend there is a big cycling event in London with tens of thousands of people expected to attend, it was a good time to get out of town, and loads of people with bikes were arriving at the station as we left.

It was also the first weekend of the new football season – except for the top ranked premier league which starts in two more weeks. Portsmouth were at home to Oxford United so we were aiming to time our travels to miss any potential rowdy supporters – and by rowdy I mean singing and shouting, not drunk and violent, though I definitely wanted to miss any of thosetoo, if they still existed.

I was a bit pensive on the way down as I planned on attempting a couple of hours of running, not something I have done in a good six months, and this only on the back of a forty minute jog last week, my first in over a month.

Once in Ryde I farewelled El, got changed in the public toilets and then went to seek advice from the tourist information office, where I met the most unpleasant tourist guide I have ever met, a rude little angry man. Luckily once he thrust some maps in my hand I was able to escape unlike the poor woman after me who actually needed advice…

However I was soon on my way, calmed down and ready to enjoy some fresh air, some fresh sights and some nice running. I decided to keep it simple and just jog out of Ryde in the direction of Seaview, go for an hour and turn around and come back, no need to worry about maps or having to find my glasses to be able to read them. Most of the run was along a sealed path alongside the sea front and I stopped to take pictures all the way along, sadly my camera had a big smear on the lens so the photos are not as sharp as I wanted… Apart from the concrete path it is a lovely spot for running and the conditions were near perfect.

After about forty minutes the path ended at a set of steps up into…. heaven, I guess.

Starting at Horestone point was a lovely little bit of muddy, rooty single track that ran above Priory Bay, a lot of seemed to be private track and I had to skirt around some holiday homes a couple of times, but it was the sweetest bit of trail I have run in England, twisty and turny, short ups and downs and just like home.

I loved it and had a smile on my face all the way to the end.

And then all the way back again…

It was so cool to run in the dirt again, and the twisty muddy track suited my slow plod so much more than the road ever did. But it was soon over and I took a slow jog back along the water front to Ryde.

I love this sign…

When I got to Ryde I discovered the tide was about five hundred metres further out then when I started. I was planning on a cool swim at the end of the run, but ended up with a knee deep splash, just out of the hovercraft lane, it was not quite enough to refresh, but at least I could wash my feet 🙂

Once I had cooled down enough I took a walk into Ryde and had lunch and a well earned pint in one of the local pubs where I met El and we made our way back down the long long wharf.

And caught the ferry back to Portsmouth, and the train home.

It was a nice wee run, I surprised myself by getting two hours done, slowly and with lots of stops to take photos, but then again I wasn’t racing anyone, and the pack was awesome to run with too 🙂

A wee trip to Cornwall.

Wednesday 31 July 2013 – Cornwall.

Crikey, another month over- 2013 is disappearing so fast !

On Sunday I picked up a Vauxhall Astra that I had hired from a rental company just down the road from El in Walthamstow, after loading a few days worth of stuff we excitedly headed off on our first road trip – and El’s first experience of me behind the wheel…

Our first stop was lunch with my daughter Meliesha in Bristol. The journey to Bristol was pretty quick, I was expecting a lot more traffic on the motorways given it was the school summer holidays, but apart from some roadworks that just seemed endless on the notoriously awful M25 it was plain sailing all the way. Luckily Mel’s new flat was not far off the motorway exit ramp so we didn’t even get lost. We went for a very nice vege roast lunch at the pub up the road and sat outside in the sun for a couple of hours before El and I left to get back on the road for the longer drive down to Cornwall. It was so nice to see Mel again, and Dickie of course !

I had to really resist the urge to go on a street art walk, there is some great stuff in Bristol, but it was not on the way to where we were going and I could have taken hours… I did snap this as we walked though.

We had no real plan for the day and no accommodation booked for the night so just drove down towards Cornwall, through Exmoor and past a whole load of places that I visited when I was supporting Mal on his epic epic 1014km run last year.

It was strange driving past some of these small villages I shot through last June, I was a bit of a bore to poor El, regaling her with memories of the run and I have just had a slight blogging detour and wandered off to re-read Mals posts about the run. Epic really is the word.

We had sort of picked the coastal town of Bude as a possible place to spend the night and arrived there in the late afternoon and conveniently the local hotel had a room available. The hotel was a classic old school English hotel, we were the youngest people by about fifty years and I am sure I was looked at sideways when I wore flip flops to dinner ! The food was very nice though and the banoffee pie was (almost literally) to die for.

We had a good walk around Bude before tea and I ended up taking more photos here than anywhere else in Cornwall, a lovely spot.

On the top of the hill I saw a marker for the southwest coast path and the trail heading off over the cliff tops and into the distance and it really made me want to go for a run. I haven’t run in weeks, no motivation, or even worse I think – lacking the inspiration to run. I now know what was missing – hills and trees and grass and mud and all those other good things that don’t come with running on tarmac. Time to change me thinks!

Anyway, we loved Bude and I especially liked this tidal swimming pool, though I didn’t jump in.

The following morning we headed off south-west making our first stop at Boscastle, a village I stayed in last year. It is a lovely little fishing village that was almost destroyed by flooding in 2004 and has been mostly completely renovated. We were early enough we missed the worst of the summer holiday crowds.

Second off was Tintagel – famous for its ruined castle that was supposedly the home of King Arthur. We didn’t go into the ruins, there were quite large queues to get in, but did walk up and around it.

In one direction there were clouds, in the other blue sky ! Tintagel Castle is just a ruin on this rocky outcrop.

There is a rather out of place and fairly ugly Georgian (Ithink?) hotel on the other side of the valley.

After a very nice, locally made ice cream we set off for our final journey to the hotel that El had booked for us in Mawgan Porth, The Scarlet Hotel, a new eco-hotel on the cliffs above the beach – it was absolutely lovely and even better it had a no children policy !

Once unpacked we went for a walk along coast path along the cliff tops in quite a strong breeze. El, Sorry about the photo, just showing how windy it was, honest!

After the walk in the afternoon we sat on our deck and drank a bottle of wine my sister and brother-in-law bought me a while ago, a bottle of Wither Hills Marlborough Pinot Noir – it was superb – thanks ! This was followed by a wonderful meal in the hotel and for a change we chose wines that were recommended for each of the food selections and they too were delicious. I did wear shoes by the way…

The following day we took a trip into Padstow as the weather was looking a bit rubbish, it seemed most other people had the same idea as though it was raining quite hard when we arrived the village was packed, though the sun soon popped out and it was another lovely day. I didn’t really enjoy Padstow, it was very commercialised, full of shops selling clothes and stuff that was unnecessary to a small fishing village. Oh, well – most others seemed to like it. We did wander up this street for lunch at this pub, but it was closed.

We went back to the hotel and I finally had to succumb to my needs and chucked on a pair of board shorts some old road shoes and took off for a half an hour run along the bit coast path that we walked the day before. I really enjoyed just getting out and plodding up hills and down rocky shale paths, it felt good to really suck down some fresh sea air!

In the afternoon El had booked some spa treatments for both us, and I will say the massage was welcome !

We went for a walk along the beach in the early afternoon, watching the heavy clouds come in over the sea, waiting for it to rain.

The hotel is the building centre right with the curved roof.

But the clouds soon blew clear so we ordered a light meal and a bottle of wine and sat out on the cliff side on some big cushions and enjoyed the last of the evening light.

The following morning sadly we had to check out and head home. The weather was again a bit dubious and it rained a bit on the way. We drove the long way as I wanted to go through Dartmoor, which was all a bit of let down as we stuck to the main highway and we didn’t see too much moor land, then again we didn’t see too much of anything for a while…

And a few hours later, that was that. We were back in London, our short and lovely holiday over. We had a great time away, everything was superb and El only swore and grabbed hold of things twice in all my driving…

Days and nights out.

Saturday 27 July 2013 – London.

I am pleased to say that the mere mention of rain and storms in my last post was enough to pretty much scare it all away and the long English summer returned with a vengeance, with some more hot days – getting up to 34 degrees at one stage. Though, the period of a guaranteed no-rain day is now over, thankfully to be honest. I was going to avoid long blog posts that covered many days, but as I am so far behind again I thought I would do a quick week catch up and then try to get back to just recording things that happened when I had photos to prove it, as it were.

El has taken two weeks off work for her summer holiday and to celebrate a birthday (Happy Birthday :xx ), this was really cool as it meant we got hang out a lot more during the day as well as doing a few celebratory activities too.

Way back when I was in Sri Lanka in March El had booked us tickets to the David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the show had been a sell out for months and I had been waiting eagerly to go and visit, El had been while I wasa away. It was really cool, I had expected some sort of fuddy-duddy old school museum style exhibition (no idea why I thought that really), but was blown away by the massive screens and great sound – as well as all the costumes and other Bowie related memorabilia. Fabulous show… As expected no photos were allowed in the exhibition, though we did have a quick walk around the lower reaches of the V and A, looking for lunch 🙂

After the V and A we walked up to the Royal Geographic Society gallery just up the road, this is a real gem of a gallery that has outstanding free photography exhibitions and is always worth a visit. I do however, know that the travel photographer of the year winners and finalists were on display and I was keen to check it out. There was some fabulous photos, really quite inspiring stuff, and I was pleased to see it was not all professional photographers with high end cameras getting all the glory, no photos allowed here either!

Our final stop for the day was to check out the Sebastiao Salgado ‘Genesis’ exhibition at the Natural History Museum. This was a collection of (mostly) stunning black and white images taken in wilderness areas all over the world. Lovely ! No photos of course !

That evening we took a slow stroll South Bank looking for a pizza and a wine

It was then went back to my place to watch the sun set and the moon rise from my deck. I took a few photos of the offices on the other side of the Thames.

The following day we took a trip out to Greenwich, going the long way via the Emirates Cable Car at North Greenwich. Which we discovered does not actually go to Greenwich…. But it was a fun ride over the Thames anyway, with some great views over London.

We had a brief walk around Greenwich, pass the Cutty Sark.

Upup through the park to the observatory for a cup of coffee before wandering back down into town for a really nice market side lunch of Ethiopian curried veges.

I had forgotten to get the address of the bank where my mum worked in the fifties so I will have to go back again, not that I am complaining at all, Greenwich is very nice.

While I was in Sri Lanka I read a BookFace post from one of my favourite bands, Mogwai, announcing a one of London show at the Barbican Theatre with the band playing the soundtrack to the movie ‘Zidane – a 21st century portrait’ live. The film follows the famous French footballer around a match when he was playing for Real Madrid. I was glad I bought the tickets as soon as I saw them advertised as the show was a quick sell-out and was on Friday night. The theatre in the Barbican is such a brilliant place to see a band like Mogwai, great seating with clear views from everywhere and a sound quality that was the best I have ever experienced, especially with the quite tones to extreme noise of a live post rock show. I loved it !!!

On Saturday night El, her sons and I went out for dinner to a pop up restaurant, catered by the Basement galley in the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. An old Victoria line underground carriage was converted into a restaurant for the night, what a great idea. This was our table.

The food was excellent and it should have been a fun night, but we were seated by a very noisy large group and this spoiled the evening for me, and it showed on my face. Sorry…

It was a really good week, so nice to be able to hang out together and not have to rush around doing things at the weekends.

The completed Alexis Diaz art work

Last week as I was wandering around Brick Lane I ran across Puerto Rican artist Alexis Diaz working on a beautiful new work on Hanbury St. He was painting this by hand using small brushes and had been going for the best part of a week before I saw him.

I finally went back today to have a look at the completed work. It is magnificent !

The detail is amazing.

It was a very humid morning and quite unpleasant for walking around – and trust me, I have walked in some serious humidity… London is just unpleasant in this weather. So it was only a short walk,but on the way I also spotted these other pieces I have not seen before.

Dan Kitchener.

A newly complted work by Alex Senna that was sadly partially blocked by a car.

And next to that a newish piece by Eoin.

It was a good but short time out.

A stormy night in London town.

Tuesday 23 July 2013 – London.

The two and half weeks of pretty much perfect weather had to end at some stage and it did in the wee hours of this morning – in fairly spectacular style! The television news had reported that thunder storms were expected overnight in London so before I went to bed I dug my tripod out in case something special happened.

It was a very humid night and I really did not expect to get a lot of sleep but must have dropped off as I was awoken by the rumble of thunder around 1:30 am. I lay there for a while before finally deciding to go and have a look at the action as I was awake and unlikely to go back to sleep any time soon. Disappointingly there was nothing really happening on my side of the block and I stood there on the deck for a while watching the flashes of light in the clouds from the lightening out of sight on the other side of the building. I went into the kitchen for a look out one of the side windows and could see a massive rain storm sweeping in from the north west. All of a sudden the wind hit the side of the building and started blowing things around the kitchen as it howled through the open window, it was so strong I struggled to push the large window closed. That was it, photography was on !

When I got back onto the deck with my camera set up on the tripod the horizon to the South had all but disappeared in the rain.

I had not taken photos of lightening before and experimented with a few methods without really knowing the results until I uploaded to my laptop this morning. This was the first one I got, a lucky break on a ten second exposure. The wind was really starting to hit so this is a bit soft.

The rain soon followed the wind gusts into the deck and I made a hurried exit back into the house 🙂

I also realised I was being a bit daft shooting straight off the deck when I could turn the camera forty degrees and I would have Tower Bridge as my back drop. As I waited for the wind to drop I swapped lenses from the 16-35mm to the good old nifty fifty as the images were just not sharp enough on the wide angle.

I took a lot of twenty and thirty second exposures, just hoping lightening would strike while the shutter was open. More often than not it didn’t, seemingly arriving just as the shutter closed. I have an awful lot of images of the skyline.

But I was very lucky a few times….

It was a great storm, spectacular, and it only lasted for a few minutes before it blew away to the east and I could go back to bed.

It was well worth the effort, as photography often is – I just need to remind myself of this more frequently and get out and do it.

Southbank photo walk.

Thursday 18 July 2013 – London.

Well it has been a pretty busy week with social activities happening every day. It is a pity I cannot say the same on the job front, but I am still plugging away at it with a couple of agencies rung and jobs applied for, one day, one day.

Today I had two things on, a visit to Sydenham to see the new street art which I wrote about in the previous post and then in the evening I met up with a fellow photographer and music lover Steve for a photo walk along South Bank – though I will say not a lot of photographer happened.

I have been waiting for the shutters to be down on these shops near my house so I could get a photo of the old Malarky paintings. The last time I saw them down I did not have my camera on me.

I met Steve at the skate park and took some photos while I waited, there was not a lot of action at the time but I did manage to get a couple of good shots, I am a bit gutted I cut his hand off, otherwise this would be near perfect !

The next one was a better photo, just the action wasnt as good 🙂

Steve and I didn’t take any photos between the skate park and London Bridge, we walked and chatted and battled out way through the crowds taking advantage of another lovely summer evening. I stopped for a look at Hays Galleria on the far side of London Bridge and there were some people playing petanque over a glass of plonk (or more I suspect).

We walked around the More London area for a while, past the Batman logo of the PWC building.

We had a bit of a play with some of the angles in the buildings around here.

As we passed Tower Bridge I took this picture to add to my collection of skylines. You have to love that sky!

I had heard that the barge I photographed earlier in the week with a new painting on it by Alice Pasquini was being painted some more so we walked up to have a look, but the new painting was hidden behind an old sailing barge so there was not much to see apart from this on a wall.

We crossed over Tower bridge and took a walk around the rich kids play ground of St Katherines dock, we were looking for a decent angle to get a sunset over Tower Bridge but there was not much happening there so we decided to head back over to the south side of the Thames and grab a pint or two. As we were crossing the bridge the alarm went, the gates were closed and the bridge was raised. This was very cool, I have never seen the bridge up before – a new experience.

We did end up having a couple of pints, it was a good night and an end to a good day.

Sydenham Street Art Walk

Thursday 18 July 2013 – Sydenham, London.

When I was looking at the new street art over in Shoreditch on Monday I ran into fellow street art aficionado Darryl taking pictures of Alexis Diaz working on a new piece. Neither of us had been down to Sydenham to see the results of a recent festival so decided to head down and check it out.

It was another bright and hot day, nice for being outside but not so great for mid-day photography !

We got to see the bulk of the street art work, but missed out on all the pieces painted on shop shutters – rudely the shops were all open for business, during the day. So inconsiderate! This shop also had stacked their wares over a couple of pieces as well.

What we did see was pretty cool and it was nice that it was all reasonably well contained in the high street.

The Alo door and JoyceTreasure piece were the only viewable bits from the second hand furniture store.

Luckily all the big works were very visible and we were very lucky that on a third walk past the entire Millo and Hunto joint piece was visible. The first two visits had a car parked under the no parking sign!

Louis Masai mural – “Save the lemurs”.

I love this large piece by Alice Pasquini.

Dr Zadok.

This fabulous and large mural by Bailon was very hard to photograph in its entirety as it was up an alleyway. I took a few images with a plan to stitch them together, it sort of worked. I do need to practise on my pano stitching, I just don’t have the time right now. Enough to give you an idea though.

It was a good couple of hours out and about, thanks Darryl!

Farewell new friend

Stolen last night from outside my twelfth floor flat, chained to the railings. The next bike stays inside the house.

I was really enjoying riding around London, a whole new sense of freedom. What irks me the most is the pain of trying to find a replacement. This was a good bike !

Sniff, sniff.

Shoreditch street art updated.

Monday 15 July 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

Shhhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but it was another glorious glorious day here in London with nary a cloud in the sky all day – so it’s a good day to for a ride up to Shoreditch for a street art walk/ride then! I have not been to Shoreditch for at least a week so of course there is a load of new things to see and photograph, and having the bike meant getting further – and more coolly. By cool I am, of course, referring to temperature, not me being stylish – something I definitely was not today!

I had a great few hours out and about around Shoreditch, I got to see a few things I was looking for and finally found a massive wall by ROA that I have tried to find twice before. I also ran into fellow street art aficionado Darryl who I met once before while watching RUN paint the wall at the Village Underground.

One of the things I had been planning on doing for a while was visiting the exhibition by RUN and Dscreet at the Cock and Bull Gallery in the basement of The Tramshed in Rivington st. It was really worth the wait as there were some great pieces on show there, as well as a very cool backdrop of painted walls, I bought a booklet on the show and am tempted to buy an art work as well.

After a wee coffee break I rode up Bethnal Green Road in search of the large wall painted by ROA a few weeks ago, and this time I found it. Though only having a fixed fifty mm lens on the Canon I could only shoot some of the details as there were too many cars in the narrow alley way to get a wide shot. I will go back as it is such a cool cool painting.

From there I rode around the streets of Shoreditch and snapped a few photos, most are on Flickr, but below are a couple as a sampler.

In a park behind Brick Lane I found a theatre group doing an outdoor rehearsal so I watched them for a while which was cool.

I was really excited to find this Phlegm that I knew was around but had never seen before, again I was not able to capture it all due to today’s lens choice. Weight won over flexibility – plus it is always good to shoot with a fixed a lens every now and then – keeps me honest!

Alex Diaz has been painstakingly painting this wall by hand with a tiny brush for most of a week, stunning piece.

A Jana and JS I have been looking for, I really like their stuff.

And a Stik I haven’t seen before.

It was a great few hours out 🙂