During a visit to Yarmouth, we had a wander down by the water. Yarmouth is home to an RNLI lifeboat station with a Trent class lifeboat. I was given a Airfix kit of the Trent class for Christmas a few years ago. I got quite active building the kit during the pandemic and got it to a reasonably advanced stage before putting it aside for a while. That while has grown. I took a load of pictures of the boat to use as references for when (if) I get moving with it again. We shall see…
The morning after the birthday party that took us to Cowes, we went and got some bakery items for breakfast. (I won’t focus on the quality of the baking here, but they were a bit disappointing.) We took our purchases and walked along to Cowes Parade to sit and eat them while watching the world go by. A black-headed gull soon took an interest in us and came and perched close to us. It was lacking a foot, so its perching was slightly less straightforward. Gradually it would get braver and come closer to us. I decided it wanted to be on the blog so will oblige. (I don’t think it took any crumbs from our food so maybe it didn’t rate them either!)
We made a brief visit to Cowes on the Isle of Wight for a birthday party. The party was a ton of fun, and it was great to see some people we hadn’t seen for a long time. While the party was in mid-flow, I did step out onto the terrace to get a breath of air, and the sun was setting in the distance. The view across the RYS’s back garden to the Solent was really attractive and the sky was illuminated nicely as the sun dropped below the horizon. What a delightful sight to have.
One evening in Bembridge, we were heading back past the harbour. I have had some interesting sunsets over this harbour, and, at this point, the sun had just gone down. However, it did make for a lovely sky across the water. Who wouldn’t stop and take a picture of this view.
I don’t know for certain whether I have ever previously taken the ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth. Something tells me I might have done so at one point, but I have no idea why I would have done so. Anyway, I definitely have made the crossing now because we took a trip across to Yarmouth. As we were crossing the Solent, there were some interesting views down the water towards the Needles. Hurst Castle marks the narrowest point between the mainland and the Isle of Wight. Getting both the castle and the Needles in view was possible. The distance difference meant a little careful processing was necessary to have clarity of both elements, but I loved the compression a long lens provided of this view.
Being in Hampshire makes a day trip to the Isle of Wight a simple option. We decided to go to Yarmouth for the day. Despite having lived on the Island for many years, Yarmouth is a place in which I spent remarkably little time. I would usually pass through, but it is a place with a bit to offer for a day trip. We walked around the harbour and out towards the marshes to head to a lunch spot. This took us passed the old mill building. It is an imposing structure and a sign of what might have been a busy place in days past. Here are a couple of shots of this cool looking place.
Swans are elegant looking birds and what you might not normally notice is just how large their feet are. While walking around the harbour in St Helens, the tide had retreated and there were silt flats exposed. While nothing was around, the swans had clearly been walking through here at some point after the water had receded. Their footprints were awaiting the returning sea to wash them away. I loved the starkness of the shapes.
The rebuilding of the Island Line on the Isle of Wight has been a drawn-out process. New (sort of) trains and a rebuild of the track to increase capacity took place a while back. More recently, the tracks up Ryde Pier were closed for refurbishment. That meant the trains did not go all the way to the ferry. That has now been completed and, while I was out watching the hovercraft, I was pleased to see the trains back on the pier. I hadn’t planned for photographing them but why not while I was there.
Walking across to the Duver in St Helens with mum, there is the remains of an old boat that has been decaying for a long time. The remaining sections of the hull look interesting, and the engine is still substantially intact. I got a few shots of it as we wandered by, and it got me thinking that I have made the trip a couple of times in the past when visiting the UK. Was that boat there then and did I take a picture of it? Well, the answer is yes and yes. The last of these shots is what it looked like when I first saw it to compare with its current condition and show how much it has decayed in the approximately 20 years between these shots.
I was at Ryde one Saturday morning watching the Hovertravel service on a windy day. Because hovercraft are not in contact with the surface, there is no grip to counter any crosswinds. The technique for operating is therefore like flying a plane. You have to yaw into the wind to offset the drift the wind produces. When taking stills, you don’t really show this but, when watching it happen, the drifting is very obvious.
Consequently, video is the way to go. I got some clips of the hovercraft coming in, first over the water and then as it transitioned to the sand flats. For the hovercraft, the change of surface makes no difference. It does mean, when the wind is right, you can get head on shots when they aren’t coming straight at you!