Category Archives: Travel

Hello Cows

Our friends, Rich and Julie, have a great house in Lancashire which is in a small village that has a lot of farm land around it. The fields surrounding their house provide grazing land for some cows. I needed to go out to the edge of the fields to get some shots of the sunset and the cows in the field found my presence a curiosity that they could not resist. They came across and started leaning as far as they could across the fencing to try and lick me. I don’t know why licking me seemed to be so appealing! I was trying to get my shots so wanted to avoid them if possible but they were pretty tenacious so each time I moved, so did they.

They were pretty sweet animals. They weren’t at all threatening – just curious about what was going on. I obviously wasn’t cooperating with their curiosity and eventually they got bored with me and moved on with their mission to eat all of the grass in sight.

Sunset Over Wyre

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Sunset photos are pretty ubiquitous. Since everyone has some form of camera with them at all times, if there is a pretty sunset, someone is probably going to get a picture of it. We were sitting in Rich and Julie’s house after a day out when a glance out of the window showed a really lovely sky. I couldn’t resist and headed out to grab a few shots. As my friend, Hayman, would point out, the range of information in a modern raw file makes for a lot of latitude with processing a shot like this. I had a go with HDR too to compare the results but the basic shots seemed to do pretty well and preserve the tones and contrast better.

Autumnal Vines in Napa Valley

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Fall color is usually associated with trees. However, grape vines are also prone to some nice color changes through autumn and we took a ride up to Napa Valley to see how things were looking. We probably we there a little after the peak of the colors but there were still some nice colors to be seen. A good number of vines were already devoid of leaves but others had developed a strong red hue. Heading up to Calistoga, we could get up on the hillside and see the valley floor below us. The variation in the different fields helped to emphasize the colors more in my opinion.

Hardwick Hall

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While Donald Trump might be well known now for putting his name all over his buildings, he certainly isn’t the first to do so. Head back to the Elizabethan period and you can find another example of someone who wanted you to know who they were. Bess of Hardwick had an interesting life that led her to be one of the more powerful people in England. Indeed her daughter could conceivably have been queen. That wasn’t to be but Bess acquired a substantial estate and built an impressive house on it.

Hardwick Hall is just outside Chesterfield (home to a church with a twisted spire that is worthy of a post of its own if I had only got close enough to get a shot of it). There is a new Hall and an old Hall. The new hall is only new in relative terms but it is a grand affair. For fans of the Harry Potter movies, it is Malfoy Manor although a certain amount of CGI added elements to the actual structure. You approach along a road that loops around the back of the house and gives you plenty of time to appreciate its grandeur. Once you are closer, you walk through a small enclosure of estate buildings and past the ruins of the old hall. They were both used at the same time but the old hall fell out of use and has deteriorated accordingly.

We only briefly looked inside but there was a great introductory talk about the history of Bess and the hall which was well worthwhile. We also got to look around the grounds and also appreciate the view over the valley below. Until the M1 was built, I imagine the view was pretty unspoiled! The building itself has an inordinate amount of window space for its time. This was a statement of how important Bess thought herself to be and if you look to the roofline, her initials are all along the tops of the walls. I guess she wasn’t a shy person.

Disused Water Mill

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As we left the house at Chatsworth, we walked along the river that led back to where we had started our walk from. It is a pretty large river and has a strong flow including a cool weir. Shortly before we got back to the car, we came across an old mill house. I am not sure whether the river has realigned over time or whether there was a strong flow down from above that is no longer in place but there was once a working mill in this location.

The stone walls of the building are still in good shape. The roof and any other wooden elements have pretty much gone at this point. Inside the building you can still see some of the iron work and the remnants of the axle of the waterwheel. There are gaps in the walls that show where other parts of the building were once located. The entrances are closed off so it isn’t possible to get in to the building. The wildlife obviously finds a way in. A sheep was quietly using the walls as shelter while we were there.

Rock Garden

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Plenty of people have rock gardens. When you have a country estate, the scale of your thinking can change. A rock garden now turns in to something that is a little more grand than average with rocks that should really be classified as boulders. We were actually beginning to wrap up our visit to the gardens at Chatsworth when we came through the rock garden. This place would be phenomenal if you are a kid. So many places to climb on and jump across. The opportunities for bumps and bruises would be many but it would be so worth it.

Boris Bus

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My years living and working in London were spent when the Routemaster was still a regular feature. As we left, the time was coming when the fleet would be retired and subsequent visits involved a more conventional selection of buses to get around the capital. (As an aside, when visiting London, use the bus rather than the tube. You see so much more and feel a lot more part of the city.). The days of jumping on and off moving buses seemed to be over.

Our recent visit gave me my first view of the new buses that Boris Johnson wanted to replace the Routemaster. I am not very swayed by populist nostalgia and, aside from being able to get on and off when you liked, I felt the Routemaster had a lot of shortcomings as a passenger. However, I was curious as to whether the replacement was good or not. Boris’s hatred of the articulated buses struck me as utter bollocks. Sadly, we didn’t take any routes that used them. We did see a lot of them though. Interestingly, the rear platform was often closed off when I saw them. I guess that is only open on certain routes or in certain areas? Maybe someone could fill me in on that. They look a little strange but I imagine you become accustomed to them quickly enough. It will be interesting to see whether they come to dominate or end up as a diversion that ultimately goes away.

Cool Bench

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Just a quick picture from the gardens at Chatsworth. An old tree trunk had been sculpted to make a rather cool double sided bench.

Hovertravel Have a Busy Day

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Another Isle of Wight development is the hovercraft. Much early development of the concept was done on the Island and many were produced in East Cowes. Hovertravel still provide a frequent service between Ryde on the Island and Southsea on the mainland. I got a couple of opportunities to shoot these hovercraft while visiting. On the day Pete and I went flying, we arrived over Ryde just as one of the hovercraft was coming in. Another was parked on the slipway at the time.

When we left the island, I headed up on the upper deck of the ferry to see what was going on and had two over the hovercraft come by in opposite directions. It was rather windy up on deck but I was able to get some usable shots of the two of them individually and as they crossed. Apparently, Hovertravel are in the process of acquiring new craft to replace the current AP1-88s that are in service. Given that they were built in the late 1980s, they have provided good service. It will be interesting to see what replaces them. I wonder whether the new vehicles will arrive before I next get back.

Coin Tree

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I’m not sure whether to categorize this as in interesting oddity or vandalism. While walking in the Lakes, we came across this tree. At a distance I thought it was an interesting type of bark but, once you get closer, it is clear that the tree has coins jammed into the surface. I have no idea how or when this started or even why it did. Obviously, a lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon and now there are so many coins embedded in the wood that I couldn’t see the point of even trying to estimate how many there were. Instead, we just checked the whole thing out and then went on our way.