A panorama of beautiful Victoria on Canada’s Vancouver Island.
Victoria by night
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Category Archives: travel
The Cobb
Our summer holiday this year will be spent at Lyme Regis, a lovely little town on the coast of Dorset. It is steeped in history and features in Jane Austen’s Persuasion:
the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the Walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with bathing machines and company…are what the stranger’s eye will seek
The Cobb is Lyme Regis’s famous harbour wall. In Persuasion, one of the characters takes a tumble off the Cobb. In a later novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles immortalised “quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England”.
Lyme Regis is on The Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site for its wealth of fossils from the Jurassic period. It was here that Mary Anning (1799-1847) discovered, at the tender age of twelve, the first complete ichthyosaur. She went on to become a renowned palaeontologist when the science was in its infancy. Lyme Regis Museum, a fascinating place to visit in its own right, is built on the site of Mary’s home.
Utah panorama
A panoramic view of Arches National Park and the La Sal mountains in Utah to mark my 100th post. Utah is one of the most amazing states I have visited in America, so far. The landscape is vast, magnificent, empty. So different from anything we have here. I hope to return before long.
A recycled habitat
A recycled forest in the heart of Montreal’s Eaton Centre.
Last summer, while in Montreal on holiday, we visited the Eaton Centre and came across an art installation made from recycled waste materials from the shopping centre. Called Fragile, it was the work of Roadsworth and Brian Armstrong. Given access to the Centre’s recycling bins over eight months, the artists transformed the retail centre into an ecosystem.
Cardboard trees with soda can leaves.
Bubble wrap salmon leap up a plastic bottle stream.
Cardboard lily pad with plastic bottle and coat hanger frog.
Coat hanger dragonflies with cellophane wings.
Strolling through the recycled garden.
“When you present something playfully, or even satirically, you create a space where people can drop their defences. When you manage to do this, you can reach them at a level at which they’ll be receptive to what you have to say.”
— Peter Gibson (a.k.a. Roadsworth)
Red
Red is such a very photogenic colour. It looks great against snow and ice.
And makes a vibrant focal point for a colour-popped black and white.
We love red over here, on our buses, phone boxes, and postboxes.
It is the colour of earth, from the slopes of Kauai’s Waimea Canyon…
…to the raw power of the mighty Kilauea.
It is the colour of fire, and those who fight it.
But it is also a colour flowers use to lure bees,
the colour of a robin’s breast,
and of Christmas.
From a boat on Lindisfarne’s fair and ancient shore,
to the far more ancient walls of Egypt,
deserted cliff-dwellings,
and the roof of a Quebec church,
red is all around us.
It is the colour of our very life’s blood,
and of remembrance.
Blue skies
I was blue, just as blue as I could be
Ev’ry day was a cloudy day for me
Then good luck came a-knocking at my door
Skies were gray but they’re not gray anymore
Blue skies smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies do I see
Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you’re in love, my how they fly
Blue days, all of them gone
Nothing but blue skies from now on
Irving Berlin, ‘Blue Skies’
The images:
Chesterman Beach, Vancouver Island, Canada
Northumberland Coast, UK
Moab, Utah, USA
Northumberland Coast
Sorrel River Ranch, near Moab
Desborough Island, Surrey, UK
Arizona highway
Lake Mead, Nevada, USA
River Wey, Surrey, UK
Zion National Park, Utah
Monument Valley moonrise
Our visit to Monument Valley in April 2009 happily coincided with a full moon.
Reigate
We spent yesterday in Reigate, a quiet market town in North Surrey. The only camera I had with me was my iPhone so, in the true tradition (if there has been enough time for there to be a tradition) of iPhoneography, I have lightly edited the images on my iPad and uploaded directly from there.
Reigate has the remains of a castle so I get to continue my series on castles. The castle was built in the eleventh century and fell into decay in the seventeenth. None of the stonework remains but the earthworks have been turned into a pretty, and peaceful garden.
Underneath the castle gardens is a network of caves. The most well-known, The Barons’ Cave, is reputed to have been a meeting place for the barons who devised the Magna Carta. The stone pyramid in the top photographs guards an underground
sallyport.
The few remains of the castle were removed in 1777 when the land was converted into a garden. The mock medieval gateway was built at that time.
We thoroughly enjoyed our day in Reigate. The town has a lot of interesting independent shops, a fine array of eateries and an Everyman cinema (in which we saw Prometheus). Best of all, the sun shone: a rare event here this summer!
Shooting the City
On the whole, I find photography a solitary activity, and I am happy with that. I very rarely go out shooting in a group. When I do, I usually end up deleting the images I take; I just can’t seem to relax into it.
But a couple of years ago I did enjoy a stroll around the City of London with fellow members of a Flickr group, T189 Oct-Dec 2008. All members of this group, which I administer, took the Open University’s short digital photography course in Oct-Dec 2008.
Although activity in the group has gradually waned over the years, there is still a core of supportive and keen digital shooters and it was a pleasure to meet some of them in person on our City photo walk.
And I didn’t delete every image.
The Cathedral of the Thames Valley
A view of St.James’s, a beautiful Victorian church in Weybridge, Surrey designed by Sir John Loughborough Pearson. This is a series of shots I took in 2009 pro bono to support the renovations work of The Friends of St.James.
The Church of Saint Nicholas stood on this site from 1175 until the middle of the nineteenth century. St Nicholas’s was demolished in 1846 and a rebuilding programme was commenced.
The new church was dedicated to Saint James and was consecrated in 1848. Seven years later the Spire was completed, and in 1864 the South Aisle was built. A further eleven years would pass before, in 1875, the ‘Eight Bells’ were dedicated.
Finally, in 1889, the Chancel was enlarged and the outer South Aisle was added; it was also at this time that the height of the Chancel was increased by roughly ten feet which gave a better harmony to the overall proportions of the building. The interior of the church is a lovely example of arts and crafts design.
Installed in the West face of the south aisle is the Sacramental Window. Made from Victorian stained glass, it is probably intended to depict the sacraments of the church. This important window is made after a design by the celebrated pre-raphaelite, Edward Burne-Jones.
St.James’s is the work of John Loughborough Pearson. Pearson, 1817-97, was a Gothic Revival architect renowned for his work on churches and cathedrals. Pearson revived and practised the art of vaulting, and acquired in it skill unmatched in his generation. St.James’s has been described as the ‘Cathedral of the Thames Valley’.
Focused Moments 