Category: Travelling in Europe

The well-travelled heron

I am an occasional contributor to the Bird Weekly Photo Challenge: and this week’s appealed. Birds that eat fish as their primary diet. Well, I have images of gannets, gulls and guillemots. I have puffins, though not a single photo features one with a beak crammed with sand eels.

But the fish-eater I love the most is the bird I so often see snaffling goldfish from our landlord’s pond: or as I walk the banks of our neighbourhood River Ure : the one I spot as I hang over the sides of bridges and boats in Spain: the one fishing in among the townhouses of Dordrecht, the Netherlands: the one in my featured photo who was flying down the canal-side in Busan South Korea. It’s the heron, the grey heron.

  • Sneaking goldfish from our landlord’s garden pond.
  • Just a few hundred metres from our house, fishing on the Ure.
  • Parque Natural de la Albufera, Valencia
  • Evening on the River Guadalquivir, Córdoba.
  • Dordrecht, the Netherlands
  • With an egret companion on Nosterfield Nature Reserve, North Yorkshire

Click on any image to see it full size

Around the World in Ten Photos (3)

Several of you guessed yesterday‘s photo was of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, though if you recognised that monumental woman as a Damián Hirst, you weren’t letting on. Unsurprisingly, all three of you who knew the view can find your way round the north of England.

OK. Where today?

The photo was taken at this time of year. That’s all I’m saying.

Andrew of Have Bag, Will Travel invited me to join him and other bloggers to post one favourite travel picture a day for ten days without explanation, then each day, nominate someone new to join in on the same terms. Sarah, of Travel with Me: any chance you’d like to join in? No pressure if it’s not for you, but you are well-travelled! Link back to this post if you decide to have a go.

Around the world in ten photos

There’s this blogging challenge doing the rounds. I don’t know where it started, but it’s already made a showing with Brian at Bushboy, with Su at Zimmerbitch, and then yesterday morning with Andrew at Have Bag, Will Travel. And he invited me to be next.

This is how it works. Person Number One posts a different travel picture on ten consecutive days. And on each of those days, they ask a fellow-blogger to join in too. So on Day Two, Persons One and Two post a picture, and each invites another person to join in. On Day Three …. you get the idea. I can’t fathom how to do the maths, but it seems to me it wouldn’t take long for a million people to be involved. Any ideas about the numbers involved, anybody?

So I’ll post a photo each day for ten days. No comment, no strapline. If you want to guess where it is, tell me in the comments, and I’ll reveal the answer the following day. As today is a Monday, we’ll make the shot one of a window. I think this one’s quite hard.

Who next? Life … One Big Adventure. Do you fancy joining the party? No pressure if you’re not interested. Please link to me if you do decide to join in, just so I know.

Travel Challenge

Monday Window

Life on the Ocean Wave: the good and the bad

We’re going on two virtual trips today. You might not want to come on the one where I took the featured photo. It was a channel crossing we made a few years go. Expected duration? An hour and a half. Actual duration? Six miserable hours which you can read about here. This shot shows the view as we neared the harbour in Boulogne.

Mainly though, a trip across the Channel – even the North Sea – can be part of the holiday. A chance to enjoy views of the waves, the sunrise and sunset, the salty breezes whipping at your hair. And that’s why I’ve chosen shots taken while at sea for Jude’s challenge this week: waves. After my nightmare voyage, I’ve preferred gentle rippling water playing with reflections from the sun, and vessels heading across the endless waters. That’s my kind of sea trip.

2020 Photo Challenge #43

#Kinda Square

Patterns Through the Window, on the Wall

Look out of that window.  Who wants to go out unless they have to?  Instead, I’m inside and cosy, seeing if I can find photos that fit Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge for February, Patterns.

I decided to go with the built environment.  I looked not for deliberately created architectural motifs, or applied ornamentation, but for reflections, distortion, or for other elements that weren’t intended as the main event.  Except in one case, where reflection and baffling the eye was definitely the main story.  Which one was that do you think?

Sightseeing in Granada by looking at, rather than through a window.
The new entrance to the V&A, London.
Glimpses of El Escorial, Seville, from the balustrades by its water features.
Garden at the Gasholder development, Kings Cross, London.
Reflections at Canary Wharf, London.
Office windows in Brussels, Belgium.

 

This challenge was provided by Jude, of Travel Words.  

‘Wish You Were Here’

Summer used to be a time for postcards.  Sending them.  Receiving them. Receiving was better.  What to say to your friends and relations with only such a small space to play with?  ‘Wish you were here’ maybe?

The views were standard, wherever they came from.  The castle.  The cathedral.  The fisherman’s cove. The crowded beach.

Today I’m reviving the tradition, but with a different angle on the standard shots.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, seen reflected in Angel’s Wing (2000) by Thomas Heatherwick, Paternoster Square, London.

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal passing under a bridge near Gargrave.

The Port Olímpic area of Barcelona seafront, reflected in nearby buildings.

Hull Minster, as seen in a nearby office building.

An honest view of a British holiday? The countryside near Penrith on a soggy Sunday.

This is my contribution to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #59, Angles. Leya so often joined in when I was contributing to the Ragtag Daily Prompt that it seems only fair to return the compliment.  Thanks, Leya!

 

Dirty Dutch Coaster and Other Ships

Travelling from Rotterdam to Hull the other week, on a grey and breezy North Sea crossing,  I spent hours on deck, enjoying the busyness of the cargo vessels puttering back and forth, back and forth across the steel-grey waters.  I was reminded on John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’ – the last verse of it anyway:

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

My memories of our trip are of grey seas, grey skies, grey industrial coastal landscapes, grey wind turbines.  With red highlights –  those busy ships: the cargo of lorries on our ferry: and an almost lurid sunset.

Click on any image to view full size.

Linked to Debbie’s Six Word Saturday, which I’ve been following for a while.  Time to join in!

And also an entry for the Which Way Photo Challenge.

A new angle on a ferry trip

Coming back on the overnight ferry from Rotterdam to Hull last week, I had a lot of fun playing with my camera.  Most shots celebrated the sea, the shipping, the grungy industrial shore side, and I’ll share some of those soon.

But as the sun was setting, my eye was caught by these passengers on the decks above.  They didn’t know it, but I thought they made quite fine silhouettes set against the angled railings of the deck.

My response to today’s Ragtag Challenge: Angle.

Click on any image to view full size.