New Forest Donkeys waiting for bus

Just got back from a brief trip to the New Forest which despite being grey and rainy was still spectacular. I can certainly recommend the New Park Manor Hotel and Spa which - on a Sunday night deal - is great value. But my favourite moment is captured here (trying a new camera incidentally as well) while cycling round the area.

I'll definitely be heading back for a spring visit with hopefully better light.

Funny thing is nobody had told the donkeys that the bus doesn't run on Sundays!

Virgin Balloon Near-Miss

Just captured this tonight. Amazing. Not sure quite how the basket managed to get over the phone/electricity wires and between two houses. But it landed in a field at the bottom of the ridge without incident!

Tags: Virgin, Balloon

Surreal Experience

On Friday, we witnessed the most torrential rain I've ever seen in the UK - a truly massive amount of water descending in London in just an hour or so. We spent several hours sorting out the problems caused by an overflowing gully to the flat downstairs.

Having checked traffic reports which seemed to be generally ok (c'mon Highways Agency/AA/RAC/BBC etc can't you do better than this?), we headed off for the weekend at 7pm on a journey that usually takes us 2 hours. We arrived 6 hours later, but at least we arrived. We passed possibly 300-400 vehicles which had been left stranded at the side of the roads all the way from Swindon to Ross-on-Wye. We went under the M5 motorway, which at almost midnight was at a complete standstill. While we had numerous in-water experiences of our own, we probably didn't have anything worse than about 300mm. I think had we been earlier, we'd have been stranded like many of the others.

Here's a link to some photos on the BBC site by local people, the first one being the M50 motorway very close to us. Look also at number 37 to see it getting even worse! Here are some from Gloucestershire - including underwater Cotswold villages which we passed close to.

As my partner Sue pointed out, weather is a great equaliser. Among the stranded cars was a rather distraught Bentley!

What a summer this is turning out to be!

Tags: Flood, London, Hereford, Photos

Nice Photo (2)

On Monday evening I was cycling back over Battersea Bridge, and observed the moon rising over Albert. I rushed back to get my camera (and tripod) and snapped another load of shots of my favourite Thames Bridge. If you look carefully below the moon in the second shot, there's a glimpse of the London Eye.

I'm a bit disappointed about not being able to capture the moon's detail - I think that's a dynamic range issue that I can only overcome with a much better camera of som clever multiple shot/combination image. I have managed to get a good moon shot - when in India, but in daylight. You can see this on my webpage linked to here if you're interested. Any good photographers who are willing to share the secrets of how to do a good moon photo on a landscape are welcome to comment here!

Nice Photo (1)

Out in Herefordshire on Sunday was an amazing sunset across much of the sky. I took lots of snaps, none of which can capture the true beauty, but here's a couple to give you an idea.