Category Archives: Photos

Wrist recursion

My new watch can be used as the viewfinder for my iPhone camera. So, of course, the first thing it wanted to do was take a selfie.

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There’s a slight delay in the image, and in the shutter release, which means that the shot the camera actually took was after my finger had moved off the screen, but the image on the watch, from a second before, still shows it in place. If you click to see the full-size image, you can see a few levels of recursion (which says something about the resolution of this 1.5″ display!).

Moo

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Very peaceful on Grantchester Meadows this morning.

Once more unto the beach

Holkham Beach in Norfolk is an amazing place. It’s just vast.

Yesterday, the car park was packed, and the path from it to the beach a queue of people and dogs, yet when we got there and walked for just a few minutes, it looked like this:

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A few more, and it looked like this:

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(Yes, that’s Tilly – you can click for a bigger version.)

Looking away from the sea, you get this:

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And I’m fond of that, admittedly less exciting, view, because it features in the memorable closing sequence of my favourite movie.

Tilly absolutely adored it, and seemed to keep running, flat out, for about an hour and a half.

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All in all, a most enjoyable stroll.

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Change of season

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The Fairfield Horseshoe, from Clappersgate.

This is supposed to be an excellent walk, but I’ve never done it. It’s on the list, perhaps when it’s a bit less snowy!

Portrait of a tree

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In the grounds of Wray Castle, Windermere. I thought each of the main branches had different and interesting characters.

Click for a larger version

Well, that was a surprise…

If you saw my photos from yesterday, you’ll understand why we were surprised to wake up this morning to this:

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and this:

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Very pretty, though:

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By the afternoon, the weather had returned to something closer to what we expected:

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Photos often don’t, however, tell you anything about the wind, which was, at times, somewhat dramatic!

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All peaceful now, though.

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Simply messing about in boats

We’ve escaped to the Lake District for a few days, and, as we turned off the main road and came down the side of Ullswater, we got the sudden urge to be on it instead of beside it, so we rented a small boat from the very nice people at the Glenridding Sailing Centre. I think it was just about the first one they’d rented this season.

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Tilly has limited experience of boats, and wasn’t too sure what to make of it, but quickly settled down. I haven’t sailed much in a long time, but spent many happy days in my childhood doing this. Very nostalgic.

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The Inn on the Lake at Glenridding caught the sunlight nicely at one point.

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And when I got distracted by the view, Tilly would keep a close eye on the set of my sails.

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Click images for larger versions.

But what ARE they doing up there?

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Spotted in Linton yesterday.

Latte to go

In Cambridge, there is nothing that cannot be bicyclized…

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A nice cheery guy runs it, too. He told me that when he first got the bike, he had an hour’s cycle ride to his parking place. I can’t imagine it’s exactly lightweight… that’s a proper espresso machine, and I think the thing on the back carrier is a fridge.

In the land of the red dragon

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Just back from a weekend in Snowdonia with my brother, niece and nephew, which was wonderful, despite the Welsh weather trying to throw its worst at us. It really is a very pretty place.

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We had gone there planning to climb Snowdon, but we didn’t quite make it to the summit. Though almost no snow was visible from our starting point, as we approached the cloud base we met people with crampons turning back because they didn’t have ice axes, and since we had nothing very pointy or spiky at all, we decided to save the peak for another day. But this was better than we had expected, since the forecast had predicted heavy rain most of the weekend. It was a wonderful walk.

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On Sunday we took a more lowland route, through the old Dinorwig slate quarry.

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Despite some really dramatically inclement weather at various times over the weekend – rain, sleet, hail, and wind so strong it was almost impossible to walk into it – we somehow managed to be inside for almost all of the bad bits and outside during the intermissions!

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I don’t know Wales nearly as well as I would like, and I left with a strong desire to go back again soon. Perhaps in the summer.

I think that I shall never see…

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Lovely evening light at Wimpole Hall last week.

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Oh, the weather outside is frightful

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I’ve just returned from a few days’ skiing at La Tania, in the Trois VallĂ©es. A pretty spot, and quiet, since we were there before the half-term madness!

However, it snowed almost continuously from our arrival on Weds night to our departure yesterday evening. This was the view from my window on the first night:

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Well, actually, it looked like that almost every night – the snow just got deeper.

This trip therefore had the nicest snow I’ve ever skied on, accompanied by perhaps the worst weather I’ve ever skiied in. When you could see where you were going, and the headwind wasn’t blowing ice at you, it was nice!

This meant that, overall, I took very few photos. After all, there’s a problem with skiing pictures: large areas of white are generally of little interest to anyone who wasn’t there. This was some of our better weather, for example:

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See what I mean? It gets much less exciting and more cloudy above the tree line.

And then, on Saturday morning, just for a few hours, the sun came out, and even a quick iPhone snap could look like this:

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We headed to the top of the mountain, and skied down to La Folie Douce: a bar just below the cable car, parts of which have been around for some time.

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This is a place where they know how to party. A large outside area has tables that are specially reinforced, so you can dance on them, which they encourage strongly. Regretfully, I felt I should decline, on the grounds that my table-dancing was not at its best when wearing ski boots.

Most of the music was intended for people two or three decades my junior, but some of the performers were really quite good.

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(We made our entrance down that slope behind him.)

Playing instruments outside, especially metal ones, does require some extra equipment:

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But it also makes for some dramatic pictures. This lass did a really rather good Lady Gaga cover:

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And this guy, as well as having a great singing voice, was just too cool not to shoot:

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But then the weather closed in again, and we skied down to the vin chaud in the valley. All of which explains why I spent several days in the Alps, and mostly came back with pictures of people standing on tables!

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But I can at least finish with one classic skiing shot, and my thanks to Steve, Paul, JP, Ray and Mani, who welcomed me into their group, and were great companions whatever the climate!

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© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser