St. Davids trip - Aug 2019

A camping trip in early August, during a heatwave, to see the extraordinary tidal effects in Ramsey Sound, on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, during a spring tide.  The sea changes direction through the sound with each tide, causing spectacular white water around the rocks known as 'The Bitches' which are very popular with kayakers and tourists on organised boat trips.

Scotland trip - July 2019

Our first place of interest to visit on this trip was Stob Dearg (1022m) in Glen Coe; this is a spectacular looking mountain with an iconic, triangular shape when seen from the A82 as one reaches the west end of Rannoch Moor before driving up the dramatic Glencoe Valley.  Having driven past this famous mountain on our last Scotland trip three years ago, we decided it would be nice to walk up it.

Stob Dearg

Looking west toward the Pass of Glencoe from the Stop Dearg footpath.

The vastness of Rannoch Moor, as seen from the summit of Stob Dearg

On the summit of Stob Dearg with Loch Linnhe in the distance.

We didn't see any Golden Eagles on this trip, but there was a big Raven hopping around on Stob Dearg's summit, admiring the view.

The south west view from Stob Dearg (Buachaille Etive Mor)

After a tiring seven hours on Buachaille Etive Mor, we drove on to our next camp at Glen Nevis where the next day we walked through the Nevis Gorge, deep into the heart of the mountains until we came to a fabulous waterfall, the Steall Falls, which is Scotland's second highest waterfall, with a single drop of 120m.

The Steall Waterfall

Standing in front of the Steall Waterfall

We then drove on upwards into the northwest Highlands to explore the Coigach peninsula. It was a lovely surprise to drive over a hill on Rubha Mor and then see the Summer Isles archipelago.  We decided to camp here at Altandhu, and for once we had a midge-free evening.

The Summer Isles, Northwest Highlands

High on the agenda was a summit camp on Cul Mor (849m).  We had been monitoring the weather continuously for a good day to climb it, but the forecast kept promising improved weather towards the end of the week. Running out of days, we couldn't wait around forever so we went up with a forecast for light cloud and hoped for the best.  But halfway up, low cloud rolled in and the summit camp, which should have been a spectacular event, turned into a white-out.  If only we had gone up the previous evening when the summit was cloud-free instead of trusting the forecast.

Cul Mor, Inverpolly, Highland, the day before we went up it.

Cul Mor summit, in cloud.  Not the weather we had hoped for.

A Song Recital in May

It has always been a dream of mine to perform a song recital of wonderful repertoire with a delightful soprano, on a magnificent concert grand Steinway piano.  This May, that dream came true.

Here's the video that I made of the recital:   https://youtu.be/Ru5Y1MOm8qY which was held in the chapel of Chichester University; with songs by Schubert, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others.

Lake District trip - Aug 2018

Towards the end of August I went up to the Lake District for nine days of camping in the fresh air and mountains.  

Ennerdale forest is one of the most scenic areas in Lakeland.  The valley in which the forest resides runs for many miles between Green Gable and Ennerdale Water, and I'd always thought it would be nice to walk through that lengthy valley one day.  This involved a 30km hike, starting at Buttermere, walking up the ridge of Fleetwith Pike, following the path round to below Windy Gap where I wild camped for the night.  Thankfully, the weather improved the next day for some perfect blue skies as I walked the long, forested valley which was wonderful.

After reaching the shores of Ennerdale Water I continued my circular route through the mountains arriving back at Buttermere 27 hours later.

Ennerdale valley, looking west.

The 30km hike

Crummock Water (looking east), towards the end of the long hike.

Langdale Pikes from Blea Tarn.

Looking towards The Old Man of Coniston (4 miles away) from Carron Crag viewpoint in the Grizedale Forest.

The Skiddaw massif under perfect weather, from Castlerigg Farm campsite.

Crummock Water, from Rannerdale Knotts.

Buttermere and Crummock Water from Rannerdale Knotts.

Photographing the Andromeda Galaxy

I thought it would be nice to have another go at photographing the Andromeda Galaxy as best I could.  I took this shot with a 200mm f/2.8 prime lens.  Normally at this focal length you would only be able to expose for just over a second before the stars would start trailing; however, for the first time, I used a celestial tracker that slowly moves the camera with the sky so that the night sky would appear to stay exactly still as far as the camera was concerned.  This meant I could expose this photograph as long as I wanted, which in this case was for 45s.

After taking approximately a hundred shots at various settings and ensuring the focus was pin sharp, this turned out to be the best image at the end of the evening.  And with a little adjustment to the brilliance, contrast and black point levels in the light balance options, this was the result - amazing!

The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy.  It is 2.5 million light-years from Earth, and contains approximately one trillion stars, more than twice the amount of the Milky Way.  It is the furthest object that we can see with the naked eye in the night sky, and even then, you need to be looking up on a very dark night, from a very dark site, to see what is just a very faint distant smudge.  But this spiral galaxy is as wide as the full moon in terms of its apparent size in the sky, so you don't actually need a lot of magnification to observe or photograph it.

The little smudge upper left of centre is the M110 dwarf elliptical galaxy which is a satellite galaxy of Andromeda (M31), as is M32 the bright dot right of centre.

Canon 200D 200mm f/2.8 (@ f/3.5) 45s ISO1600

Kayaking around Hayling Island - July 2018

I'd always thought that one day it would be interesting to kayak around Hayling Island.  I also knew that it would be a very long paddle!
But there's nothing quite like a summer heatwave to provide the inspiration for such a trip.
And so I checked the tides to make sure I'd hopefully go with the flow, or at least not be going against it, and then set off anti-clockwise from Northney marina at 5.30pm, three hours after high tide.
The sunny paddle down Langstone harbour was Ok and I had slight tidal assistance of about 2mph which added to my regular kayaking speed of 3mph.  My GPS unit was very helpful throughout the paddle because it confirmed my forward speed, and that is very important to know when you are at sea with tides and wind.
Exiting Langstone harbour at low tide, there is a vast sandbank that stretches a mile out to sea which you have to paddle around, and then I had a steady off-shore breeze to paddle against for the rest of the trip.  As I entered Chichester harbour the tide was incoming but only by about 1mph.  If I stopped paddling, the evening breeze would blow me gently SW, thus this finally northwards section of the paddle seemed to take the longest, particularly as I was starting to get tired by now.  The sun set at 9.20pm and the last hour of the paddle was in darkness.  I missed the turn up Sweare Deep because I couldn't see any lights up that channel, only the Emsworth lights ahead.  But when my GPS said I was heading NE, I knew something wasn't right, so I got out my iPhone to see where I was on the mapping and had to backtrack nearly 600m, annoyed with myself that I'd added almost an extra mile to my already long journey!
In the end, I completed the 16 mile circuit in 5 hours, averaging 3.2mph, never paddling against the tides but going against the off-shore breeze for most of the time.
I carried plenty of snack bars and water which helped, but two things I would have liked to have had with me would have been my shower radio and my iPad mini (obviously in a waterproof case) so I could have seen my mapping in front of me in real time.
The best thing I took with me was my Garmin eTrex.
The thing I would have liked the most would have been a faster kayak!

Snowdonia trip - May 2018

Camping trip to north Snowdonia with the mission objective of climbing Tryfan via the steep north ridge, and then jumping the Adam and Eve stones.  Had heatwave conditions in what turned out to be the hottest May in over a hundred years.


Tryfan looms into view with its iconic steep-sided shape - a proper scramble if ever there was one.

Canon Stone makes a nice stop for a photo.

It was hot, but good photographic conditions.