36 photos summarising my wonderful weekend....

It's been quite a hectic weekend this Bank Holiday. Not least because I worked on Saturday and Monday. Didn't stop me having fun though. Or.......... taking far far too many photographs. Instead of a wordy blog today, this weekend, I shall let the photos do the talking......

After days of dark, wet and miserable days, Friday evening developed such a glorious sunset over Bristol Channel, I had to photograph it from my bedroom window.

On Saturday I was at Corfe Mullen, just outside Poole in Dorset by 8.30am for their BioBlitz (see previous posting last Friday). It was a great day but by mid afternoon I'd finished work so headed home. En route home was the Stock Gaylard Oak Fair, North Dorset which I last went to in 2008. I love this Fair, and on Saturday I had time to have an hour and a half wandering about in fabulous sunshine before it closed.

Lots of toys to play with..........

................... things to burn !!

Things to buy............

........things to saw

and arty photographs to take......

And piles of wood.............

It's thirsty work wandering about taking photographs so I thought, I know, I'll pop over to the Greyhound pub at Sydling St Nicholas and have a refreshing cider shandy while reading the paper.

Before that though, I had to drive past Cerne Abbas. The light was stunning on the fields, but the only way to replicate it, due to the sun being in the wrong place, was to take this exposure driven photo from the car...and yes it did look like that.

Or if I looked the other way, it looked like this.

Or if I looked towards Cerne Abbas it looked.... well you're getting the picture now!

I did make it to the pub eventually, and quaffed a most welcome cider shandy, read the paper and hoofed it back home.

That was Saturday.

By 9am Sunday I was back in Wiltshire (via Dorset and Somerset) for my day off this weekend. I have to admit I was not the most energetic of people in the morning, absolutely nothing to do with the cider shandy, or bottle of red wine, followed by muesli when I got in. Anyway, we had a quiet morning, which involved doing something interesting with a plum tree. But in the afternoon went for a walk, to Bedwyn Brail.

Bedwyn Brail is adjacent to Great Bedwyn on the Wiltshire/Berkshire border and a walk I'd not done before. Setting off in glorious autumnal sunshine, the much beloved and self hoofed it up a hill.

Or let me rephrase this. We hoofed it half way up the hill until autumnal produce caught our eye........

Anyway we spent so long messing about, the blue skies of our walk were rapidly being overtaken my dark and brooding clouds.

But at least the views were stunning

Before the rain came, and boy did it come.

We tried to shelter under the trees, but eventually made a dash for a gamekeepers hut, where two other walkers were holed up.

But eventually the rains subsided and we continued our walk.

past sweet chestnut

and verdant foliage (just took this because of the composition)

By the time we got back to Great Bedwyn, the sun was out and the wonderful buildings in this village were at their best.

So homeward we drove for a well earned cup of tea, a Jaffa cake or two and a rest. But not for long. Being such a wonderful evening, we decided to go for another walk, this time to Avebury. In all the years I've lived down here I've never visited Avebury. Driven through it, but never stopped.

So we parked at the bottom of the Avenue and walked up it towards the circle

I took some arty photos......

of trees and stones

or stones and shadows

or texture of the rock

or atmospheric skies

or the setting sun through trees

Before walking back down the Avenue as the sun began to set..........

Now that's what I call a fabulous end to a day..........

Durdle Door in Photographs

One of the things I'd like to do with my new blog is put on here some photographs I take as I wander about the country. I have quite a strange view of the world (or at least I keep being told this) consequently I'm always looking for the unusual or obscure. But sometimes I'm at a location which defies taking anything other than the standard scenic photo. Take for example yesterday, I spent 3 hours at Durdle Door, on the Jurassic Coast / World Heritage Coast and I have to say, it is almost impossible NOT to take the "classic" image of the arch, as the first photograph shows. A photograph which is almost exactly the image I painted for a friend of mine 2 years ago as a house warming present.

But as I say I have a view of the World which I'd like to share with the other bloggers out there, in the hope it brings a small bit of relief to this otherwise somber World. So the following photographs are my attempt, not to take the classic image of Durdle Door. Click to enlarge if you'd like a better look. Oh and before I forget, there was some wildlife yesterday afternoon, a Ringed Plover beetled along the strand line for 5 minutes, which was a nice diversion.

Pebbles

Faffing about with the depth of field

Nice seaweed

Not enough black and white photography around these days, I like this for it's lack of colour.

Photographing waves tests the patience of a saint

I was not alone on the beach..... Just being pretentious and arty here

More seaweed

More waves

More waves and an arch

More pebbles

Moody and dark

Jolly and bright

Could almost be black and white this one!

More waves!

sunlight reflections

There you are I told you it was almost impossible not to photograph the arch :-)