Essex Coast
View allAll Photos Tagged Clacton-on-Sea:
Travelled to Clacton-on-Sea to get a sunrise shot with the pier but the fog got there before me. I should have trusted the weather forecast.
… unfortunately for Clacton-on-Sea, Banksy never got involved in the vicinity :-/
Watch it properly @ Gallery Minimal!
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HMM! My first Macro Monday post in a long while. This is a photo of a sedimentary rock (about 1" in height) I found at Clacton-On-Sea. The cracked layers makes it quite interesting; it resembles a miniature version of a mountain with rock layers.
37401 Mary Queen of Scots and 68001 power 3S60 Stowmarket DGL - Stowmarket DGL (via Shenfield, Clacton-on-Sea, Colchester, Stowmarket, Ely, Norwich and Ely again) railhead treatment train past Cockspin level crossing at Fordham (south of Soham). [Pole, 5/6 sections (~6.8m)]
This was the hastily thought-out Plan B for this working, as I'd intended to return to Thurston after photographing 6A95 at Barway - but 3S60 had passed Haughley Jn. exactly an hour early, having not taken its booked 50 minutes in Colchester Goods Loop (after returning from Clacton) and was now 66 minutes early. Thankfully I checked RTT before setting off from Barway, and realised it was expected to reach Thurston in less than twenty minutes (and I was nearly half an hour's drive away).
My first thought was whether I could get to the Kennett area and do the shot near the stone terminal, but you need to drive past the spot on the A14 and come back on yourself and I thought it would be tight - and the train gained time, so I don't think I'd have made it. Staying at Barway would have been an option, but I wanted a picture of 37401 (which I knew was leading) and the shot would have been quite backlit. I then thought of this spot (which I'd visited during the morning, for a shot looking the other way), realising it would be less backlit than Barway; getting here to find the sun was already round on the nose was a very pleasant surprise! However, if I found the shot didn't look like it would work (I'd not tried it before) I had enough time to go back to Barway.
I would have liked to stand a little wider (further to my right), but there was a crop planted in the field so I stood right on the edge of the wide strip of grass beside the line. I thought about changing to a 35mm lens and standing slightly further forward, but I'd left it in my bag, which was in the car, and didn't want to risk going to get it as the train was already approaching Chippenham Jn. As I wasn't sure how long the train would be, I stood further back than I actually needed to, and have therefore cropped an earlier shot in the burst, choosing one where the sun got between the wagons to light one of the buildings on the far side of the line.
This was the end of my day's photting, the first reasonable day of photography since my trip to North Wales in early November. Thanks to KF on SouthEast Gen for posting a sighting of a 37 / 68 combination (assumed to still be 37401 and 68001) on this during the morning, and for pointing out that the 37 was on the country end.
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The Gunfleet Sands Offshore Wind Farm is located approximately 7km south-east of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in the Northern Thames Estuary. It consists of two phases, Gunfleet Sands 1 with 30 turbines and Gunfleet Sands 2 with 18 turbines. Total capacity of Gunfleet Sands Offshore Wind Farm is 172MW corresponding to the consumption of up to 100,000 British households. The wind farm is operated and maintained from the town of Brightlingsea only 35 minutes away by vessel.