View allAll Photos Tagged Seemingly
A wonderful close-up opportunity with this hybrid goose, seemingly a blend of Canada Goose and Greylag Goose, among a large flock of mallards.
Seemingly the collective noun for a group of flamingos is a 'Flamboyance'. This group like my other recent photographs of Greater Flamingos was taken at the coastal lagoons just north of Korba on the Cap Bon Peninsular in Tunisia.
I feel that a they look so unhurried, calm and stately.
Adding the stylish (and inefficient) Woodslites to a Looonnnng and Low hood.....eye catching on this 1930 Cord Cabriolet!
Errett Lobban Cord was, seemingly, fearless. He’d worked his way into the industry on sheer chutzpah by bluffing his way into a Chicago Moon dealership, and his success there led frightened investors at the failing Auburn manufacturer to take a chance on him as the man who could turn their brand around. First as general manager in 1923 and soon as president he did so in magnificent style. Auburn became the springboard for an empire.
Like Henry Ford, E.L. Cord believed in controlling as much of the manufacturing process as he could, and acquired Auburn’s engine supplier Lycoming. New subsidiary Duesenberg used Lycoming engines as well, albeit a heavily modified version.
With Auburn selling between $1,000 and $2,000, and Duesenberg starting at over $8,000, there was a big gap in the lineup, and Cadillac, Packard and Pierce-Arrow were all targeting a sweet spot at $3,000 to $4,000 with their mid-range cars. The market was booming, and E.L. Cord wasn’t about to miss out.
The new car would be the first with Cord’s name on it, so he was determined it had to be special, especially in styling which he wanted to be lower and sleeker than the competition. At the same time he didn’t want to compromise on headroom. In keeping with his “be different” motto, he determined that front-wheel drive was the answer.
In 1926, Cord purchased the rights to a front-wheel drive passenger car design from Harry Miller, whose FWD race car had made a very strong showing at Indianapolis in 1925. He hired Miller himself on as well to oversee engineering, and Miller in turn brought on engineer and driver Cornelius W. VanRanst; together, they had a working prototype by 1927. Together with Auburn and Duesenberg engineers in Indianapolis, they began developing it into a production-ready automobile. On a test drive in 1928, the doors popped open on a rough road, which inspired Auburn to use the first known application of an x-brace in the frame. Cross and roller joints in the driveshafts were replaced with double universal joints to quell vibration. The engineering reportedly wanted more time to develop the car further–for instance, despite the engine being set far back in the chassis with the transmission in front of it, the weight balance is unfavorable and L-29 Cords have difficulty with traction under certain conditions, such as climbing hills in the rain. The car was capable of high-speed driving, but Lycoming’s 125hp, 298.6-cu.in. straight-eight was taxed during acceleration of a 4,320-pound cabriolet and never designed to be in this reversed installation, driving the transmission in front of it.
But any shortcoming were lost behind the L-29 Cord’s styling. The longest and lowest hood in the industry combined with that sensational radiator made the car a sensation, as well as proving irresistible to coachbuilders.
In four short years of production, Auburn built just over 5,000 L-29 Cords, before the Depression combined with a lack of distribution and lingering public mistrust of the unconventional configuration ended sales in 1932. That was ample time, however, to make it a legend and completely change the course of American luxury car styling.
Because of the L-29s avant garde construction and high cost, some $3,000 and up, comparable to a less-expensive Chrysler Imperial or V-8 Cadillac, owners tended to be artistic and adventurous. Frank Lloyd Wright famously owned one, as did designer Brooks Stevens.
AS ALWAYS....COMMENTS & INVITATIONS with AWARD BANNERS will be respectfully DELETED!
Many a time when out for a walk in woodlands Robins will follow closely in hedgerows. Seemingly waiting for a treat but perhaps just for the company.
Photographed at Old Moor a few days ago.
Bunker 599
A seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced open. It opens up the minuscule interior of one of NDW’s 700 bunkers, the insides of which are normally cut off from view completely. In a radical way this intervention sheds new light on the Dutch and UNESCO policy on cultural heritage. Paradoxically, after the intervention Bunker 599 became a Dutch national monument.
The project lays bare two secrets of the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military line of defence in use from 1815 until 1940 protecting the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem by means of intentional flooding. In addition, a long wooden boardwalk cuts through the extremely heavy construction. It leads visitors to a flooded area and to the footpaths of the adjacent natural reserve. The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war.
It is visible from the A2 highway and can thus also be seen by tens of thousands of passers-by each day. The project is part of the overall strategy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon to make this unique part of Dutch history accessible and tangible for a wide variety of visitors.
Source:Raaaf
Weeks probably painted this seemingly spontaneous sketch of the banks of the Ganges River in the sacred city of Benares during his first extended visit to India,in 1882-83.It most likely served as one of many preparatory for his large and important painting The Last Journey,Souvenir of the Ganges,Benares,exhibited to acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1885. Although the broad brushwork of this study is characteristic of his sketches executed on the spot,its size suggested that it may have been painted in his temporary studio in Benares,perhaps with the aid of some of the photographs that he also employed to document his firsthand observations.
A scene shot in November, Sunset believe it or not. Grey and seemingly un-inspiring. Shot from the passenger seat of our car on a window mount
I've been staring at this for over an hour as it seemingly has encapsulated the crossroads our state and this country has found itself. This was taken on a gloomy day that was so bright it hurt the eyes and yet I couldn't have told you where the sun was to save my life. These gentlemen were erecting a wonderfully vibrant sign in the rain between this jaunty fountain and the once magnificent State Capital which now stands in need of some attention. Sporadic park goers came and went, no one stayed long. There was some laughter, but nothing loud, the Cherry trees were in bloom, but drooped with heavy droplets and showed dully in the diffused light while being photographed by people wearing coats in the Spring. Lying on the wet pavement one can see discarded flowers of vibrant yellow near the gray distorted reflection of the Capitol Rotunda. Inspiration, hope? Not until this line in the sand mentality is gone, the 'you are either with me or against me' attitude that our politicians seemed to have morphed into. It's We the People, I can disagree with you and you with me, it's the moving forward together part that's missing, let's get back to that. Don't get me started on the assault on the thin blue line where we can't even arrest thieves.....
Anyway....
This shot threw me down a rabbit hole that I knew existed but have striven to ignore for several years and now I find myself screaming from the bottom.
PS If you are into sado masochisme (sp?) try photographing a randomly shooting water feature with traffic passing through the shot, good luck. :)
In this photograph, I captured a beautiful red fox, seemingly lost in peaceful slumber. Its eyes are gently closed, and its posture exudes a sense of calm and tranquillity. The soft focus on the green grassy background further enhances this feeling of stillness.
Looking at this image, I can't help but feel a sense of quietude wash over me. It's a natural invitation to pause and perhaps reflect on our state of being. This is where the concept of mindfulness gently enters my photography.
Mindfulness, at its heart, is about paying attention to the present moment without judgment. It's about noticing our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and the surrounding environment with an attitude of curiosity and acceptance.
Just as this fox appears completely absorbed in its rest, I too cultivate moments of mindful awareness throughout our day. It could be as simple as focusing on the sensation of my breath, noticing the sounds around me.
This image serves as a gentle reminder of the inherent peace that can be found in stillness. It encourages us to take a breath, observe our inner landscape, and perhaps find a touch of that same tranquillity within ourselves, even amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life here in Canvey Island.
A seemingly important discussion is taking place in the heart of Stortorget (the Grand Square), a historic public square located in Gamla Stan, the old town at the center of Stockholm, Sweden. Stortorget is home to the Stock Exchange Building (Börshuset), which houses the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Museum, and the Nobel Library.
Could they be talking about the next Nobel Prize laureates?
A seemingly endless avenue of old oak trees outside the town of Uhyst in Saxony.
When I happened to pass by here recently, I simply had to turn around and drive back to the beginning. I also noticed that this perfectly straight road is 3 km long. It's not endless, but it's still very impressive.
Just as I stopped at the side of the road, this elderly lady in her red jacket cycled past me.
That got me a bit hectic again, because she absolutely had to be in the picture.
Eine schier (zumindest gefühlt) endlose Allee von alten Eichenbäumen vor der Stadt Uhyst in Sachsen.
Als ich hier kürzlich zufällig vorbei gekommen bin musste ich einfach wenden und nochmals zum Anfang zurück fahren. Dabei habe ich auch gesehen, dass diese schnurgerade Strasse 3 km lang ist. Das ist zwar nicht endlos aber trotzdem sehr bereindruckend.
In dem Moment, als ich gerade am Strassenrand stoppte, kam dann diese ältere Dame mit der roten Jack an mir vorbei geradelt.
Da ist dann mal wieder etwas Hektik aufgekommen, denn die musste unbedingt mit aufs Bild.
Seemingly defying gravity beneath the towering cliffs of Mount Stephen, Tier-4 ET44AC 7433 powers skyward toward Cathedral on CPKC's Laggan Subdivision, hauling a lengthy Vancouver-to-Montreal train no. 112 up the arduous 2.4% grade out of Field, British Columbia. A heavy overnight snowfall has blanketed the massive pines, creating a picturesque scene while simultaneously challenging maintenance crews, who would later contend with three slides closer to Field.
The Stunning Interior of St Gerion Basilica in Cologne. This Romanesque church, dating back to 612 is an architectural masterpiece that seemingly almost defies and challenges conventional assumptions about symmetry and geometry. It feels almost as if its builders anticipated Frank Gehry!
The seemingly impenetrable beech forests of the Radika river valley are actually recognized by the UNESCO as the natural patrimony of humanity.
Кажущиеся непроходимыми буковые леса в долине реки Радика включены ЮНЕСКО в перечень природного наследия человечества.
A pair of white pelicans seemingly watching over a bunch of American avocets and a lone gull. The size difference between the pelicans and avocets is really striking!
Taken at the Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary, Texas.
My sincere thanks to all who spend the time to view, like or comment on my photos. It is much appreciated!
© 2024 Craig Goettsch - All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use without permission is prohibited.
A seemingly trivial photo. But a beautiful memory. The shot is of a Spider Climbing Pyramid that my son climbed again and again with enthusiasm in the pandemic.
This 6ft. gator was just sunning next to the boardwalk, seemingly not caring about the people walking by. It probably knew no one was going to disturb or mess with him/her. It's not uncommon to see them along the trail.
Rolleiflex 2.8E2
80mm Xenotar Lens
Ilford HP5
We are in a seemingly endless stretch of cloudy and WINDY weather........back to the archives.
The cardinals are singing their morning serenade right now though.........sweet.
A funny thing to see is how the hummer migration came to a screeching halt up here on March 22.
A seemingly, but not really, ominous sky. Post-sunset, post-rain clouds in a darkening, late-twilight sky. McKinely School rear entrance and parking lot overlooking the Back Bay skyline. South End, Boston.
Seemingly out of place, this small clump of trees stand alone and stark against the rugged landscape of the Isle of Skye, seen here on the B8083 Broadford to Torrin and Elgol road.
on our front porch in cabo was a pot with seemingly hundreds of colorful, tiny little flowers. my macro lens and I spent time with them and you'll likely meet a few more.
thanks to Jill and Paul of 'flypaper textures' for their contribution to the cause of texture art for us all. flypapertextures.blogspot.com/
here I used their rainbow trout, luminescent, and pompeii stucco.
check out their site!
The NRE yard at Silvis, IL was full of locomotives and all was seemingly right in the world when I started using a drone in 2017.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and I wish I had taken more views of the facility before the purge and sale of the property to RRHMA in 2021.
July 24, 2017
Seemingly makeshift concertina gates to the Harbour Town southern entrance, with a yellow M in the background.
(Regulus calendula) -- Ruby-crowned Kinglet
A tiny bird seemingly overflowing with energy, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet forages almost frantically through lower branches of shrubs and trees. Its habit of constantly flicking its wings is a key identification clue. Smaller than a warbler or chickadee, this plain green-gray bird has a white eyering and a white bar on the wing. Alas, the male’s brilliant ruby crown patch usually stays hidden—your best chance to see it is to find an excited male singing in spring or summer.
Read more at: www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruby-crowned_Kinglet/overview
35 days. Thirty five long, interminable, seemingly endless days. That's how long I was without internet thanks to the Australian goverment and it's forced upgrades. Away from SL and my friends and boy howdy did I miss you all. But I also missed myself.
I watched too much TV, read books, finally played Bioshock Infinite as I'd been promising myself I would do for years - and loved it so much played it and the DLC all the way through twice - and just generally moped my way around like a lost soul. What was the first thing my beloved sister Grazia said to me when I told her I was back?
"Get your boney arse in SL and grace flickr with your beauty!"
I didn't have a boney arse to put on display, but I did have this boney spine which was a gacha by Antinatural, as well as the Oron ear deco by BTTB at Cake Day. Gloves by Noche, forearms by Amias - these two items can't really be worn together because of poke through, but I did it anyway. Pants are Riot, hair is Doux.
The beauty and grace are debatable but not the happiness at finally being back home.
Seemingly greeting all the travelers on this path is this beautiful hanging vine. I believe that it is a Bougainvillea. It certainly caught my attention, as I was driving past.
I wasn’t completely sure whether the three young German speaking men to the left of me were discussing the scene in front of us, or the seemingly erratic middle aged photographer that had only moments before been to the left of them. And then to the right of them again, before rapidly returning to their left hand side once more. As the tufts of high cirrus changed from white to gold, and finally to a satisfying pink, perhaps they were wondering why that lone tog appeared to be so confused.
I studied German to A level standard, albeit forty years ago, and only just scraping through. In the intervening four decades, I’ve been able to practice what I learned just twice. Once on a day trip to Vienna from where we were staying on the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary, and then again during a two hour layover at Dusseldorf airport on the way to Majorca. On the latter occasion the lady who was offering us a free tasting session from the Bailey’s range she was promoting said she'd thought we were just shy before discovering that we weren’t German. Sadly I’d remembered so little that I’d failed to understand a single word she’d said.
But some odd stray remnants of vocab did manage to stay with me – and I knew that the happy trio of German photographers had just declared that something was “unglaublich.” Which means unbelievable if you haven’t got the babel fish implant in your ear. I hoped they were referring to the epic vista in front of us, rather than my very apparent indecision as to which composition I was going with. “Funf minuten” also came across the airwaves during the golden hour. It seemed that one of them was going for a five minute exposure. Either that or he was giving his mates a deadline before setting off for the pub. They reminded me of those halcyon days when Lee, Dave and I would gather together at the exact same patch of ground and more or less take the same image – the days before we began to develop our own styles and stand at least ten yards apart from one another, quite often pointing our cameras in different directions.
Ali and I had spent most of the day gradually making our way south through the mountain roads of Fuerteventura. We’d fueled up on toasted ciabatta sandwiches at the brilliant Alberta’s in Lajares, before taking a wrong turn at Tindaya, and then heading towards the FV30, which took us onto higher ground where we stopped a while to watch the Barbary Squirrels, that have for reasons unknown (to me at least) have made their home on Fuerteventura alone, whilst pointedly ignoring its neighbours. Another brief stop at the old capital of Betancuria, where someone attempted to relieve us of three euros to park, was followed by a longer break at the oasis of Pajara and ice creams from the local Spar.
By now, the afternoon had advanced to a surprisingly late hour, but the timing seemed to have worked out well as I’d wanted to arrive at the observatory of Sicasumbre, a place I was completely unaware of until I’d done some research before our holiday here. The term “observatory” is a bit of a stretch I must confess. More of a patch of high ground with some binoculars mounted on poles for anyone passing by to stop and gaze at the stars. Don’t go expecting a state of the art white dome with sliding doors, a café and restrooms – just saying. But while the use of the word “observatory” required a slight stretch of the imagination, the three hundred and sixty degree views were enough to send me into a spin.
I started by taking a few snaps of compositions on the phone, checking the focal length and making notes for later. Firstly I’d visited a hefty hillock on the opposite side of the road from the more lofty observatory that overlooked a valley of folds and forms towards the west. Then I made my way up to the rocky outcrop, I mean the observatory from where views to the other three compass points opened up. To the south lay the mysterious coastline and mountains of Cofete, a place only accessible by four wheel drive unless you wanted to risk your excess on the hire car and a little bit more. This was the view that enticed yet ultimately frustrated me, the foreground mountain filling too much of the frame and encroaching more closely on the stunning cloud capped hinterland than I’d have liked it to. Heading further to the left found me losing altitude, and ultimately I decided it wasn’t quite going to work. But a couple of draft compositions taken on the phone earlier had looked quite promising, so back across the road I went to the grassless knoll to join those young Germans, who were having an unglaublich time in a heavenly landscape of diagonals and V shapes.
Three compositions caught my eye, and this is what caused my endless shuffling around the contented triumvirate who collectively seemed far more certain of their shots. To the right, a patch of low cloud danced across the mountain crests, while in the middle, a series of interlocking repeating forms lay where the bases of the connecting ranges overlapped one another. And on the left I could see a patchwork of tessellating lines and stunning conical peaks rose and then fell away again. You can’t beat a lot of diagonal lines really.
The light began to fail and the last patches of pink cloud started to turn black. The German party were still having enormous fun. The word “aufwiedersehen” came to me rather more easily, although I had to refrain from adding “pet” in a Geordie accent. What a location. It took us two hours to drive back to our apartment in the darkness, but I was glad we’d made the effort. I’m not sure whether Ali felt the same, but I promised her we’d only come this far south in Fuerteventura on another holiday – one with a four wheel drive included so I can drag her to Cofete at the ends of the earth. Now that’ll be unglaublich for sure.
Grazing cattle are seemingly unbothered by the horn of CSX 7876, as it and the 9016 bring the Worthville Turn south through Eagle Station as a summer thunderstorm brews overhead. About here is where I’d usually mention something along the lines of this being a “last hurrah” for CSX’s Dash 8s and 9s, but they tend to always come back out from storage every year or two.
Seemingly shy, but actually very tolerant of entranced human admirers, an Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) peers out toward the setting sun, contemplating fish, eels, and egg tending. Their short strong wings work well for both flight and swimming. During the breeding season puffin beaks become more brightly colored. Puffins spend only a short time on land during the two month breeding season, mostly confined to rocky cliffs such as here on the Látrabjarg cliffs in northwestern Iceland. The rest of the time they live on the open ocean.
I will be away for a week in the wilds of Utah (visiting the Maze for the first time), so please forgive my absence from Flickr.
Otherworldly - Looking down a seemingly endless tree lined track, immersed into the otherworldly view of the glowing foliage of early summer gently swaying in the light breeze. A surreal, blissful, view into a dreamlike world; another place far away from the stresses of the present day.
Thanks to a number of inspirational images by Glenn D Reay, I was motivated to get one of my rarely used bodies recently converted to infrared. The converted camera arrived back on Saturday and this is the result of my very first effort with the digital IR medium and post processing. Having had a go with infrared film in the distant past, including colour Ektachrome EIR transparency film and remembering the enjoyment of the creativity then, I reckoned it was time I revisited IR and to try something new. Thanks Glenn for the inspiration for this and to the folks at Protech who did a wonderful conversion job for me.
False colour infrared
North Yorkshire
Seemingly I felt a need for some drama when looking for a capture to convert it from colour to monochrome. I decided to work on this photo of Eloise (the Osprey) enduring a fierce attack by a Whistling Kite.
Coindre Hall....
Seemingly plucked from the south of France, this 80,000 square-foot medieval-style mansion provides a setting that is both timeless and historic. A majestic foyer greets guests upon arrival at this 40-room chateau; a stately circular stairway provides the perfect backdrop for photos, the grand ballroom and piazza offer two distinct settings. Your guests will appreciate being able to explore this 1912 mansion that is a point of pride for Huntington residents and a National Historic landmark.
A seemingly rare daylight South Shore Freight runs on a beautiful code blue sky Sunday, as Engineer Nice Guy Mike takes a trio of CSS GP38-2s (2005/2001/2004) on train PF9 enroute to Belt Railway of Chicago’s Commercial Avenue Yard. Seen here heading west through the S Curve in Hammond, IN while approaching the Illinois State Line. Taken: 11-12-23
This whole area of downtown Hammond will look drastically different in the coming months as next to me is the track realignment for the main and the connection for their new passenger service to Dyer, IN. This S curve is one of my favorite hidden shots on the line, time will tell what the track alignment will look like when the track project is all said and done.
A male Great Banded Grayling photographed in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain. One of the commonest butterflies we encountered with 20 or more males flying low around a meadow, seemingly searching for females.
A pedestrian bridge over Hardee Creek, seemingly being devoured by invasive kudzu.
Kirkwood Urban Forest Preserve
Atlanta (Kirkwood), Georgia, USA.
6 November 2021.
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The famous Aescher Guesthouse is cuddling the cliff, seemingly seeking shelter form the vastness of the universe.
When I see a great spot, I tend to immediately ask myself, if it could be used for nightscapes. Even though I have seen but one decent nightscape from the Aescher, the answer here is a definitive yes, but you need some careful planning:
Milky Way needs to be positioned almost vertically in the sky, but not yet hidden by the cliff. As the shot has to be taken from a narrow mountain trail, there is no possibility to move laterally and lighting the scene artificially is difficult and only possible from another trail that passes below the house.
The best time to take a nightscape from Aescher is therefore in August, about a week after full moon when you have time to capture the night sky and a bit later the foreground in the light of the rising moon.
That's what I did here: The night sky was photographed between astronomical dusk and moonrise and combined with the foreground that was photographed about an hour later during moonrise at a lower ISO setting.
- Canon EOS 7D mk2
- Samyang 10mm f/2.8
Sky:
- 12 x 25s @ ISO3200
- stacked with fitswork
Foreground:
3 panel panorama each consisting of:
- 5 x 60s @ ISO1600
- dark frame corrected and stacked in PS
- Stiched with PTGui
Some of the seemingly ever-increasing number of large, bland lumps of architecture that have been shoved into the Fountainbridge area in recent years as student blocks (don't mind some in the neighbourhood mix, but we just keep getting more added instead of building new blocks for permanent residents, which is a bit shortsighted in terms of the local community wellbeing). As with a number of other insipidly bland buildings, they look better at night, shot in monochrome!
For the first time in seemingly weeks Friday was predicted to be perfect bluebird weather. Coupled with the news just released the day prior that the Pan Am Railways acquisition by CSXT had been approved I figured I should skip my beloved ex Boston and Albany for once and go to the old Boston and Maine before the changes come. While it won't happen overnight, it will be quicker than we expect before blue dip or ugly patched GEs are rare and intermodal trains on District 3 are but a memory.
With that in mind a look at the turnover revealed that a 22K was tied down at Fitchburg scheduled for an early recrew to bring into Ayer and that an EDPO was out of East Deerfield headed east and counterpart POED was moving with work at Graniteville before going west. Throw in regular AYPO building in Ayer and it was an unusual busy morning to the point that you actually had to make a choice what you wanted to focus on!
After getting some nice morning shots of tied down 22K and a few MBTA trains a friend in Ayer said POED was going west first before the two eastbound freights and he recommended this spot that I'd never shot at before. Here is a big POED manifest hustling west on Main 1 through the interlocking at CPF Derby (MP 42.8/322.8) behind three C40-8s. The spring buds are just beginning to offer some color to the scene as a harbinger for tbr vast changes this railroad will see in the ensuing months.
Leominster, Massachusetts
Friday April 15, 2022
Staircases seemingly to nowhere
Lasipalatsi (designed by Viljo Revell, Heimo Riihimäki and Niilo Kokko in 1936), Helsinki
[and seemingly just like that, the brilliant greens of the swamp give way to soft winter pastels]
However you celebrate, I wish for each of you all of the magic the season has to offer :)
We do love a bargain, Ali and I. Only recently, we discovered that certain chain pubs, mostly those strategically positioned next to well known budget hotels on the edges of our towns, offer a weekday afternoon menu at seemingly impossible prices. Did you know you can get two mains between noon and six at a price you’d normally expect to pay for one meal alone? We’ve started visiting some of the nearby ones - keep tuning in and we’ll keep you updated on our progress. This time we were dining at the May Tree on the outskirts of Helston, ten miles south from home at the gateway to the Lizard peninsula and mainland Britain’s most southerly point. For a penny under twelve quid, we were each treated to a plate of perfectly acceptable fish and chips with mushy peas no less. Tartare sauce at no extra cost too. Followed up with a couple of triple chocolate brownies and a scoop of ice cream and we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.
It was tempting to go back to the bar and ask to see the cheese menu next, but we had come this way for a reason. And in truth I should have been here a week earlier, when the weather had been pretty much perfect for what I had in mind, but I’d been overtaken by an attack of sloth that had confined me to my garden chair for much of the afternoon. This time it felt like a case of now or next year. Who knew how much longer the heather would be in bloom? Now, with burbling stomachs happily silenced, we were heading just a few miles further to one of Cornwall’s lesser known beauty spots - a place that I only discovered three years ago when a sudden itch to photograph a bit of heathland needed scratching. The one previous visit had been in the middle of September, long after the heather had finished flowering, and I made a mental note to return one summer, a month earlier. And after a colourful visit to Land’s End the previous week (more of that to come soon), it was clear that this particularly fickle summer had been a good one for the purple season in Cornwall.
Quite why it had taken three summers to return is a good question, but here I was again at last. We tottered along the heavily rutted track from the road towards the heath and a space that feels quite apart from much of Cornwall’s celebrated coastal landscape. It’s as if a section of the New Forest has been stolen while the residents of Hampshire were all asleep one night and transported down to the Lizard on the back of a big lorry. A central avenue of tall pines, flanked by open spaces studded with smaller firs and spruces on either side. It’s by no means an expansive location, but one that deserves a tog’s love and attention - a place to be learned and visited throughout the seasons. In two hours I’d be struggling to find something convincing as we trod silently through this intimate landscape, but if you don’t try, it won’t ever happen. I had a tree in mind that I’d remembered from last time, but when we arrived at it, a branch was broken and the foreground heather I’d hoped to find was both sparser than expected and in the wrong place. We carried on exploring.
As the sunset approached and we began to retrace our steps, a small tree in front of a swathe of purple caught my eye. But with a competing sapling in the background that no amount of airbrushing would convincingly remove, the otherwise perfect composition was doomed to failure. I carried on, just a few yards to the left behind a thicket and emerged to find the tree again, now free of all distractions, and with an even purpler host of blooming heather to fill the space between us. Purpler - did you know that was a word? I didn’t until I typed it and wasn't told off by the spellchecker. All I had to do was frame the scene and hope the sun was going to reappear from behind that low cloud. Eventually it did, only very briefly, but with just enough golden light to set the scene ablaze. And because we’d already eaten, there was no particular rush to get home. I could dabble with a couple more compositions in the disappearing light. All thanks to the reasonably priced menus of the great British chain pub.
There’s another food related beano due soon. Ali’s niece takes a rather different view on the subject of money than we do, and in recognition of our contribution to family childminding services during the school holidays, has bestowed a gift voucher upon us which will lead to somewhere that absolutely definitely isn’t part of a chain. You know - one of those places with classically Cornish tourist prices screaming from the menu; where the front of house team fawn over you without invitation before adding a twelve and a half percent service charge to your already terrifying bill for the pleasure. It’s not the first time she’s invited us to a disappointing upmarket gastronomic experience. She’s would happily shed fifty pounds a head to eat in the right places rather than pay comfortably less than twenty for (count them) two plates of proper grub followed by calorie chomping desserts. Even with thirty quid in hand before we have to start using our own money, it seems as if we might need to sell a body part or two to settle the rest of the bill. We do our best to look grateful, and I keep trying to tell her we prefer Smokey Joe’s but she’s just not getting the hint. Do wish us luck!
Seemingly one of the two names for a collective group of Oystercatchers is a "stew". The other name mentioned is a parcel.
This group of eighteen birds was one of many similar sized parcels that were feeding on the arable fields above the cliffs just south of Whitby.
Seemingly plucked from the south of France, this 80,000 square-foot medieval-style mansion provides a setting that is both timeless and historic. A majestic foyer greets guests upon arrival at this 40-room chateau; a stately circular stairway provides the perfect backdrop for photos, the grand ballroom and piazza offer two distinct settings. Your guests will appreciate being able to explore this 1912 mansion that is a point of pride for Huntington residents and a National Historic landmark.
Seemingly oblivious to the three thousand tonnes of train bearing down on him, a farm worker saunters across the rail lines of the Jitong railway.
The exhaust from double-headed QJ locos fills the sky as they attack the initial gradient out of Jingpeng heading for the pass of the same name. Steam finished on the Jitong Line in late 2005.
Jitong Line, Nei Mongol, China. October 2004. © David Hill
For seemingly the first time in several weeks, Florida East Coast Railway's 204 had an SD40-2 lead the way instead of the recently standard pair of GPs. Albeit without stripes and logo, FEC SD40-2 714 wearing the champion scheme and GP40-2 421 wearing the new Grupo Mexico colors lead train 204 North across the San Sebastian River bridge in Saint Augustine, FL. An SD40-2 and GP40/38-2 used to be the standard power for the most part for this train, until about roughly two months ago since when it has been almost entirely a pair of GPs, presumably because the SD40-2s have been needed more as trailing power on other road freights as some of the Gevos have left the property for Mexico.