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High above the waters of Lake Ohrid lies the beautiful Paradise Nest Guesthouse, hidden among trees and gentle hills. After following the winding road uphill, we arrive at this peaceful place with an impressive view over one of the most beautiful lakes in the Balkans. The small houses are entirely built of wood and blend perfectly into the natural surroundings. Warm colors, wooden balconies and flowers around the house give the place an almost alpine atmosphere. In the garden a hammock hangs between the greenery — a perfect spot to relax for a while and enjoy the quiet of the mountains. The family running the guesthouse is incredibly warm and welcoming, making you feel at home immediately. Despite its secluded location, the narrow road leading up the hillside is still manageable without a 4x4, as long as you drive slowly. From the guesthouse you look out over the vast Lake Ohrid, one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe. The lake is estimated to be more than one million years old and is home to hundreds of unique plant and animal species that exist nowhere else in the world. The mountains on the far side already belong to Albania, as the lake lies exactly on the border between North Macedonia and Albania. This place, surrounded by nature, wood and tranquility, makes it easy to understand why travelers enjoy staying here for a while and simply taking in the view over this timeless lake.
High above the waters of Lake Ohrid, in North Macedonia, the beautiful Paradise Nest Guesthouse is tucked away among trees and hills. The wooden cabins blend perfectly into the natural surroundings, creating a peaceful place to relax — a hammock in the garden, mountain silence, and views over one of the oldest lakes in Europe, more than one million years old.
Hoog boven het water van het Meer van Ohrid ligt het prachtige Paradise Nest Guesthouse, verscholen tussen bomen en heuvels. Na de slingerende weg omhoog bereiken we deze rustige plek met een indrukwekkend uitzicht over één van de mooiste meren van de Balkan. De kleine huisjes zijn volledig van hout gebouwd en passen perfect in de natuurlijke omgeving. Warme kleuren, houten balkons en bloemen rondom het huis geven het geheel een bijna alpine sfeer. In de tuin hangt een hangmat tussen het groen — een perfecte plek om even tot rust te komen en te genieten van de stilte van de bergen. De familie die het guesthouse runt is bijzonder gastvrij en behulpzaam, waardoor je je meteen welkom voelt. Ondanks de afgelegen ligging is de smalle weg naar boven nog net te doen zonder 4x4, zolang je rustig rijdt. Vanuit het guesthouse kijk je uit over het enorme Meer van Ohrid, één van de oudste en diepste meren van Europa. Het meer is naar schatting meer dan één miljoen jaar oud en herbergt honderden unieke planten- en diersoorten die nergens anders ter wereld voorkomen. De bergen aan de overkant behoren al tot Albanië, want het meer ligt precies op de grens tussen Noord-Macedonië en Albanië. Deze plek, omringd door natuur, hout en rust, maakt het gemakkelijk te begrijpen waarom reizigers hier graag even blijven hangen en genieten van het uitzicht over dit tijdloze meer.
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Every year, some time around now, the morning post plops onto the doormat at 123 Somewhereintheblackcountry Street, Walsall, England (not a real address – or an impressive and unintended coincidence if it is). A stovepipe hat wearing septuagenarian hears the sound of the letterbox flap dropping back into place and shuffles along the hall to where among the myriad leaflets for home delivery pizza services that have spread across the floor, he finds and opens an envelope, in which lies a cheque made payable to a Mr N Holder for a very large sum of money. Attached to the cheque is a note which screams “IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!, Love you Noddy, from the people in charge of the dishing out the royalties.” All is well in the world and this famous pensioner will survive the year ahead in comfort and unaffected by the astronomical wholesale price increases in gas and electricity. All because of a song he sung as the front man of a band called Slade nearly fifty years ago that still gets blasted across the airwaves in every supermarket, every workplace and at every party across the land as soon as the bunting goes up in early November. Merry Christmas Everbody!
I really hate that song. In fact, that’s pretty much my position on all popular Christmas songs. In fact (and you may need to read the next bit with your eyes covered because it contains a blasphemy), I even hate “Fairytale of New York,” and that’s an undeniably wonderful record – everyone loves that one don’t they? I know that makes no sense, but when you hear these songs played on loop time after time, year after year wherever you go, whether you asked to hear them or not, you start to wonder how much more of it you can take. But most of all, I can’t stand that song by Slade; the one I’ve been forced to listen to for weeks on end every year since I was seven years old. Anyone coming into my office during the festive period (or any other period for that matter) was far more likely to be serenaded with Black Sabbath or Rainbow; or maybe Billie Holliday if I was in a more reflective mood. If they popped their heads through the door to say goodbye at the end of the day, then they might find me sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, lost somewhere amidst Dave Gilmour’s guitar break from “Comfortably Numb.” I always save Pink Floyd for the most important moments.
So you’re probably thinking to yourself, “what a miserable old curmudgeon he is, listening to Pink Floyd while we’re all being invited to Step into Christmas by Elton John” and you may be right, but it’s just that I’ve never been comfortable with what someone I once knew rather creatively referred to as “enforced jollity.” I like to enjoy things (including Christmas) in my own quiet way, and I never understand why people feel the need to almost bankrupt themselves in the annual budget race as they seek out the most extravagant crackers and a turkey the size of a small ostrich. Most people don’t even like turkey because no matter what recipe they follow, the resulting Christmas Day roast is a dry as a fortnight in Lanzarote. Answers on a postcard please. In fact, Ali and I were supposed to be in Lanzarote at the moment, but the arrival of Omicron B put the frighteners on us and we postponed that much wanted dose of winter Vitamin D. Although in retrospect it seems we may as well have gone in any case.
Lee and I were discussing the pleasures of the Yuletide season on the way to a place where you can’t hear Slade on Monday, and concluded that the best thing ever about Christmas is the break from work. He said his wife couldn’t wait to have thirteen days catching up on sleep and overdosing on cheese, which pretty much echoed my favourite memories of the festive period in the days when work ruled everything. A couple of days earlier, after some lengthy discussions around whether we were really bothered at all about it, Ali and I had finally decided to drag the decorations out of the loft. It was a slow process, interrupted by her insistence on singing the words of non Christmas songs to the wrong tunes; something she does deliberately at regular intervals to make me think I’ve finally lost the plot completely. Either that or she’s in the mood to amuse herself by awakening the uncontrollable pedant that lurks close to the surface, ever waiting to be invited to the table because she knows that the person who hates this trait in me most of all is myself. This time she was warbling happily away with the sparse lyrics of Lieutenant Pigeon’s “Mouldy Old Dough” to the tune of Roger Whittaker’s “Dirty of Town.” Try it for yourself – it works rather neatly in fact. So to correct her and also make sure my own memory was still intact, I located a YouTube video of the eternally bizarre “Mouldy Old Dough” and the next three minutes were lost to a bout of uncoordinated movements that were supposed to pass for dancing in the hallway as we procrastinated on the Christmas decorations. With further similar bouts of irrelevant and deliberate dithering, it took all day to finish assembling the fifteen year old artificial Virginia Pine and covering it in baubles and tinsel.
So, it seems appropriate that miserable old souls such as mine are cast into the wilderness, to a place where the strains of Slade’s annual reign can’t reach, and I can enjoy the sound of not very much at all. After all, a brain as full as much useless nonsense as this one contains needs a quiet space in which to recover. On Monday, we found such silent contentment in the misty and rainy wilds of Dartmoor, an early start delivering us to the abandoned Nun’s Cross Farm, where the only other human we saw was a lone trail runner who wasn’t playing Slade on his headphones as far as I could tell. Life seems so much easier in places where nobody is urging you to join in the fun and sing along with everyone else. And no, I’m not going to wear a paper crown either, just because we always do.
Today’s post is dedicated to all you similarly minded people whose only crime is to want to escape the madness of enforced jollity. For those of you who love the madness, do have fun, but please leave us out of it – we’re happy being miserable after all. It’s why we come to places like Nun’s Cross Farm in the pouring rain in December.
And as for Mariah Carey - let's not even go there..........
An insanely beautiful sunset with perfect colors to capture the wild swells of the Pacific ocean from the big island of Hawaii. Kona Drains is a phenomenon that one has to experience, all your thinking will freeze when you see these waves crash into these rocks..A great spot!
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Spending a day with fellow photographers is always an enriching experience—sharing techniques, exchanging ideas, and capturing moments through different perspectives. The Folly Beach Pier at sunrise set the perfect stage for creativity and camaraderie. As the first light of day stretched across the sand, our group gathered, each framing their own interpretation of the pier’s beauty.
Folly Beach Pier, an iconic landmark of Folly Beach, South Carolina, extends gracefully into the Atlantic, offering stunning views and a peaceful escape. Whether capturing the sunburst through its wooden beams, the endless reflections in the wet sand, or the rhythmic waves below, every shot tells a story. Beyond the photography, the day was about connection—bonding over a shared passion, learning from one another, and simply enjoying the beauty of the Lowcountry. It’s days like this that remind us why we love what we do.
Lee was looking confused. I suspect that he is looking back at my own bemused expression and thinking the same thing about me 99% of the time we’re out on a shoot together. The trouble with Kynance,” he declared while narrowing his eyes in the direction of the horizon “is that it’s a tricky old place to get a good shot. I had a look online before we came out and I couldn’t really see any that inspired me.” Of course he hadn’t seen yours. Yours was a beauty. “What about the one taken by [insert your name here] that I saw on Flickr this morning,” I protested. “That was a stunner. The mood, the light, the composition – I could feel the emotion in that shot.” He confessed he’d missed that one. He sends his apologies.
But he did have a point. Taking a shot at Kynance Cove did present some challenges. For a start, there were still plenty of people around. My daughter Nicky, who works at the National Trust car park on Saturdays told me that most of them appeared to be visitors from outside the county, despite the main holiday season having ended over a month ago. Once she’d finished her duties for the day she briefly joined the party before heading off in the direction of her mother’s nearby hot tub. Sadly, when the marriage came to an end all those years ago I lost out on the custody battle for the hot tub, so I suppose it's only inevitable that our now grown up children tend towards their mother when there's a social evening on offer. All I can provide is a few puddles on the front drive and they'd have to queue up behind the resident goldfinches to take their turn at them in any case. Those goldfinches love a good puddle.
Erm, where was I? Back to the steady stream of visitors filling the path between the car park and the beach, stopping for selfies by the cliff edge in front of the all too agreeable backdrop and right in the middle of our compositions. And then there was the focal point itself. Stand here and the big yellowy rock at the back clashed with the headland behind it and spoiling the sense of separation. From a higher vantage point we'd have been fine, but there wasn't one. We either needed a stepladder, a pet giraffe, a drone or some serious experimentation with dangerous and fast acting growth hormone products. Stand there and the right hand side of the rocks disappeared into the headland in front of them. I even tried the wide angle lens and concentrated on a clump of foreground granite. I couldn't decide whether I liked it. There were possibilities everywhere, but none of them were quite perfect. I suppose that's photography. The day we get a shot that we think is perfect, will there be any point in carrying on? I'll continue to look for pictures that make me smile and bring back a feeling or a memory.
We moved closer to the jumble of shapes in the sea, and then we moved away again. A poodle raced to the cliff edge in an apparent suicide bid, stopping at the last nanosecond and staring at me questioningly as I gasped out in horror. Its owners seemed not the slightest bit troubled. Dogs might know when to stop, but can they also tell where the cliff edge is about to crumble and head south at an alarming rate? A group of men scrambled down a near vertical slope so that they could launch stones into the sea far below them more easily. I tried not to look. It was all quite unsettling and it occurred to me that getting older makes you value the remaining years that bit more dearly. After all, when you've done all the hard graft and you're soon to retire with some good years ahead to look forward to, why would you get too close to the edge of a cliff?
And so eventually, Lee having departed in the direction of food, I found myself over this vantage point again. I've managed to take at least four different versions of it. Between them, they have all of the elements that might have produced that perfect image. In one of them the sky is filled from one side of the image to the other with sunbeams. But I don't like the composition. In another I managed to pull off a 30 second exposure despite the strong wind. I liked the drama in the sea, but was less sure about the sky. In the end I decided to post this one. If I were telling this story half and hour later this evening, such is my confusion, I might very well have shared one of the other ones with you instead. But that's the joy of not finding that perfect image. It means the quest to carry on trying continues. The journey is always so much better than arriving anyway.
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Captured the breathtaking beauty of Kauai's Waimea Canyon, known as the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific". The vibrant shades of red, orange, and green create a stunning contrast against the clear blue sky, showcasing the natural wonders of this iconic Hawaiian landmark.
🌊✨ Discover the hidden gem of San Lorenzo Beach near Vieste in the stunning Gargano region! 🌿 Perfect spot for some peaceful vibes and breathtaking views. 🌞💙 Who’s up for a little adventure off the beaten path? 🌴
#SanLorenzoBeach #Vieste #Gargano #HiddenGem #NatureLovers #BeachLife #TravelGram #Wanderlust #ExploreMore #ItalyTravel #SummerVibes #SeasideEscape