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The van is loaded and ready to take the goods to Manchester on the first leg of the delivery to Mongolia. 11th June, 2021.
Burnsville High School Theatre Guild Presents 'Noises Off' in February 2010. For ticket information, visit www.MrazCenterTickets.com.
I’ve been wanting to take a city break in summer, rather than in the cold months for a while, so rather than heading for the Lake District for a week of toil on the fells when Jayne could get a week off, we took off from Liverpool for Paris. Flight times were nice and sociable but it meant we were on the M62 car park at a busy time in both directions – it’s a shambles! I’ve stopped over in Paris a dozen times – on my way to cycling in the Etape du Tour in the Alps or Pyrenees – and had a few nights out there. Come to think about it and we’ve spent the day on the Champs Elysees watching the final day of the Tour de France with Mark Cavendish winning. We hadn’t been for a holiday there though and it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision. Six nights gave us five and a half days to explore Paris on foot. I had a good selection of (heavy) kit with me, not wanting to make the usual mistake of leaving something behind and regretting it. In the end I carried the kit in my backpack – an ordinary rucksack – to keep the weight down, for 103 miles, all recorded on the cycling Garmin – and took 3500 photos. The little Garmin is light and will do about 15 hours, it expired towards the end of a couple of 16 hour days but I had the info I wanted by then. This also keeps the phone battery free for research and route finding – I managed to flatten that once though.
What can I say – Paris was fantastic! The weather varied from OK to fantastic, windy for a few days, the dreaded grey white dullness for a while but I couldn’t complain really. We were out around 8.30 in shorts and tee shirt, which I would swap for a vest when it warmed up, hitting 30 degrees at times, we stayed out until around midnight most nights. It was a pretty full on trip. The security at some destinations could have been a problem as there is a bag size limit to save room in the lifts etc. I found the French to be very pragmatic about it, a bag search was a cursory glance, accepting that I was lugging camera gear, not bombs around, and they weren’t going to stop a paying customer from passing because his bag was a bit over size.
We didn’t have a plan, as usual we made it up as we went along, a loose itinerary for the day would always end up changing owing to discoveries along the way. Many times we would visit something a few times, weighing the crowds and light etc. up and deciding to come back later. I waited patiently to go up the Eiffel Tower, we arrived on Tuesday and finally went up on Friday evening. It was a late decision but the weather was good, the light was good and importantly I reckoned that we would get a sunset. Previous evenings the sun had just slid behind distant westerly clouds without any golden glory. It was a good choice. We went up the steps at 7.30 pm, short queue and cheaper – and just to say that we had. The steps are at an easy angle and were nowhere near as bad as expected, even with the heavy pack. We stayed up there, on a mad and busy Friday night, until 11.30, the light changed a lot and once we had stayed a couple of hours we decided to wait for the lights to come on. This was a downside to travelling at this time of year, to do any night photography we had to stay out late as it was light until 10.30. The Eiffel Tower is incredible and very well run, they are quite efficient at moving people around it from level to level. It was still buzzing at midnight with thousands of people around. The sunset on Saturday was probably better but we spent the evening around the base of the Tower, watching the light change, people watching and soaking the party atmosphere up.
Some days our first destination was five miles away, this is a lot of road junctions in a city, the roads in Paris are wide so you generally have to wait for the green man to cross. This made progress steady but when you are on holiday it doesn’t matter too much. Needless to say we walked through some dodgy places, with graffiti on anything that stays still long enough. We were ultra-cautious with our belongings having heard the pickpocket horror stories. At every Café/bar stop the bags were clipped to the table leg out of sight and never left alone. I carried the camera in my hand all day and everywhere I went, I only popped it in my bag to eat. I would guess that there were easier people to rob than us, some people were openly careless with phones and wallets.
We didn’t enter the big attractions, it was too nice to be in a museum or church and quite a few have a photography ban. These bans make me laugh, they are totally ignored by many ( Japanese particularly) people. Having travelled around the world to see something, no one is going to stop them getting their selfies. Selfies? Everywhere people pointed their cameras at their own face, walking around videoing – their self! I do like to have a few photos of us for posterity but these people are self-obsessed.
Paris has obviously got a problem with homeless (mostly) migrants. Walk a distance along the River Seine and you will find tented villages, there is a powerful smell of urine in every corner, with the no alcohol restrictions ignored, empty cans and bottles stacked around the bins as evidence. There are families, woman living on mattresses with as many as four small children, on the main boulevards. They beg by day and at midnight they are all huddled asleep on the pavement. The men in the tents seem to be selling plastic Eiffel Tower models to the tourists or bottled water – even bottles of wine. Love locks and selfy sticks were also top sellers. There must be millions of locks fastened to railings around the city, mostly brass, so removing them will be self-funding as brass is £2.20 a kilo.
As for the sights we saw, well if it was on the map we tried to walk to it. We crossed the Periphique ring road to get to the outer reaches of Paris. La Defense – the financial area with dozens of modern office blocks – was impressive, and still expanding. The Bois de Boulogne park, with the horse racing track and the Louis Vuitton Centre was part of a 20 mile loop that day. Another day saw us in the north east. We had the dome of the Sacre Couer to ourselves, with thousands of tourists wandering below us oblivious of the entrance and ticket office under the church. Again the light was fantastic for us. We read that Pere Lachaise Cemetery or Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise was one of the most visited destinations, a five mile walk but we went. It is massive, you need a map, but for me one massive tomb is much the same as another, it does have highlights but we didn’t stay long. Fortunately we were now closer to the Canal St Martin which would lead us to Parc de la Villette. This was a Sunday and everywhere was both buzzing and chilled at the same time. Where ever we went people were sat watching the world go by, socializing and picnicking, soaking the sun up. As ever I wanted to go up on the roof of anything I could as I love taking cityscapes. Most of these were expensive compared with many places we’ve been to before but up we went. The Tour Montparnasse, a single tower block with 59 floors, 690 foot high and extremely fast lifts has incredible views although it was a touch hazy on our ascent. The Arc de Triomphe was just up the road from our hotel, we went up it within hours of arriving, well worth the visit.
At the time of writing I have no idea how many images will make the cut but it will be a lot. If I have ten subtly different shots of something, I find it hard to consign nine to the dark depths of my hard drive never to be seen again – and I’m not very good at ruthless selection – so if the photo is OK it will get uploaded. My view is that it’s my photostream, I like to be able to browse my own work at my leisure at a later date, it’s more or less free and stats tell me these images will get looked at. I’m not aiming for single stunning shots, more of a comprehensive overview of an interesting place, presented to the best of my current capabilities. I am my own biggest critic, another reason for looking at my older stuff is to critique it and look to improve on previous mistakes. I do get regular requests from both individuals and organisations to use images and I’m obliging unless someone is taking the piss. I’m not bothered about work being published (with my permission) but it is reassuringly nice to be asked. The manipulation of Flickr favourites and views through adding thousands of contacts doesn’t interest me and I do sometimes question the whole point of the Flickr exercise. I do like having access to my own back catalogue though and it gives family and friends the chance to read about the trip and view the photos at their leisure so for the time being I’m sticking with it. I do have over 15 million views at the moment which is a far cry from showing a few people an album, let’s face it, there’s an oversupply of images, many of them superb but all being devalued by the sheer quantity available.
Don’t think that it was all walking and photography, we had a great break and spent plenty of time in pavement bistros having a glass of wine and people watching. I can certainly understand why Paris is top of the travellers list of destinations
The last flying Lancaster in the UK taking off just before noon on 16/05/2013 from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire on its way to the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. 'Celebrating' 70 years of the famous Dam Busters flight into Germany.
The 1943 raid was practised over the dams and reservoirs in Derbyshire before the long flight over to Germany with the 'bouncing bomb'
I took this short film with a Lumix TZ30 camera while standing at the perimeter fence of the southern end of the runway.
This Anhinga Pounced up to the lowest branch it could find after getting wet in the water, Shaking off its wings and leaving them out to dry in the warm Everglades sun.
A pair of horses belonging to the U.S. Park Police cool off in the heat of the late spring by drinking out of the horse fountain in the Summer House in Washington DC. Note the surprised tourists in the background.
The Summer House is a brick structure set into the sloping hillside of the West Front lawn among the paths that lead from Pennsylvania Avenue to the Senate side of the Capitol building.
Completed around 1881, the Summer House has offered rest and shelter to travelers for over a century. Constructed to provide comfort for those who explore the area on foot, it is also a pleasant location from which to appreciate the Capitol's classical architecture and the landscaping that surrounds it.
The Summer House is sometimes referred to just as "The Grotto", because the structure is set under a canopy of trees and feels a bit secluded even though it is quite literally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol building. In fact, if you look for it in the satellite view of Google Maps, you will not be able to spot the Summer House through the thick tree canopy above it.
2 Boys wading and waiting for a geiser to explode from this wimpy bubbler fountain on the 16th Street Mall in Downtown Denver. Burgeoning engineers perhaps?
N370TJT a Scania K113 / Vanhool Alizee C46FT of Birmingham Coach Company is seen off its normal run . Seen entering its bay in Central Drive Blackpool it is runing the 387 Blackpool service to Coventry it will take a break here before it returns to my home town this coach would normally be seen on either the 420 or 460 service Birmingham - London. The coach was new to Yellow Buses of Bournemouth for their National Contracts
Another discarded railway wagon to add to my collection found abandoned across Worcestershire! This one is in the grounds of Cottage Farm, Droitwich.
"The year is 2547. The Covenant are currently invading the planet Skopje. Things aren't going very well, at least not for me. We were being dropped in to create a perimeter around a shipyard so some big corporation could evacuate their ships. Sounds easy enough, but I was seperated from my team during the drop and landed in a field in the middle of freaking nowhere. My radio is being jammed, and I can't use a flare because that would alert the Covies. I can see smoke off in the distance, so that must mean that the Covenant are destroying a city there or something. I guess the old saying is true, Feet First Into Hell. Looks like I've got a lot of walking ahead of me."
Hey guys! Figured I'd do a Halo story, try something different. Tell me what you guys think! Comments and faves are greatly appreciated! I'll be going on vacation for a week, so I apologize in advance because I won't be able to respond to your comments right away.
Went on a sunset hunt whilst in Germany and ended up in the middle of nowhere off road with the hire car. Wish I could have washed up the side panels a bit to remove the layer of mud I had managed to deposit all over it :)
P.S - Don't tell Avis!
Think my strobe setting was off (too dim), but I like the effect anyway.
Do you like this or the other?
Ascidia ornata
~Aphol's Rock~