View allAll Photos Tagged pair
This is looking into the window of a small clinic near my house. People entering put their shoes on this rack and then put on a pair of slippers.
Unfortunately these lemurs are behind perpex which means gruby hand and paw marks and reflections...
Blackbrook Zoo Park. North Staffs
Pair of Scarlet macaw parrots perched side by side at the South Lakes Zoo in Cumbria.
To view & purchase my best images please visit my website at www.jasonwells.co.uk.
On the reverse:
This is
Baxter, and
Virginia Brown
Roy's Son ans
Daughter
Ancestry.com was very helpful on this one. There are a lot of Browns in the world but the combination of Baxter, Virginia and Roy popped up only once.
Royal Brown (1894-1973) apparently had only the two children Baxter Brown (1917-2007) and Virginia Brown (1919-2000). The three spent most of their lives in Kansas. Virginia lived and died in Herrington.
When last we visited our old locale we bought a "his and hers" pair of bicycles from our old neighbours. That was in October. The winter intervened and, apart from a couple of try-outs on the paths near our house, I haven't used mine until today. As I type I'm still aching and my legs are wobbly when I go up and down the stairs. And my sit-upon, well...
Is this what's known as a "mountain bike"? As long as the wheels go round when I pedal it's all the same to me. On the frame (and again on the saddle) it says "Exodus", in letters resembling those used by "urban artists" when they spray their grafitti designs on railway rolling-stock. I'm not sure why. On the rear forks it says "Havoc" ...again for no very clear reason.
The area where I now live is heavily wooded, and the woods are publicised as a kind of playground for cyclists. This would be alright if the woods were worth cycling in, but really they're not woods at all, bearing much the same relationship to real forest that a potato field does to an alpine meadow, or a salmon hatchery to a mountain torrent. They are just commercial timber production units. I always wonder when some boffin will come up with the idea of selectively breeding the trees so that they grow with square trunks that can be efficiently sawn into planks of uniform size, without wastage. The trees, all of alien coniferous species producing a dense canopy, march across these sandy heaths in straight lines, only a few feet apart. Nothing grows on the lightless forest floor. Even in the rides and clearings there is nothing more interesting than gorse or heather. But of course, I consume paper and need furniture like everyone else, and want them readily available at a reasonable price. Life is full of contradictions.
Here the Bentos steed is parked next to an information board ...close relative of the "interpretive" boards we see dotted about in "managed" countryside wherever, as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, or Special Scientific Interest, nature has become part of the bureaucratic system and leisure a function of the welfare state. So it was off on the "blue" route for me. Luckily there was a sort of cut-off half way around, allowing you to return to your starting point by a short cut.
Felton, Grimwade and Bickford. From former timber settlements in the jarrah forest in SW Western Australia...pre 1960. There is also a clear one, which would complete the trio!
There were quite a few of these chaps at Sumburgh Head. The top of the headland has a lowish wall. It's quite a surprise to look over the top and find the puffins just the other side. These two were busy courting judging by their behaviour: tapping their bills together in a vigorous manner.
It was quite tricky getting a decent picture. My tele-zoom lens was at maximum focal length and the birds wouldn't stay still.
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GX1
LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 45-175mm / F4.0-5.6 ASPH. / POWER O.I.S.
175mm, 1/400, f/8, ISO 640
After returning their rented Fiat 500 at Frankfurt International Airport, taking a 70-Euro taxi ride to the city's train station, riding a pair of trains to Paris, navigating the Paris subway system, hopping on another train bound for Bayeux, and waving down one more taxi for a ride to the French seashore, Olivia and John set foot on Omaha Beach, a stretch of sand made sacred by 43,000 American Soldiers who stepped onto its shore 70 years earlier.
Omaha Beach was one of four beachheads along the Normandy coastline used by the Allies during the opening act of Operation Overlord. After a carefully orchestrated series of aerial and naval bombardments proceeded by mass airborne assaults behind German lines, approximately 160,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel on June 6, 1944 to commence the largest amphibious assault in human history.
The years of planning, training and intelligence gathering ultimately resulted in a successful invasion that led to the liberation of Paris less than three months after the first wave of Allied soldiers stormed the Normandy beaches. Victory, however, came at ghastly price. The Allies suffered approximately 226,000 casualties from June 6 to Aug. 30. Omaha Beach stood as one of the bloodiest battles in the entire operation. Of the 43,250 American Soldiers that attacked 7,800 German troops fortified by bunkers, pill boxes, mortar pits, anti-tank guns and machine gun nests, nearly a quarter would fall within a quarter mile of of their landing craft.
Although their travel time far exceeded their stay at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, John and Olivia agreed that their somber experience among those who made the ultimate sacrifice upon the altar of freedom was worth every cent and second.
Photos by John Carkeet and Olivia Carkeet