Bath Crowd continued . . .

Before and after Anna and James recent wedding, I have been in email dialogue with Rob Taylor, brother of Nick Taylor, whose wedding Simon shot a number of years ago. Unfortunately for Simon and to great benefit to me, he left for Calfornia, leaving the "Bath Crowd" to turn to me to shoot their forthcoming nuptials. To date I have shot three couples from this group of friends with Anna and James the fourth. As you can imagine there are serial guests that appear at each event and it's wonderful to see so many familiar faces.

I usually limit my housecall visits to within the M25, but as an exception, I drove down to Guildford to meet Rob and Debs to discuss their wedding plans. The M25 seemed like a Sunday morning and my trip down took 45 minutes and the return was even shorter at 35 minutes! I had a great chat with the couple and they confirmed the booking the following day - so a very well worthwhile trip!

The image above was shot from the driver's seat as I breasted a hill in leafy Guildford as I started the (short) return trip to Harrow. Canon G9, Programme mode and around 210mm.

The pleasure of small airports

As some of you may know - I love aircraft and one of the many benefits of traveling through small airports is the proximity they allow to the aircraft. Flying Ryanair is a unique experience to start with, especially as they lined us up in a corridor right beside the aircraft parking slot, separated only by glass and a few metres in blazing sunshine whose heat was magnified by that glass! Of course we were queuing well before our aircraft had even landed which was a bizarre feeling. The plus point of all this was that when the Boeing 737-400 landed and taxied to its position I was able to take the above image. 

The flight itself was largely uneventful if dominated by a young couple's loud and boring accounts of their recent drinking exploits. As soon as the Seat Belt sign went out, in went the iPod Touch headphones to drown out their drone. Amazingly when I had to remove the headphones for landing, they were still on the same subject - oh dear!

Rather disappointingly the weather at Stansted was wet and windy and quite a shock compared to the fantastic sunshine and warm temperatures in Northern Ireland. I'm sure you won't see that written anywhere too often but it is true and you have seen the pictures that prove it!

Monday lunch

Another wonderful day dawned and thoughts of what to do before my evening flight back to Stansted started to formulate. After visiting the Boucher Road shops that include a massive Cotswolds Outdoor branch, we bent the ear of a Kia car sales lady after Muriel had been attracted by their recent tv ad campaign. That took us up to 1030am! As I was restricted by the hand baggage allowance there were no visits to Dunnes Boutique to stock up as usual - except for a sneaky look on Friday when I snapped up a shirt - but don't tell the girls!

Thoughts turned to finding a lunch venue and one out of town - not too far as to be rushed to return to Osborne before leaving for the Airport - but not local either. We settled on Donaghadee which is about an hours drive east to the coast and we headed to Pier 39. Arriving at 1230pm the restaurant was deserted as we were first through the doors but no sooner had we settled to look at the menu a "bus load" poured through the entrance. We chose quickly from the menu to get our order to the kitchen first and I enjoyed the first and last pint of Guinness of the weekend.

Lunch for both of us, was Portavogie Scampi and chips with a side of coleslaw - big on bulk but lacking real flavour. They could easily halve the portion size and concentrate on the taste but then again size matters in rural Northern Ireland. After lunch we had the obligatory walk along the harbour with a cliched Lighthouse and blue sky image at the end of it!

Sunday - must be beach day?

After Church and a quick lunch we decided to drive the short distance south to Tyrella Beach, a well known and popular seaside destination that just happens to have the shadow of the Mournes to the south . Interestingly this stretch of strand has been largely unspoilt by commerce with only a carpark and no shops and the only slight irritation was the £3 fee to park at the beach. The beach was quite busy, even though this was the most overcast day of the weekend, it didn't seem to discourage the bathers and sun seekers - we even encountered a group of Polish with one rather attractive blond in a yellow bikini.

Always on the look out for the odd, I spotted this line of buildings dwarfed by the Mournes but it took quite a bit of persuading before Muriel would perform the necessary u-turn and find the perfect spot to stop and shoot. I think it was worth the effort.  

Hot, damn hot!

There is no arguing with the figures as displayed on Muriel's In/Out Thermometer . . . but then again one might as these are full sun readings! One way or the other it was a spectacular weekend weatherwise and coupled with the more northerly latitude, much longer dusks and evenings.

Magic of the Mournes

As a Norwegian friend once mangled a well known saying, my trip to Northern Ireland was to "kill two flies with one rock" and this Saturday saw me drive west to Brookfield and then south to Rostrevor to visit Frank and Noreen and install Frank Snr's new 20" iMac - the second of two flies! Thankfully this was as simple as advertised and as I've been through this process a few times recently, I had a good idea of what to expect and all was completed by lunchtime.

Now for the fun part of the day as I left Rostrevor and headed for the Mournes and the B27 that cuts through the centre of the mountain range. Of course I have shot pictures on this road and area many times before and in varying weather conditions but on this occasion, the weather was superb if a little flatly lit due to the time of the day. Not that I could really choose - so I made the best of the situation and shot a few frames . . .

What a joy to have a 35 - 210mm hires camera in the pocket - disguised as the Canon G9! This goes everywhere and produces stunning images, be they single frames across the above focal range or multiple frame stitched panoramics as the opening image of this post is.

Once through the Mournes the B27 joins the A24 main road back to Belfast and for a number of years this was a well driven route up and down to Newcastle where my Nana Nixon was resident for a few years. One particular Sunday in December dawned clear, cold and photogenic and thanks to my Father as he indulged every request to stop as I shot a memorable series of images of the Mournes, Whin and the "Yoh" tree as we drove to and from Newcastle . . . A new version of this image appears below as thankfully the tree seems to have survived.