DSLR Images

Holiday in Northern Spain/ France September 2011

2012-01-05T16:16:00.000Z

This year we decided that we would take the ferry down to Bilbao in Northern Spain and spend a few days there before driving up to our place in France. It’s only a 6 hour journey from the ferry port in Bilbao all the way up to near La Rochelle in the Vendee. The ferry journey itself was a full 24 hours but quite enjoyable.

We spent the first night in Bilbao, on the outskirts and spent the evening drinking beer and eating tapas- or ‘Pintxos’ as they call it in the Basque Country- in various bars and pubs. We had a great time and got rather drunk- so no photos I’m afraid! I do have 2 pictures actually, the first is of some graffiti we spotted that looked great and the other is of the river that ran through where the hotel was.

Then we drove on up to San Sebastian and on to a place called Hendaye which is right on the border between France and Spain. The roads in Northern Spain are unbelievable. They are really very twisty and winding and constantly up and down hills and mountains. The drivers were quite impatient and stupid too, often overtaking us or trucks on uphill, hairpin bends! Ridiculous!

We decided we’d stay and camp at a site in Hendaye. The beach there was just stunning. It was a surfing beach though so no swimming for me. It was constantly filled with surfers- the waves were so rough and big! We actually managed to run the beach twice in the few days we were there. We ran barefoot in the wet sand and it was just lovely. It was about 3.5 miles in total.

Here are a few of my favourite pictures of the beach.

I love these dusk shots:

This picture is of 2 tiny wading birds, dippers I think, that I spotted sheltering from the violent surf on the rocks at the beach.

Just across the river from Hendaye, about 5 minutes by car, there was Spain. It was much livelier on their side and I much preferred it over there. My Spanish is fluent but my French really isn’t… The town we visited most was called Hondarribia and had a beautiful little beach that was a complete contrast to the French side. As it was between two groins the water was dead still- just like Mediterranean waters. We managed to spend 1 day there when the weather was scorching and not windy and I got to get in and swim a fair bit. Well, I can’t really call it swimming, more like flailing around!

Here is the beautiful beach.

One day we decided to drive down to Pamplona, where they do the running of the bulls in the San Fermin festival.

Pamplona itself is quite a beautiful city. We enjoyed our day out. We spent all day walking around taking photographs in the sun. They had beautiful parks there filled with peacocks and other exotic birds. It was really a great place to visit.

We also took a day trip to a place called San Sebastian. It is one of the famous Basque Country cities and was a very beautiful place. It is steeped in history due to it’s strategic location. It has a huge fort up on the hill and it’s a great walk.

Here are some pictures from San Sebastian.

After 4 days or so we decided to head on up the coast back to our place in France. We stopped at Biarritz (they call it the Monaco of the West coast of France) along the way and took some beautiful photos of the coastline, stopping at other coves and bays also.

Biarritz:

When we got back up to our place in Mervent we were astonished to see the low level of the dam fed lake/ river system there. We have never seen it so low. Once every few years they near enough dry out the lake for some reason- obviously due to managing it right but I’m not sure of the specifics.

Here are a couple of pictures showing the low level. I have posted a couple of old pictures underneath to show you the difference.

How the lake is normally:

This last picture is of a sunrise one morning at our little house. I woke up and looked out the window and literally jumped up to get my camera and out the door to capture this. I had not seen this there before, just the sunset. It was beautiful and the picture really doesn’t do it as much justice as it deserved.

Anyway, these are my favourite pictures from our holiday in September 2011 but I have plenty more up on my Flickr page. See you soon with more photos!

Birthday in Cairo, March 21st 2011

2012-01-04T11:56:00.006Z

We took the Sharm el Sheikh holiday over my birthday and decided that we would visit Cairo and the Pyramids on my actual birthday. I really wanted to go to Luxor as well but we decided we will definitely be going back to Egypt in the future and we will go to Luxor another time.

We managed to get the Cairo trip with a really good discount seeing as they didn’t have many tourists at the time. We had made a couple of friends at our hotel called Richard and Sarah and they decided they wanted to come too. We used a company called Sharm Club as we had seen excellent reviews and recommendations and they were also the cheapest. We got picked up from the hotel about 5am and got taken by taxi to the airport. We booked in and found out we had been upgraded to business class which meant a free drink before we left. (We found out afterwards that they had given us business class because they didn’t have any economy seats left for that day and the travel rep didn’t want to make us go on another day because it was my birthday. How sweet!)

On the plane we were put at the front with the business customers and the economy ‘paupers’ were shut away by curtains and a burly security guard! We were given drinks and cakes during the 40 minute journey. All 4 of us were pleased as punch by this point already! When we landed we were ushered off first while the security guard held the others back and we were put on our own bus to the terminal. The economy passengers were held back until we were all out of customs- it was great! As you can tell, I’ve never flown business class before :)

We met our tour guide for the day, Shariff (he was the BEST!) and 1 other guy who was to be in our party. It was pretty much like a private tour as we had 1 guide for just 5 of us. He told us there were normally 20 odd people per group. The guide was excellent and really made our day so much fun.

We started out by going to the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo. It was really quite something. Cairo itself was hectic and very run down and full of immense traffic. To make it worse though, it was a mess thanks to the huge uprising of January 2011 which saw the long time president Hosni Mubarak forced out of power.

Next to the beautiful museum was the ruling party’s HQ building that had been completely destroyed by fire. It was pretty surreal to see it burnt out next to this awesome museum which was surrounded by real artifacts… See the picture here:

I could have spent all day in that museum. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed the cameras inside; we had to leave them in a guarded kiosk. It was so, so amazing to see all the artifacts and coffins and just everything! We didn’t have a look at the mummies as none of us fancied it to be honest but we did get to see Tutankhamen’s Mask and jewellery. It was pretty awe inspiring to see it all. 17kg of solid gold mask. Wow. They were lucky that these things were not looted by the Mubarak thugs…

After the museum, we went on a sailing boat across the Nile. It was really cool and we all enjoyed it. The boat ride was about 20 minutes long. We then went and had our lunch (included with the trip) at a huge floating TGI Fridays. I was so happy with this! We got a 3 course meal which was very, very enjoyable. We then headed off to the Pyramids.

The Pyramids are an amazing sight. We were all pretty gobsmacked when we got there. It is quite surreal really as you are driving along amongst traffic and buildings and tower blocks and then you spot these big stone peaks every now and again through the buildings. Very odd.

Here are some pictures of how amazing they look. Our guide also tipped one of the security guards so we were able to take our cameras into one of the smaller pyramids and get some great pictures.

Brian being silly!

We then went on and visited the Sphinx. It was surprising how quiet it was really. We were advised that normally it is literally heaving with tourists and people trying to make some money by selling the normal tat. Which I bought by the way! I bought my Mum a lovely wooden cat for about £2- can’t go wrong really!

Brian being silly again!

After the seeing the Sphinx and posing for silly photographs, we headed off to a papyrus shop where we saw how they were made and even though none of us bought any artwork (way too expensive!) they still gave us a free gift of papyrus bookmarks as we left.

At the end of the day we flew back to Sharm and zonked out! IT was a very tiring yet amazing day and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are going to Sharm el SheikhCheck out Sharm Club (By the way, I am in no way affiliated with them, I just really did enjoy my trip and really do recommend them)

Don’t forget these photos and more are on my Flickr page.

Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, 2011

2011-12-20T11:07:00.001Z

Back to my holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt in March 2011. This was an awesome holiday! We got a very, very cheap all inclusive deal to a lovely hotel called the Hauza Beach Resort. We got there and it was incredibly quiet thanks mostly to the uprising that had happened in January in the country and also partly thanks to the shark attacks that had happened in December 2010. We didn’t care! There was no queuing for meals or drinks, the pools were empty, the beaches were quiet and everything was pretty much perfect.

The hotel was awesome- I loved it! There was a collection of pools that they called the ‘Jungle Pools’ which were obviously more for the kids but it was so quiet we spent most of our time there. We never actually went in the main pool. Because there was a bar at the main pool, that was where the chavvy drunken lot were most of the time so we managed to avoid them. As you can see from the pictures, the Jungle Pools were pretty lovely looking. There were a couple of slides but I was just too much of a wimp to go on them. Brian got to enjoy them though! There was a really nice swinging bridge over the pools too but it was so hot it burned your feet if you tried to cross bare foot. We had a few giggles watching new people try to get across!

Up behind one of the waterfalls, they had some ‘caves’ and in the caves, in glass fronted enclosures they had some rattle snakes etc… for people to go and look at. It was rather interesting.

This (above) was the pool we stayed at the whole holiday. It was lovely as you can see.

And this (above) was the main pool at night. It was really pretty but full of drunken louts so we didn’t use this one!

Whilst we were around the pool we often saw these huge birds of prey come over. We thought they were some type of eagle. We watched them dipping into the sea and catching fish which was pretty amazing! I found out afterwards (thanks to the lovely bird identifiers of Flickr!) that they were in fact Ospreys. Wow! I had never seen an Osprey before and we were chuffed to bits that we’d seen them there. Brilliant!

Also on the bird subject… we saw quite a few Hoopoes whilst around the pool. If you look at the hieroglyphs in the pyramids and other temples/ tombs etc… you will often see the Hoopoe depicted as it was considered sacred by the Ancient Egyptians. It’s such a lovely looking bird!

So onto the sea… Wow. That pretty much sums up that part of the holiday! We were lucky with the hotel as it had 2 private ‘lagoon’ style beaches. It was great as all the fish were available to see right in the shallow waters. This meant I did not have to get in the ridiculously deep ‘dark blue’ water that was off the ‘ridge’ at the end of the jetty. It was 45m deep right off the end of the jetty! It’s like an underwater cliff edge all along Sharm el Sheikh. Some hotel beaches have the drop gradually though, but ours was on a bit where it was a sheer drop. Needless to say, I could not bring myself to get into that water! Brian did and managed to get a couple of beautiful photos for me. I did try but my body physically would not lower itself into the water, so I stuck to the shallows. As you can see from the photos below, there were plenty of fish for me to see and I didn’t have to go any deeper than about a meter or so. Also, the sharks couldn’t get up over the ridge to get into the lagoons so I was happy snorkelling there. I managed to get a couple of hours in most days. It was great!

The first pictures show the beaches and the jetty, then the deepwater and then my shallow water fish pictures. Also, a couple of shots of me and Brian snorkelling- just for fun! (and to show off my cool camera- Panasonic Lumix FT2, TS2 in USA I think)

In this picture (above) you can see what I mean when I talk about the ‘ridge’ or underwater cliff face. It is clear in the colour of the water. Also it’s quite visible in the photo below too.

So here are the underwater pictures, get ready, there are quite a few… The first 4 are in the deepwater or on the cliff edge. (Taken by Brian, not me!)

Now to the shallow water fish…

There was such a huge variety of fish in the shallows, I found something new every visit. I have many, many more fish photos but just picked my favourites :)

Here are a few more pictures from the holiday that I like the best. Descriptions are above. I have put my Cairo/ Pyramids pictures in a separate post which you can find here.

This is Sarah who we met on holiday. I love this photo! We were messing around with my camera in the pool.

This is Brian posing at the Hard Rock Café in Naama Bay.

These next few are from a day trip snorkelling to Ras Mohammad National Marine Park. I tried to get in but had a panic attack and nearly drowned so Brian took these photos. It was just way too deep for me.

These are the Flamingos that they had at the hotel. They also had Giant Tortoises.

This is the entrance to the Old Market. They call it old as it was built in the 1980’s!

Brian and me in the hammock by the pool. These hammocks are really hard work to get in and out of!

This is a Kestrel that I spotted outside our room digging for worms! I didn’t know they did that. It stayed there for ages whilst I was snapping away it wasn’t worried at all. It is obviously used to guests like me gawping at it in amazement!

And this is a Striated Heron that Brian spotted and managed to photograph down at the beach.

Sorry for the huge post peeps but as I said, I’ve been MIA for too long and need to get you caught up with my year- 2011 has been amazing for me, I hope it was for you too!

Please don’t forget that all these pictures and more are available to view on my Flickr page.

So I'm back....

2011-12-20T09:04:00.002Z

Firstly, I want to say sorry to anyone who regularly visited and read my blog, that I have been MIA since May this year. I have neglected my site for 7 months! Also, I have neglected your sites too, so sorry! The main reason is that Brian and myself have this year got very into freshwater fishing- (i.e carp, tench, bream, perch, roach etc) We joined a local club back in May and have been fishing practically every weekend since then. I am not joking about every weekend either! We are up about 6am on Saturdays and Sundays and come back as it gets dark. It is fun but less so now it is getting colder!

Anyway, I have a few things I want to catch up on. I’m going to start today with the remaining pictures from my holiday to Sharm el Sheikh back in March this year. It was pretty amazing and I have a few photos that need to be shared. We went to Cairo and the Pyramids of Giza on my birthday which was a great experience. Due to the rioting that had happened just before we went, it was also very quiet as there were no tourists around- just us crazy Brits who don’t worry about a bit of rioting! Also, there had been several (fatal) shark attacks in December 2010 which had led to many cancellations in Sharm.

I also will be updating with pictures of our more recent holiday in September. We took the ferry to Bilbao, Spain and then spent a week at the border and then drove on up to our place in France and had a week there. It was a great holiday and I got some lovely pictures that I need to share.

On top of that lot, I will be putting up *quite* a few pictures of myself and Brian and some fish that we have caught this past year as well as some of the beautiful lakes we have been visiting. Lake fishing is really nice as we get to be surrounded by such beauty and pretty cool wildlife.

So, expect another few posts from me later on today.

Kestrel in Sharm el Sheikh

2011-05-09T15:03:00.000+01:00

Here is a post from my recent holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

Our hotel room at the Hauza Beach Resort had a garden view. The patio doors opened up onto a lovely grassy area. One morning I popped out there first thing and was startled by this Kestrel, about 10ft in front of me on the grass! I couldn’t believe how close it was. I kind of looked at it for a few seconds and when I realised it was not perturbed by me, I sneaked into the room, put my big zoom lens on the Canon and sneaked back out again to get some pictures.

Whilst I was watching, I realised that it was in fact digging for worms! I was really pleased that I could see this for myself as I had heard once or twice that often birds of prey will dig up worms if they need to. Often times, kestrels feed their babies worms too.

This kestrel did indeed have babies I reckon as we spotted a pair of kestrels either mating or doing something else busy right up in a cubby hole on the roof of the main reception area. I think it was the same kestrel from the garden and it looked like they were on a nest. I didn’t manage to get photos of that though unfortunately.

I was quite surprised by the number of birds of prey we saw. We saw quite a few Ospreys and Kestrels but we also saw a few falcons and some other big birds. It was a nice surprise as I was not expecting to see much wildlife seeing as Sharm el Sheikh is a purpose built place right on the beach. There is literally nothing behind or between the resorts, just mountains and sandy desert.

Anyway, here is the kestrel from outside our room. Enjoy!

And don’t forget to check out my Flickr page!

Osprey in Egypt

2011-04-27T10:19:00.010+01:00

I thought I'd share one of my favourite pictures from my recent holiday to Egypt with you. This is an Osprey. I feel really cuffed that I saw this!

We were not sure what it was at first, we just presumed some kind of sea eagle as it was taking fish from the sea.

It flew right over us several times whilst we were at the pools too. Actually there were at least 2 near our hotel.

This one, I had to follow from up at the pool all the way down to the beach so I could get a decent photo. I was so pleased when I got down there and saw him perched on a topless palm tree.

I have never seen an Osprey before so I am very happy with this photo. I had the bird identified for me on Flickr (there are some great people on there!)

I have some more photos of my trip on my Flickr page so go and check it out if you have a spare 5 minutes. Be back soon with more pictures from Egypt.

Picasso fish

2011-04-08T12:05:00.001+01:00

Picasso fish 1, originally uploaded by Bemused26.

This is one of my favourite fish from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. It is a Picasso Trigger Fish and was very tough to get photos of but I got there in the end. Actually, I eventually ended up with quite a few! He is so handsome this one. They were always in pairs too. I only ever saw the one pair of these though as I did all my snorkelling in the shallows at our private beach. I was too scared to go in the deep water off the jetty- it was 45m deep! I'll be back soon with some proper posts with plenty of pictures!

Kluzingers wrasse

2011-04-02T22:40:00.002+01:00

I got this photo on my recent holiday to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. Plenty more to follow!

December Snow

2010-12-06T13:07:00.003Z

Ok, so I know a bit of snow is not that big a deal to most of you who read this, but it is a massive deal to me! I love the snow, so I have a few more pictures from the 2nd December when Southampton received its biggest covering of snow for many years :)
Enjoy!

This is Peter. My first ever snowman. I was very pleased with him.

These are some pictures from down my local park.

And this is my drive and what I awoke to!

My snowman Peter is still alive even though it has since rained an awful lot. I don’t know when I’ll next get snow but I do hope it is like this again!

Remember to check out my Flickr page where I have a lot more photos of the snow.

The big snow of December 2010...

2010-12-03T13:10:00.002Z

Hello everyone. The UK has been crippled by snow once again. It is so funny over here when we get snow. Everything just stops for a couple of days. I have to admit, in January 2010 it was fairly bad in the South where I am. We had snow, sleet, rain and then it froze so the pavements and roads were like ice blocks- very dangerous.

This time, my city of Southampton that never gets any good snow was buried under at least a foot of the white stuff on the 2nd December! It was amazing to wake up to. For some reason, (being close to the water amongst the reasons), Southampton is rubbish for snow. We never get more than a dusting.

I woke up on Thursday morning after my boyfriend getting a call from his workplace telling him to go in early. I had a peek out the window expecting to see a few centimetres and there was about a foot of it! That was it- I couldn’t go back to sleep. Then my boss called and said not to go in to work. How happy I was! I was like a 10 year old again. I got all wrapped up warm and went down the park armed with 3 cameras.

I was surprised how many people were out and about but it made for a great morning. I walked around for 2 hours taking photos. People were mainly out with their little kiddies and walking their dogs. The dogs were hilarious jumping around in the snow and there were some people sledging down this little hill at the park. It was really nice.

Some of the pictures came out ok but it was still snowing and the sky was a dark grey colour. This generally made the photos rather dull. But, everything was so pretty that I don’t really mind a bit of grey.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the deepest snow Southampton has seen since 1963 (according to a few people who said ‘the last time it was like this was the winter of 63…’).

These first few are off my Sony Satio phone, hence the smaller size.

This was near my house.

And this is my street. Very snowy!

I have some more photos taken with my Canon and my Panasonic which I will put up later. I just thought I’d share some of the phone photos with you first as that is all I have access to at the moment. I had one day off but am in the office today. I wish I was at home though. I might make a snowman later on. I don’t think I have ever built one before.

I just love the snow so much! I have more photos on my Flickr page that didn’t make it on here. Check it out.

Cool Pictures from Thailand (last post, honest!)

2010-11-23T14:59:00.005Z

So I thought I would round off my holiday posts with a few photos that didn’t really fit with any of my other posts. This will be my last Krabi post. Phew! I hear you say…!

I can’t believe I’ve managed to spread out a two week holiday into 6 months worth of posts. Sorry about that!

So here we are, my last lot of Thailand snaps.

This was a great scene- I was so lucky to actually get this photo as the battery had gone in the camera. I managed to switch it over in time to get this photo of a huge lizard running off with his toad supper! This was just at the side of the road too.

In this photo they were harvesting bird nests for bird nest soup. I honestly thought that bird nest soup was just a name, I didn’t realise they actually do use bird nests!! But look at the water, just beautiful.

This was probably the best side car tuk tuk that I saw whilst in Thailand. It was pretty awesome.

And this one was cool too- a banging sound system built into the side car with neon lights.

This was a weird one. There was a guy living in a cave on this island. Well, it wasn’t really an island, more a big rock in the middle of the sea! There was no boat moored there, just the guy and his washing. The boat in the picture is another long boat on a tour like we were.

I saw a few of these gorgeous red birds visiting the many red flowers around the hotel grounds. I don’t have a clue what they are but they are gorgeous. Not a good photo I’m afraid, I was miles away!

Brian asked the woman’s permission to take this photo. It was cute, but I’m too shy to ask so he did! The kids loved it.

And he took this one too. This guy had just caught this and I guess was pretty pleased with it.

I love this picture. A beautiful little Gecko. Notice the awful sounding menu?! We didn't eat in places like these I can tell you! we went Thai food all the way. Apart from the Macdonalds we had once. It's my thing- I have to have one in every country I go to.

And this one, even if it is a bit blurry. This Gecko was huge- about the size of my forearm and hand!

This bird was so cute. It was right by our feet and was not scared at all. I don’t know what it is though, but they were fairly common.

This was the LIVE jelly fish that our guide scooped up out of the water. Brian had a hold too. Crazy people. Apparently though, it is the tiny bits right at the bottom that sting.

I think these may be Purple Herons? Or black Herons if there is such a thing? I’m not sure but I know they are stunning.

This was a crazy little crab we spotted. There were thousands popping out of little holes in the sand. They were waving their one big claw about in such a funny way! In their thousands, waving, they looked like flies. I actually thought it was tons of flies til Brian got a closer look and pointed out they were actually really tiny, very cool crabs.

So that is it from my holiday to Krabi in Thailand. I am sorry I managed to drag it out so long but hope that you enjoyed looking at the pictures.

I am off to Egypt in Spring next year and have a really nifty new Panasonic Lumix underwater camera to try out. It is the FT2 (in USA, TS2) and it is a brilliant compact digital. Great colours and so easy to use and does HD videos. It is the perfect holiday camera for when you don’t want to worry about the dslr getting lugged about. Also, being an underwater camera means no need to worry if you’re at the beach or on a boat.

I am planning a lot of snorkelling and even my first scuba dive so there will be plenty of underwater shots and HD movies to show you all. I bet you’re looking forward to that! Ha ha ha- I’ll try not to drag it out so long this time!

Don’t forget to check out my Flickr page as I have a lot of Thailand photos among others that do not make it on here.

See you soon.

Day out on scooters, Krabi, Thailand

2010-11-17T15:23:00.005Z

Hi everyone. Today I have another post from my holiday in Thailand. Wow, you must be excited huh?! I know it is taking me ages but I still have photos I want you to see. Back to the post…

So one day, I said to Brian that I wanted to rent scooters for the day as I had heard they were really cheap. At first he wasn’t keen because he thought it would be dangerous and I might get hurt seeing as I have never, ever ridden a scooter or motorbike!

I was persistent and he came round to the idea. We arranged it and it cost us the equivalent of £5 for 24 hours. I guess that’s about $8-9 maybe? Very cheap anyway. The guy turned up with our scooters and I saw that they were 135cc. Much bigger than you can ride in the UK without a proper license. The limit here is 50cc and you have to pass a cbt road test. They were ‘twist and go’ scooters which was amazing because I had no gear changing to worry about. Anyway, after a brief description of the controls, Brian sped off up the road. I was left alone with the guy watching me. I tried not to look like I hadn’t been on one before (they wouldn’t have let me go otherwise!) but I was a shambles as I wobbled off up the road. I caught up with Brian and made him pull over then asked him how I was supposed to go round corners! Very funny but also worrying as we headed out onto the main roads. I soon got the hang and absolutely loved it!

Here we are filling up the scooters. It cost us about $4/ £2 to fill up the tank.

As you can see, I decided to wear my silly helmet. Brian didn’t. But to be honest I was wearing shorts and tshirt so there wasn’t much point wearing the helmet really as I would have ended up squished and cut up if I’d come off anyway!

The roads were scary at first then they were brilliant. The cars and trucks or busses and lorries would beep the horn to let you know they were coming up behind and overtaking. At first that was weird but then we got used to it. It was very strange being overtaken by other scooters with 3 or 4 people on… or a whole family, baby included!

We got to see some great stuff away from the resort. We drove through remote parts of town and saw people’s homes and life away from the beach resort of Ao Nang. We went to a place where they look after elephants and offer rides to people. We did not want a ride on an elephant but stopped to take photos. One young boy was pleased to let us photograph him and his elephant and got him to wind Brian up with his trunk which was funny. I, in typical Lucy fashion, was scared stiff by the huge creature so just stayed back and took photos!

I spotted this other elephant just relaxing, leaning on the floor of that building, made me giggle!

The elephants seemed ok and there were a couple of babies chilling out playing football with each other- not chained up. Also, the mahouts do have this big spike thing but I only saw the young lad scratching behind the ear with it, not poking him or anything. I noticed where the rope goes around their bodies, it is encased in rubber tubing so as not to chafe the animals. I thought this showed they care about them.

So that day we just rode around taking in the jungle and palm and rubber fields. It was great. I’ll finish off with a couple of pictures of me on the scooter and looking silly in a funny hat as usual!

Don’t forget all these and more are on my Flickr page. Be back soon with some more!

Beaches at Krabi Thailand Pt 1

2010-09-23T16:51:00.002+01:00

So ok, this is part 1 of the beaches of Krabi, Thailand. These are my favourite beaches. They were awesome and beautiful and just amazing. I so want to go back right now!

So these first shots are from Maya Bay. This is a beach that is closed in by the land mass of the island it is on. It is very famous as they filmed the movie ‘The Beach’ with Leonardo DiCaprio there. Consequently it was stupendously busy! I mean REALLY busy. There were hundreds of people there as we turned up. I was disappointed as it was the place I was looking forward to most out of the whole holiday but I didn’t get to enjoy it or even get in the sea for a swim. I did however snorkel round the back of the bay and saw a little clown fish (like Nemo). That was the first day I snorkelled. And, it was the time when I was just using a mask and no snorkel, but it was still amazing!

This is Brian looking beautiful in the beautiful surroundings. He said it’s his Daniel Craig picture! (James Bond!)

This is me snorkelling at Maya Bay, round the other side. That foam noodle was amazing. Takes the panic of not being able to swim away!

These next few are from a place just up the coast from where we were staying called Phra Nang Cave. There is a shrine in the cave there. The beach was gorgeous and that boat was pretty cool too. (I like wearing silly hats by the way)

The next few are of several other islands near Krabi. There is Phi Phi Don, but we just stopped there for lunch. And a shot of my most favourite place, Bamboo Island. Unfortunately I got into snorkelling there and did it for 2 hours solid so didn’t get any pictures til we were sailing away! I do regret that because it was the most beautiful island ever.

Phi Phi Don.

Bamboo Island.

This was an island we stopped at one day for lunch. I don’t know the name but it was pretty!

So that leaves Poda Island. This was probably the best place we visited. It had great coral and fish just off the beach for snorkelling. It had monkeys up in the trees. It had a great looking rock just opposite the beach. It had white sand and palm trees. It had everything! We went here a couple of times.

Here’s me snorkelling, minus snorkel again.

The beach wasn’t really mucky, that is just sticks and stuff that got washed in. The pictures don’t do it justice really!

Anyway, that’s all for now. Don’t forget my Flickr Page!

Beaches at Krabi Thailand Pt 2

2010-09-23T16:10:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone. Today I’m doing a post about the different beaches we visited whilst in Thailand. We went on quite a few different boat trips during our holiday and it doesn’t make sense to do a post for each day- plus I can’t remember anything other than the names of the beaches/ islands.

So, these next photographs are really the main thing I enjoyed whilst in Thailand- the beaches. They were just stunning. I so seriously want to go back there right now. I write this as it is dark grey outside and raining heavily.

This first picture is of Ao Nang beach. The photo is taken from a restaurant right on the beach. This was the main beach on the mainland. Our hotel was about 5 minutes walk up the road from here. When I first saw this beach, I was disappointed as I was expecting white sand and all that. However, I soon came to realise how beautiful it was and got plenty of white sand on the islands.

The next couple are of Nopparat Thara beach. This was the next one along from Ao Nang. We had a beautiful morning walking all along these 2 beaches. Right at the end of this beach was a small harbour filled with wooden long tailed boats. It was really pretty there.

This next beach is on an island called Chicken Island. It is called that because of the shape of rock that sticks out. I couldn’t see it myself… However, this island was absolutely gorgeous. And the trees up in the hills were full of monstrously huge fruit bats. Unfortunately, didn’t have my big camera lens with me so never got pictures of them.

That’s Chicken Island behind me and Brian. And yes, sorry about the smudge. It was on my lens for the first few days. What a wally!

These next couple are of Hong Island. We went there for a kayaking trip but I bottled out after seeing how far I had to go in the rather choppy sea. The lagoon bit looked ok but I wasn’t brave enough to get round to it so we both stayed at the beach instead for a couple of hours. It was beautiful.

This is the lagoon where we were supposed to do the kayaking.

This was the sea going into the lagoon- such a beautiful colour. (This wasn’t the choppy bit!)

This was the beach. As you can see, gorgeous is an understatement!

The next few are from Railay Beach. Apparently supposed to be one of the most beautiful strips of sand in the world. It was very beautiful and we went here a couple of times as it was just a 10 minute boat trip around a couple of bays up the coast from us.

So that is all for this post but I have a part 2 which is below. Check it out! Don’t forget my Flickr page has all these and many more too.

Also, I’m sending out my best wishes to Ratty again- so if you happen to read this Ratty, I hope you are starting to feel a little bit better.

Monkeys at Tiger Temple. Krabi, Thailand

2010-09-08T15:59:00.000+01:00

Monkeys at Tiger Temple. Krabi, Thailand

I hope you have enjoyed my posts of Tiger Temple. If you are getting bored- fear not! I have a post with just monkey pictures here to finish off that part of the holiday. I found these monkeys to be very well behaved despite the warnings we had received stating the contrary.

The only time they got narky was when Brian gave his bottle of water to one of them. He tried to drink it but dropped the bottle. When Brian picked it up and gave it back to him he thought Brian was stealing it and shouted a bit! He then made off with it in his mouth. It was quite funny. So anyway, enough talk. Here are the monkey shots!

I hope you enjoyed my monkey photos. I’m off for a couple of weeks now so when I get back I’ll post some more Thailand photos including a few of some elephants. Something to look forward to hey?

On another note, if you are reading this- get well soon Ratty! Everyone else, why not go and visit Ratty and send him your best wishes?!

Day trip to Tiger Temple Krabi, Thailand. Part 2

2010-09-08T15:39:00.000+01:00

Day out at Tiger Temple, Krabi, Thailand. Part 2

So last week I showed you some of my pictures from our day trip to Tiger Temple, the hot springs and the Emerald Pool. However, I couldn’t find any of my semi decent pictures. I had a hunt around and found I had not uploaded half of them to Flickr. So this week, I’m doing a part 2 with a few more pictures, slightly better than last week. Also I’m adding a second post purely about the monkeys at Tiger Temple.

So here we go. This first picture is when I realised that it was going to be pretty tough going getting up the 1237 steps to the Temple. You can just make out the temple at the top of the hill, in the middle of the picture.

These next 2 show the crazy steep steps that I mentioned in last weeks post. This was on the way back down.

This was the view from the top.

These next few show the Temple and the different things we found up there, shrines etc…

I think he was tired from all those steps…

The next few show what was around at the bottom of the hill. They were building a new temple and there were a lot of brightly painted statues around. As well as monkeys, but they come in a separate post.

So on to the hot springs and Emerald Pool. I just have a couple of these places.

This was at the hot springs too. Brian and another guy decided to swim out towards where the river goes until all the people in the water started shouting at them not to go down there. We didn’t ask why not!!

This looks like some kind of scary bamboo!

All this- just in the middle of the jungle. It was so pretty there.

So those were the rest of my pictures from our first day trip we took in Krabi, Thailand. If you get the chance to go there- do it! It is an amazing place, so beautiful.

Don’t forget these and many more are on my Flickr page. See the next post for the monkeys!

Mum and baby hedgehog

2010-08-31T10:59:00.008+01:00

Messy Hedgehogs!

Mum and one of the baby hedgehogs. Somehow managed to flip their food bowl. And also poo in the box. Thanks you guys, i do enjoy cleaning up your mess. Not! But, it is always worth it to have mum and her 3 babies coming back each night.   

One of my hedgehog videos is featured on a very cool site today. Go check out nature center magazine and see my video along with other great articles and pictures and videos all relating to nature.

Day trip to Tiger Temple. Krabi, Thailand

2010-08-27T14:27:00.001+01:00

Day trip to Tiger Temple. Krabi, Thailand

Ok so I didn’t really do as many posts as I would have liked about our holiday to Thailand. So, I have decided to show you photos from our first day trip. It was lovely.

We went for a walk up to a place called Tiger Temple. There are no tigers there, just a lot of pesky monkeys! Oh, and a giant Buddha, some shrines and a great view. I have to point out at this point, that we had to climb up 1237 steps to get to the top of the cliff. I thought that didn’t sound like much. Big mistake. It was horrific and I really don’t know how I made it up there! The steps are very steep too and at the top of each section there is a little helpful reminder of how many steps are left to go. It got pretty soul destroying actually. Also, as you start the ascent, there are monkeys around winding you up and being generally mischievous!

However, it was a lot worse on the way down. The steps were so steep and my legs had turned to jelly (from the way up!) that I had to go down quite quickly to stop my legs from wobbling! It was not fun at all. I managed to get a few photos of the stairs- very steep and scary. In a couple of places I had to go down on my backside it was so steep. N.B I seem to have misplaced the photos of the stairs. Once I find them, I’ll add them in.

The view was great (even though I maintain NOT worth the 1237 steps!) and it was excellent once we reached the top as there was a big water chiller there for anyone who got up there. There was also a random dog up there. Weird.

This is the view down on where we started from the top.

These are at the top.

This is us, hot, wet and very knackered!

This was the view… worth 1237 steps in 40 degree heat?

Very cute monkey.

After the temple visit we went to a hot springs waterfall. This was lovely and the water was about 40 degrees. It was a bit crowded though but good for a little stop off. It was so pretty deep in the jungle.

We were then taken to a place called the Emerald Pool, in the middle of the jungle again. This place was quite random! They had lilos and rubber rings etc… Was quite busy but nice all the same. The pool was also surrounded by the Crystal Streams. You can see why they call them that in the pictures.

This is Brian enjoying the stream.

I got a little bored so decided to look for the Blue Pool. I took a path through the jungle and eventually found it. It was not for swimming, just photos. It was quite pretty.

It was a great day out and we did really enjoy it, even after the monstrous climb! I will do a couple of posts for each day trip we did in the coming weeks. Don’t forget to check out my Flickr page where I store all my photos. See you soon.

Meet my hedgehogs...

2010-08-06T15:29:00.002+01:00

Ok, so now it is time to introduce you to my hedgehogs. They are beautiful little creatures! The first hedgehog turned up on the day that we lost Buzz- that very evening actually. The little critter has done well to keep my mind off losing Buzz to be honest.

I called it Mr Hedgehog. How wrong I was- it turns out she’s a Mrs Hedgehog with babies! The other night 3 babies were in the garden altogether. I have a friend who used to look after rescue hogs and she says that she would have had the babies in about June and then kicked them out after 6-8 weeks to fend for themselves. She obviously showed them where a regular food supply was though. Apparently, the babies will probably stick together for a while, maybe even hibernate together. How cute is that?

Anyway, pictures! These are of the Mum to start with. She is quite big.

Now here’s a couple of pictures of two of the babies.

They aren’t scared of me or anyone in the garden to be honest. I had my Mum come round to feed them the last week as I was away in France on holiday. They carry on doing their thing and munching on the cat biscuits even if you talk loudly or make a racket. They even let me take the lid off the box to photograph them whilst they eat.

Hedgehogs are becoming exceedingly rare over here in the UK and I feel really lucky that I have one, let alone babies too! I live in a town but we have a really good strip of gardens all the way along my road which is obviously good enough for the hedgehogs. I feed them every night and clean up their food and water box every night too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my hedgehog and her babies- I’ll keep you updated with them. Don’t forget to check out my Flickr page- plenty more on there!

By the way, it was great to find out that I have pictures of an animal that you don’t have in America- purely because I am always looking at all your photos and thinking ‘it’s so unfair we don’t get interesting animals like that over here’ then Ratty told me that you don’t get them over there! I was pleased with that. Have a great day everyone!

RIAT 2010 Royal International Air Tattoo, RAF Fairford

2010-08-04T14:28:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone- well if there’s anyone left out there still reading my blog that is! I hope everyone is keeping well. I’m good, just been a bit busy and not doing much photographing of things lately.

Please click on the highlighted links - they'll take you to pages explaining whatever the words are.

I have an unusual post (for me, anyway) for you all today. I recently took my Dad for his 50th birthday to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford (RIAT 2010). We had a really great day and the aircraft on show were quite simply awesome.

We had an issue as the weather was dull, dark and grey, but not raining. This meant with my zoom lens not having a wide aperture, I struggled to pick up a lot of detail on the aircraft. However, after a teeny amount of fixing, it turns out that some of my photos are pretty darn good. Well, I like to think so anyway.

So, here we go. I’ll start with the new Airbus A400M military carrier.

Now we have the B52 Bomber Stratofortress- one you should all be pretty familiar with. This was one of the planes that I think was used in Vietnam. (Please do correct me if I get any of this wrong, I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on these things!) It is massive!

Here is an Apache helicopter. This one is part of a Dutch display team- a strange team- of an F16 fighter jet and the Apache. I was amazed at what this helicopter could do!

And here we have the F16 (Fighting Falcon). I am particularly happy with these shots. Please bear in mind that the jets were flying by at super fast speeds. I think because this is orange my camera found it easier to pick up detail.

Now we move on to an awesome machine… from the USA… the F22 Raptor. This was absolutely stunning to watch, the noise sent chills down my spine and all my hairs stood up! It was awesome. I am very happy with these shots as this plane was really fast… speed of sound fast… God knows how I managed to get these shots! Some were taking when the aircraft were flying slowly, like they do for shows, but most weren’t.

This last one is my favourite:

This is our famous Harrier (GR9). The Americans call it a Jump Jet I believe. I think other nations have been struggling to build a craft that is as effective as this for vertical take off and landing for some time. We now have the Joint Strike Fighter jet, well now it is called the F35- Lightning but I really don’t think the Harrier can ever be beaten. This is something we English should definitely be proud of!

The Harrier came on right at the end of the day unfortunately so the light was even worse.

Here we have a few photos of the French acrobatic team the ‘Patrouille de France’. They were particularly good but due to the crappy cloud they had to do their ‘intermediate’ routine which was based mainly around formations and nothing more interesting. However, I found it really enjoyable. And, a little factoid, their leader is a woman! And, she is the first and only female leader of a demonstration team in history. Well done Virginie Guyot!

Oooohhh. Now we have the Tornado GR4. These came on as we were getting ready to go, the light was rubbish at that point so I’m pleased these came out ok. The Tornado is also an awesome piece of kit and I love it!

So now we move on to the star of the whole show. An aircraft that has a special place in most Brits hearts- if they know a little about aircraft that is. Here we have the Avro Vulcan. This aircraft has not flown for some time- until the weekend of RIAT 2010. The Vulcan is an absolutely beautiful aircraft from the early 50’s designed to cope with the threat of the strengthening Soviet Union. She is, you could say, a cold war icon. She was only flown in anger once in her career and that was to bomb the runway at Port Stanley on the Falklands in 1982. She hasn’t flown for some time but has been restored and maintained and is now flying again.

So, I hope you enjoyed my RIAT photos this week. I’ll be back soon with some photos from my recent trip to France. I have a great macro of a scary spider eating a cricket… nice. Back to my normal type of pictures!

Don’t forget to check out my Flickr page where I keep all my photos. See you soon!

Bye bye baby...

2010-07-05T16:10:00.002+01:00

I had one hell of a weekend last week. It was really shitty to be honest. Out of the blue my cat Buzz got poorly, on Friday evening. He just didn’t look right. If you have a pet you’ll know what I mean by that. Then on Saturday morning he was looking really wrong. We decided he probably had a bad tooth because he was dribbling a bit and smelled a bit too. I took him to the vet right away and when she said ‘his teeth are fine’ my heart sank because I just knew something wasn’t right. She felt his stomach and it turns out he had a rather huge tumour in there. Luckily for Buzz, it seems to not have troubled him too much up until Friday night. She told me he was in a lot of pain and that we had to decide what to do for him. Basically, there was no choice for us. He was in pain and I didn’t want him to carry on in pain just because I didn’t want to be without him.

We were there with him right until the end and it was a hugely traumatic experience for both of us. The thing is he was actually Brian’s cat- I just completely took over when I moved in with him 5 years ago! Brian had already had Buzz for about 5 years before I came along. We are both utterly gutted by this and keep looking at the patio doors as we would normally to check and see if he was there waiting to come in. I seem to be spending a lot of time crying over him and wishing he was back on the sofa with me, begging for my dinner! Or sunbathing on the windowsill, or waking me up in the morning by sneaking upstairs and moaning at me from behind my door. Or strolling up the lawn to come and get pampered on the decking. I just miss him so much!

Here are some photos of Buzz doing what he did best- lolling around and looking stunningly gorgeous! I loved my little boy and I won’t stop just because he’s gone.

Here he is being silly on the decking!

This is one where I tried to HDR him. (Even though he was looking grumpy!)

This is from my old phone, so not so good, but he loved sleeping like this next to me on the sofa!

This is him also sleeping on the sofa- pattern emerging here!

Here he is again on the sofa, looking beautiful as usual!

Here he is on the window sill...

These are taken with my mobile phone. Here he is just lazing around on the decking. Beautiful. These were just last week.

He loves Brian’s feet!

Here is Buzz looking a bit shocked that I was taking his picture…

And here he is getting annoyed at me taking more pictures:

Buzz was just an amazingly cool cat and I will miss him forever. I have put more pictures on my Flickr page here.

Seriously cute hedgehog eating cat biscuits

2010-06-29T16:25:00.002+01:00

Please turn up the volume for this video- it makes it even cuter!

This is our new visitor. I've called it Mr Hedgehog though I guess it will probably be a female! He seems to like the cat biscuits I put out for him :)

He now sits and waits for me to come out with the cat food and I've only been doing it 3 days!

I feed him at the bottom of the lawn so as not to draw him into the open for any cunning foxes...

It's all about the fish (Krabi, Thailand)

2010-06-11T16:41:00.000+01:00

Today I wanted to bring you a post just about the fish I saw in Thailand. I didn’t see that many fish to be honest but for someone like me, I saw more than I’d normally dream of!

To explain a little, I have a seriously morbid fear of the open water, the sea, being in the water etc… It is hard work to get in a boat for me and hard work to paly in the sea. I never go past about waist height and I like to wear shoes for fear of what could be in there! I know it is a strange thing but I just am not good with the sea or water.

Anyway, whilst we were in Thailand we went on quite a few boat trips because that was when you got to see the really stunning white sand beaches, out on all the islands. On the trips you’d normally get the opportunity to jump in the sea and do a bit of snorkelling. Off the boat, in the middle of the sea…. With monstrous jelly fish around and the promise that you might even be lucky enough to see a shark! Right, well as you guessed, I didn’t take them up on the offer. But Brian did and he kept on and on about how gorgeous the fish were and the beautiful coral and that it was amazing in there.

After about a week of insane jealousy brewing up inside me, I finally took the plunge and actually snorkelled for the first time. In the open sea. I was terrified and I shook like a leaf the whole time and didn’t let go of Brian or the speedboat for the whole of my first snorkel experience. All 2 or 3 minutes of it! I got back in the boat a proud woman, even if I had only had a mask on and no snorkel. Then, the next place we stopped at, I was the first in the sea believe it or not! I was hooked. By the end of the day, I had the whole group waiting for me as I was quite happily snorkelling, on my own snorkel and everything, miles away from the beach.

As you will see from the pictures, I had a floating aid to help me. It is called a ‘noodle’ and was the best thing I’ve ever bought. I didn’t have to worry about sinking whilst trying to breathe and not freak out. Also, they gave you life jackets on the boats but whilst on the beach the noodle was awesome.

So after all that talking, here are some pictures. Hope you enjoy them!

Ok, so this isn’t a fish. But I’m looking at them. This was before I’d braved the actual snorkel. This was hard work with just the mask as you had to keep coming up for air every few seconds. By the way, the water was about 25 degrees. Like a bath! Closer to 30 nearer the beaches.

This is what I could see over the side of the boat on one of the trips.

Brian snorkelling with my noodle. He found it helped too. Can you see all the fish around him?

This was me snorkelling minus snorkel at a place called Poda Island. I went off the beach, and it looks like silty water, but I could see plenty of fish. My green noodle sort of attracted the stripey fish that wanted feeding all the time!

This is one of the smaller jelly fish that were constantly around whilst you were snorkelling. Nice huh?! Apparently, it is only the tiny bits right at the bottom that actually sting you, which is why our guide didn’t get stung whilst showing off to us! Then, he offered the jelly fish to the members of the group- all said ‘no thanks’ except Brian who then held the jelly fish. I didn’t get any photos of him as I was too busy panicking that he’d get stung!

These were the greedy fish! Eating bread and things like that.

These pictures illustrate why we went on day trips to the local islands. Look at the sand and the sea! I wish I was back there now…

Remember that I have all my holiday photos and many more on my Flickr page. I hope you’ve enjoyed these and that you all enjoy the World Cup!!! I’ll see you in 35 days or so!

Holiday in Krabi, Thailand

2010-05-26T16:40:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone- if I’ve still got any followers to say hi to; I’ve been gone a while. I have been sorting out my photos from Krabi, Thailand for the last couple of weeks. I took about 2000 whilst away. However, the majority were shot with my lowly Kodak camera the main reason being that a big DSLR is seriously NOT practical whilst you’re out and about in the jungle, near monkeys, in rivers, in and out of boats, on beaches and in the sea snorkelling. Ok, I know, I’m rubbing it in a bit but it is true. I did manage to smash the front end of one of my lenses. Luckily it had a polarising filter on so I only smashed that and not the actual lens, but it was still enough to stop me from taking it out much.

Also, for the first week, I had a big smudge on the lens of my Kodak and didn’t realise it, meaning that many of my pictures have a fuzzy patch in the middle. In truth, it was a total disaster for my photos *but*… I had the most awesome time ever and I’d go back in a heartbeat if I could.

Krabi was jaw-droppingly gorgeous (seriously), most of the locals I met were pretty darn nice, the food was out of this world, the sun shone loads and we had a consistent 35-40 degree heat for the 2 weeks we were there. Basically, it rocked BIG TIME. If you get the chance to go you really should take it.

I will start with a couple of scenery photos. I may do this for a few weeks and put up a different day trip and commentary for each post. I’ll see how I feel and just go with it. Sorry they’re not the best quality; I just hope you enjoy looking anyway!

This is Ao Nang Beach (as seen from a restaurant we ate at). This was where the main town was based. There was the main strip of shops, bars and restaurants along the beach front and the majority of the hotels were set back a bit. I didn’t like this beach when I first got there as it was not what I was expecting but after the first day or so, I realised how nice it was and we did spend a couple of days there in the end, swimming and relaxing.

This is a picture of some long tail boats at Railay Beach. This was a 5 minute boat trip from our beach (Ao Nang). The boats look so picturesque but they have dirty great diesel engines attached and sound horrific!

This is also Railay Beach.

This is the next beach along from our beach and is called Nopparat Thara Beach. Ao Nang is just on the other side of that headland. We walked all the way to the end of Ao Nang Beach then to the end of this one and then back again all on our first day. It was beautiful. We both got very sun burnt unfortunately! At the end of this beach are some tiny islands and a harbour for long tail boats. This was a beautiful yet deserted place.

This is the harbour I just mentioned.

These are all the tiny islands. They are joined by sand banks when the tide goes out and you can walk between them all. It was very pretty here.

I will finish with a very strange fish we spotted. In fact, there were hundreds of these- in the inlets as well as in the sea at the beaches. This was a small one but they actually get fairly big and quite freaky looking! We just called them the long nosed fish but I haven’t a Scooby what they’re really called. If anyone knows, please mention in the comments!

I will be back soon with more pictures. If however, you can’t wait and really want to see more of my pictures from Krabi, Thailand then please check out my Flick page. Here the pictures are tagged and labelled accordingly in one set. Hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures.

Sneaky peek of things to come

2010-05-13T21:45:00.004+01:00

Well, I eventually got away on my holiday after a week delay due to volcanic ash... Here is a quick preview of what you have to look forward to. These are long tail boats on Maya Bay beach. Maya Bay is where the movie 'the Beach' starring leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. The place was absolutely, jaw droppingly gorgeous but unfortunately there were several hundred other tourists there at the same time as us which made it less exciting. I'll be back soon with more pictures.