North Wales

By shendyNo Comments
We had a few days pootling around bits of North Wales. We were based in Porthmadog, which turned out to be a really good base for getting around. Home of course to the Ffestiniog railway. This is the evening sun breaking through the clouds onto the Snowdonia hills behind Porthmadog. While much of Snowdonia is beautiful, you can't escape the industrial background of some parts. This is in Llanberis, and I think the Dinorwig hydro power station is in that hill. One of these hills is apparently Snowdon - taken from the road between Beddgelert and Llanberis. One really annoying part of Snowdonia is the lack of places to stop by the road and take photos of the views. The road down the Llanberis pass has great scenery but only about 2 places to stop. There was plenty of military jet activity. Unfortunately, by far the best view of a plane was one that appeared out of nowhere and passed very low overhead -...
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Tyntesfield

By shendyNo Comments
In lieu of a "proper" summer holiday this year, I had a couple of weeks off and we pottered about a bit. We had a week in Wales (pics to follow), but started off with a visit to Tyntesfield The National Trust have done a massive amount of restoration since they acquired the property in 2002, and the whole building is currently covered in a mass of scaffolding. Interestingly, they've built a viewing platform, so you can actually go up and see what's going on. It's fascinating to be able to look out over the roof! The garden had an excellent array of flowers in bloom, so out came the Panasonic compact camera in macro mode. I'm told they're dahlias. To me, the natural world consists of lilies, roses, tulips and "flowers". ...
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Walcot v Brixham

By shendyNo Comments
More than 10 years ago now, I took a fair few photos at Walcot RFC in Bath - a colleague was initially captain, subsequently chairman and is now secretary. The old (film!) photos are on my sports website. Anyway, I was asked to go to their first home game of the season (against Brixham) to take some photos for them to use on their website. It was a decently sunny day, which always helps the quality of the photos - it was just a shame about the result, as Brixham racked up 40 points. Walcot are in black and white, Brixham in the rather fetching pink. It's still possible to be a bit creative when taking sports photos. This is undoubtedly the shot of the day - the Walcot winger taking out his opposite number high and in the air as he went up for a high ball. It was very obvious, but amazingly the referee and touch judges all missed it - the...
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Beckford’s Tower

By shendyNo Comments
Just before going to photograph a rugby match (see next post), I stopped off at Beckford's Tower on the edge of Bath. Far easier to climb up than Alfred's Tower at Stourhead - apparently Beckford built it when he was in his 60s, so that might explain why it's so much wider and less steep! The views from the top weren't anything to write home about, but I did quite like the spiral stairs. ...
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