I’ve seen the small single person sailboats with a hydrofoil. But it is only recently that I’ve noticed surfboards, whether sail, or kite, with a hydrofoil. The reduction in friction means that these things can reach sixty miles an hour. It’s amazing to see. I’m not tempted to indulge though.
Up until about an hour ago, it has absolutely chucked it down. We haven’t left the house, except to put food on the bird table and rubbish in the bin. Just pottered about really. I should have spent time getting my radio shack sorted, but I’ve been having a bit of a mare installing Big Sur – got it done eventually, but it wasn’t straight forward. In a way the problem lay with me choosing too low a spec machine.
It’s Saturday, we decided that there weren’t any house jobs we felt we had to do. So, we’ve had a a bit of a relaxing day. That’s OK, I won’t complain about that. Not long before lunch, I suggested that it would be quite nice if we went back to the waterfront at Titchfield Haven. I had an ulterior motive, partially. I wanted to shoot some video in what are some quite wild conditions. As you can see from the photo, not massive waves, but enough to show that there was quite a breeze blowing. The wind was driving the intermittent showers quite strongly, the rain felt like needles hitting my face. I have to say though, that I was enjoying being out.
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the 30 or so minutes that I spent on the waterfront, there’s a bit of a shingle bank that is walkable when the tide is low, so I took the opportunity to get out as far as I could – not far, only about a hundred yards, if that. It gave me an opportunity to speak to a couple of the surfers as they were preparing to go out. They were friendly and keen to speak. One had only been doing it for a couple of weeks. Wasn’t going out very far, but was keen to get out.
There’s something to be said, I find, for being out in wild weather. There’s just something about it that really appeals to me. Lunch was lovely, Tuna Mayo rolls, making the whole expedition a very enjoyable experience.
The morning skies are getting darker. It won’t be long before my entire morning walk will take place at night. Every day, the length of the daylight or night changes by at least a couple of minutes per day. The light over the Haslar Marina had a strangle very delicate glow to it, quite unusual.
Now, this is strange. All of a sudden, I can’t think of what to write, and so of course my ultimate fallback is to write about that. Why that should suddenly happen, I’m not sure. Usually, I try and think about the blog a little bit during the day, and usually a thought will come to me for the topic of the evening post. Today, the only thing that came to me was was the photograph at the head of this post. But then, having started to write about, I have dried up.
The weather forecast last night indicated that it was very likely to rain at about 7AM, there’s alway’s a bit uncertainty there , so it may have rained on me. Luckily it didn’t. In fact, what I think was supposed to be a bit of a storm, turned into not even a damp squib. That made it a nice walk as usual.
Not too bad considering I pretty much stopped at the end of the first para. Unfortunately, you can expect this to happen again.
I’ve been walking this route for almost four years now would you believe, 5 days a week for the most part. All year round, the exceptions are rain, holidays, illness, and over-sleeps. I’ve probably accumulated not far short of 20,000 pictures of the same subject. Well not really, the same area, but each picture is unique it’s own way. I would quite like to do a 365 day project of the same scene; either a street scene or the waterfront. I don’t think I can commit to that, not because I literally couldn’t do it, but factors would inevitably intrude. I’d inevitably miss a picture for one reason or another, and that is the project ended effectively.
I have to say that whilst I am typing this, I’m sat watching the Joy of painting. To be honest, we are open mouthed at Bob Ross, he makes it look so easy. Are his pictures formulaic? I neither know or care – they are effective. Apparently our neighbour is doing it. We really must ask him for an exhibition.
I hope you haven’t realised that, from my writing, as I sat to write this evening I couldn’t think of what to talk about. I’m happy with this.
Ah! Right, so this is not quiete what I intended. No. 90/365 was going to be a celebration of the fact that I had reached No. 90. Then of course, not the doubts, but the wondering set in, should I celebrate at No. 90, or or as seems more likely at 100 – given that is only 10 days away. So, given the three confessions I have to make, I thought I had better leave any thought of celebration a bit further down the line.
OK, where to start? Oh, well, actually, my two mistakes both relate to one period of time. So, in my remembrance post on Sunday, I made a couple of statements. Both are wrong.
Firstly, I said that our visit to France and the tour of Normandy was our first trip to “Rural” France. Wrong. A few years before that we had booked a villa just outside Carcassonne, southern France. In part it was because we had all read Kate Mosse’s book Labyrinth based around the city. We had a lovely week with dear friends exploring the area. It was delightful.
I then said that I must do a blog on Castle Bagging. Oh Dear! It was we were holidaying in Carcassonne that we came up with the idea of doing a bit of Castle Bagging. We managed to get several quite spectacular sites in the bag.
The third one is, after looking back at the post, I suddenly thought “Hang on a second, I’m sure I’ve a post about castle bagging, and looking back through the list, there you were, and here’s a link;
One of my magazines turned up earlier this week, Country Walking. Like Black & White Photography, I like reading this publication cover to cover (almost). For me, it’s a combination of reading about people’s walking experiences, lovely pictures from all over the country and quite frequently, you pick up something of interest.
This issue (413, Dec 2020) had several articles that made very interesting reading;
The ten maps every walker should own. It’s not the maps them selves, one of the websites recommended is;
Go and have a look at it, you can get specialised maps such as The Great British Adventure Map or Great British Place names. Or, you could get your own personalised map from the Ordnance Survery at
shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/custom-made/
Particularly interesting to read was the story of the London A-Z and how this was developed and published by Phyllis Pearsall.
Then of course there was the little gem of TrigBagging (which reminds me, I must do a blog on Castle Bagging – I will explain all). What is Trig Bagging? I’m sure you must have been out for a walk and found one; these small concrete pillars in the middle of nowhere for no reason, with strange mountings Trig points; Although the country had been mapped in the 18th & 19th centuries, a more accurate re-mapping was needed. Brigadier Martin Hotine completed the task, giving us these more than 6,000 trig points across the country. To bag a trig point, is to visit it, touch it, feel the environment, and respect the effort that was put into creating this monument to the country.
Reading the SoA has been held up a bit this week. With the arrival of the B&W Photography magazine, and Country Walking. The thing is with the magazines, when they arrive, I like to read them straight away.
Anyhow, that done I was able to get back to the SoA. At the moment, we are still moving through the 16th Century. My eye was particularly drawn to the Cupola of the Parma Cathedral.
I can imagine laying on the floor in the centre of the cupola looking up falling up. When you think this was drawn between 1520 and 1524. It really is an amazing piece of work, and I am only looking at it in a small picture in a book – what must the real scene be like? I must admit, I would love to see it. Here’s a link to a picture;
A little bit further in I encountered Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as the “el Greco” or “The Greek”. He drew the vision of St John. My first thought was that this was a very different style, bordering on surreal. I was secretly pleased to read a few paragraphs later that el greco’s work, although popular was quite heavily criticised. Bearing in mind that it was drawn in 1609, it tells you just how different it was that it wasn’t until after the First World War that it was recognised. Here’s a link;
It was probably about this time of year when they were starting to talk about their annual challenge of walking 1000 miles. To walk 1000 miles in a year, you have to walk an average of 2.79 miles per day, every day – all 365 of them.
Obviously, you could walk one mile one day, and 6 miles another. It has to average out. The challenge starts on the 1st of January each year. I registered for the challenge and I am prepared to admit that I found the prospect of the challenge quite daunting. But by the end of January, I had clocked up over 90 miles, as a normal part of my routine. I knew that although a shorter month if February worked out to a similar amount that provided I stuck with it, I would be able to do it. Naturally, Holiday intruded, But, even then we did a fair bit of walking, so when I got back to the UK, I caught up the deficit fairly quickly.
As it happens, I reached 1000 around the end of October, meaning that over the year I did not far short of 1200 miles. I was, to put it mildly, as chuffed as anything.
Naturally, I signed up for this years challenge, but I knew that I would have problems when the lockdown was looming, and my family were saying that they didn’t want me to go out at all. After about 5 weeks of walking barely any distance at all, I knew that it would be pretty much impossible for me to complete this years challenge. I know that there are people that have completed the challenge notwithstanding the lockdowns, and the other problems, very good luck to them, and well done.
I hope that it goes without saying that I will be signing up for the challenge in 2021.
Several years ago, we holidayed in France. Although we had been to Paris a couple of times, this was our first proper holiday in “Rural” France. We caught the ferry over Ouistreheim, Caenand were booked in a hotel there. With the intention of exploring the Normandy coast for a while.
As we drove along what was a beautiful countryside, I knew that we could have no concept of the violence that had been visited upon the people.
As we were driving along, and we visited places like Arromanches-les-Bains, to see the remains of the Mulberry Harbour, which had very likely been built here in Gosport, the gun emplacement at Longues-sur-Mer and then on to Omaha Beach, where we visited the American war cemetery. As we walked amongst the graves, looking at the names of people, men, sons, husbands, lovers who had given their lives, how could you not just gently touch the occasional gravestone and say thank you? How could you not do that and have a tear in your eye? I know I did.
We visited the British cemetery at Bayeux, the restrained dignity of the site, much smaller than the US site, but one of many, no less significant. Once again I said thank you for your sacrifice, so that we could could live the life we have.
For most of us, we have been incredibly lucky to live in what has been for the most part peaceful times. We must remember the sacrifices, and the people who sacrificed for us.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
I went for a walk into town this morning. I did have to go into a couple of shops, but the main thing was to get out. It was worth it, Being a lovely bright day. Slightly on the chilly side. But it was a real pleasure to get out.
I was quite surprised that the the high street was quite busy. There were even a few market stalls out, mainly the ones selling food. People were being quite sensible, there were masks everywhere, people were making efforts not to get too close. It was definitely a case of people just wishing to be out to enjoy the day.
That was no more self evident than along the waterfront, on the Gosport Promenade, just about every seat was taken by one or two people, who were just enjoying watching the water. No particular ship activity whilst I was there, but that was OK.
It’s always a bit strange to be at the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall during normal daylight. I’m normally there about half past 6 in the morning. It was though, very pleasant.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
I'm here to work on fiction. Occasionally I'll blog but that's certainly not my focus. You have a specific fiction genre or format you can't find enough of? Ask me. Maybe I got it. I migh share it with you. Otherwise, leave me alone; I'm toiling away at my workbench.
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