With a bump. After two weeks of lovely amazing holiday in Kenya including a Safari, I’m back in the realm of Albion and feeling the after holiday come down in a big horrible way.
I took over 3,000 photos, of which I’ve no doubt about 2950 will go straight in the bin. Here’s a photo of the Alps from 33,000 feet to get things started; full post to follow.
Bye for now!
Menorca.
So the good lady wife and I took a little week off work to go to Menorca. We’d neither of us been to the Balearic’s before so weren’t really sure what to expect, in addition it was a last minute “bargain” style booking so it was a gamble for sure.
Upon arrival it was raining. Yes that’s right, RAINING. I know. Happy holidays. It was basically colder and wetter than the England we had left behind three hours earlier. Abby was not impressed, I think she secretly blamed me for the rain as well, which I suppose is only fair since I’ve learned that as a married man everything bad is basically my fault.
The weather stayed pretty gray for the rest of the day but by day two were were in full beach holiday mode. The beach at Cala Galdana is pretty special I have to say – we certainly liked it.
On the second day of our holiday, we went to the Fiesta de Sant Joan in the city of Ciutadella. This was to put it quite simply, nuts. The rep sold us down the river really, explaining about the historical significance of the festival, which involves men in costumes riding around the city (picture Venice without the rivers) on horseback, saluting the mayor and so on. The information from the rep said “Find a quiet bench in a square and sit down with a glass of Pomada and watch the festival go by”.
The reality was this; two hundred Menorcan Stallions ploughing through a crowd of about 15,000 people all crammed into a small town square. Health and safety, what’s that?
It was hard to get a sense of the scale as we were jammed up against a wall by a several hundred drunken Spaniards, but this just about gives you an idea:
Menorcan stallions are famed for rearing up onto their hind legs – the locals think it’s good luck to touch the shield on the chest of the stallion when the horse does this – watching the stallion’s front legs working the air, I think it’s only actually good luck if you survive without fatal head injuries or massive brain damage.
When the horse wants to go sideways, regardless of where it is and who is around it, it goes sideways, ploughing 50 or so boozy locals out of the way as it goes. All in all, it was bedlam, and despite the slightly inaccurate description from the rep, I’m glad we went!
The rest of the holiday was your more standard beach holiday fayre, so I’ll take you back to a more peaceful scene. We went on a little walk from Cala Galdana to a nearby beach called Cala Macarella, on the way the views were pretty special:
And because no post from me these days would be complete without a panoramic or two, on the walk back to Cala Galdana I go this – click to make it bigger:
The beach at Cala Galdana is a nice place to be – it’s where they filmed the movie “The Blue Lagoon” which I’ve heard of but never seen.
I hope you like these, I can recommend to you a holiday in Cala Galdana, it’s alright there really. Except did I mention it rained again whilst we were there? I know.
Because I took a load of pictures, see, they are panoramics, see? And they are over here. See what I did there? DO YOU SEE? ANSWER ME!!!!!!
…Anyway, in the third of what will likely be four entries relating to our trip to Cornwall, I present to you, some photies. Of stuff in Cornwall, like beaches and that. Cornwall is great.
Since these are big fat panoramics you need to click on them with your little mouse pointer thingy and make them all re-bigulated. I made all these pictures with my Leica photo machine I did.
The Beach at St. Ives:
Click it I tells you!
The view from Lands End – this right, is literally, right, the end, of the land. I know, right?!
Press it with your mouse!
Ooh look it’s Porthcurno beach, bleedin fabulous, why would you go abroad when you can holiday here? You should support your local UK economy, not go to foreign places, you disgust me. Did I mention I’m off to Spain in a couple of weeks?
Touch your pointer on it!
This do be Sennen Cove, one of the best beaches in the entire country, not according to me, but official important beach experts, so there.
You know what to do.
Moving on from panoramic ones, here’s a photo of Penzance harbour taken when I was on the thick end of many pints of Doombar and Tinners. mmmmmm ale.
And finally, another of Porthcurno, I was really taken with this place I have to admit. Just bloody look at it!!!
So to summarise, if you think there is even a chance of having good weather, you should book a holiday in Cornwall because quite frankly it’s brilliant there.
That is all.
As I said before, Last weekend I stumbled around the more picturesque areas of Cornwall along with my good lady wife and our excellent travel companions Phil and Laura.
They patiently waited whilst I periodically plucked not one, not two but three different cameras out of my bag and pointed them all around like a goon with the obvious expectation that if I just took enough photos at least one of them might actually turn out good. Six rolls whizzed through my Holga and the Leica got a bit of a pounding too.
As these are the easiest to process, first up come these pseudo polaroids taken with my iPhone. The full travel report will follow when I can be bothered to write it and sort all the other photos out.
So there you go then, loads of bad quality mobile phone pictures, can life really get any better than this? Seems to me it can’t, but I’ll have to wait till my Holga slides come back from processing, which wont happen until I’ve sold another kidney to afford how it will cost to develop all that film.
This weekend saw us take a short getaway to the far reaches of the south west of England in the form of a trip to Sennen.
The weather was quite simply amazing, so we were suitably blown away by the picturesque scenery and the spectacular beaches.
Here’s a quicky of Porthcurno beach, a full holiday report will follow as soon as I’ve gone through the several hundred photos I took.
Over the course of a few days we took in Penzance, St. Ives, Senned, Porthcurno and the Minack Theatre, and a whole load of St Austell ales and delicious local seafood dishes.
I also got a funky new bag for carrying crap around in. Yay!
So I’ve treated the wife to a day trip to bath for her 30th Birthday, and no that isn’t all I did. Bath is fun, we had a good wander around and stopped in a few pubs for beers and I took a few photos with my Holga before we went for a meal at the Hole in the Wall which isn’t a dodgy saturday night TV show with Dale Winton but rather is a nice little restaurant which serves yummy food.
Bring on the wall!
Anyway onto the photos – of two rolls I was unhappy with virtually all the results. The reason for this was that I tried to be clever and deliberately over-expose all the images. In practice what I acheived was washing them out almost completely except in about 1 case. Never mind, lesson learnt, don’t try to use bulb mode on ISO400 film in daylight.
Holga
Holga 120cfn
Pulteny Bridge, Bath
Fuji Provia 400
Holga
Holga 120cfn
Pulteny Weir, Bath
Fuji Provia 400
Manaul exposure of approx 1/3rd of a second
Also on the roll when I got it developed was this one. I’m not sure what I did but I vaguely recall putting it in bulb mode and waving it around. I like it!
Holga
Holga 120cfn
Abstract
Fuji Provia 400
Manual exposure of unknown length.
That’s all for now – BYE!