In the latest installment of cars shot for Richard over at Performance Car Dreams I borrowed an Impreza WRX for long enough to take some photos of it.
Bonkers loud and 300BHP ensure it’s quite an event to drive, I was tempted to buy it myself but decided I’d stick with my little Fiesta for now until (if? when?) the fuel prices ever go back to a bearable level.
No silly, not horrible ginger swellhead Rex from big brother, but rather a Maxda RX-8, and a Golf GTI. See what I did there? Anyway I can’t think of anything funny to write so I’ll just put these pictures here and leave it at that.
These were taken for Richard over at Performance Car Dreams.
What?
In the last of the “what I did on my holiday” series, I’m going to break from tradition and actually not say anything bad. We were lucky enough to go to Bristol Zoo on one of the three days this summer where the sun came out. So it was a nice day.
Granted it rained at about four in the afternoon but we were already in the car on the way home then.
Bristol Zoo isn’t a bad day out really, although photo opportunities are limited to shooting through glass or long lens stuff. These are all shot with an 80-400 VR lens.
I’ve run out of stuff to say. Until next time, bye!
I mentioned in my Wookie Hole post that we’d been to various attractions during our week off work – one of these attractions was Longleat. Longleat is actually a pretty good place to visit, there is a lot to do, in fact we didn’t get to see even half the stuff so we are going back to see the rest!
The only problem with Longleat is that it’s full of shuffling cretins. Normally this particular species of human can be easily avoided or ignored but at Longleat you are continually smashed in the face by acts of sheer moronity (a new word I invented).
Take for example the drooling gibbon lady who stopped her battered old Peugeot 406 to look at the Tigers. Ahh, pretty stripy tigers. BUT YOU ARE BLOCKING TWO LANES OF TRAFFIC YOU UTTER UTTER GOON. So now something like 30 cars have to sit and wait. And wait…. And wait…….
Until the mouth breather and her brood have crushed their faces up against the car windows for long enough and having had their fill of tigers they move on, only to block the entire two lanes a short distance later, ohhhhh… Look at the Wolfies…. droooooooool…
Still the tigers didn’t seem that bothered.
Acts of stupidity such as stopping in doorways and blocking pathways are the norm at Longleat. Luckily I am a calm and balanced person so I wait until I get home then write sarcastic things on the internet because actually saying something to someone just wouldn’t be the correct behaviour for an Englishman.
The best bit of the Safari driving experience has to be the fallow deer – you buy a cup of food, then you feed them and they eat right out of your hand. Look!
As I was taking this photo of a particularly cute deer eating out of my wife’s hand, another impatient chap had his head right in the car trying to find some delicious deer munchies:
Second highlight of the trip was watching a car who felt that the massive queue waiting to see the monkeys didn’t apply to him. Fortunately one cheeky little chappy had a sense of justice and so ripped a couple of trim pieces off that particular car.
Throughout the safari I attached my Nikkor 80-400VR lens to my camera to see what photos of the animals I could get but there ended up being a number of problems, such as focusing through wet glass or through my front windscreen which has a heating element in it. As a result almost all the photos were consigned to the big delete bin in the sky.
The deer photos were taken with a Sigma 10-20mm, the Tiger photo with a Nikkor 80-400VR.
A special mention to the chap with a back seat full of kids who shouted the “C” word out of his car window at another driver. That kind of high quality parenting gives me hope for the future of our country, I salute you sir.
Yesterday evening I went back to the sea front to have a look at the aftermath of the Grand Pier fire, and the view was not pretty. Fire crews were still working hard and the beach was closed for hundreds of yards in each direction around the pier.
This panoramic photo shows the fire crews still dousing the smouldering ruins with water. Click on the photo to make it biggger:
It’s interesting to note that the tower still standing is the right hand front tower, one of four towers that were on each corner of the main structure. It’s apparently where the fire started, which to me is surprising that it’s the only one of the four that survived the fire without collapsing.
The Grand Pier, Weston-super-Mare was built in 1903/4 and has for many years been a tourist attraction that brings thousands of visitors to the town. It first burned down in 1930 and was rebuilt. In the last couple of years the pier was purchased by a local entrepreneur who spent money refurbishing and revitalising it, and who apparently had big plans for the future.
This morning, I woke to this view out of my window and figured something was up… I live several miles away from the sea front, so the scale of the fire was fairly clear from the outset.
Despite having lived in the town for more than 20 years, I find I have almost no photos of the pier as it was.
You can see it here on November 5th;
And here in the background of this photo:
I’m not a sentimental sort really, but it was sad to see what is an iconic part of the town’s history going up in flames.
Directly behind where I was standing taking these photos, Fire crew were working to pump water out of Marine lake, along the full length of the promenade and to the fire. From where I was standing, it was clearly an exercise in damage limitation, there is simply no way they could have controlled the fire.
You can see in this photo the tiny white stream of water on the left hand side, and how little hope the fire brigade could have of putting the fire out.
All in all a sad day for Weston. I really hope the Michael family rebuild it.