Day 292 - Setting Sun

underglow

Well, that worked out better than expected!

As I was driving home I realised that it's getting dark earlier and earlier, and I suppose we will be putting the clocks back in a few short weeks...available light for getting a decent Photo of the Day is fading daily...

So when I got home, I grabbed the camera and went for a wander around the garden, looking for subjects. 

I got a couple of shots of one of our robin's, but the light was poor...

I got a shot of a crow landing in the field, a lovely profile silhouette...and all blurred and out of focus because it was a true snapshot...

I got a vaguely interesting shot of the top 25% of a large tree over the road, all lit up in the golden evening sun...but it really was only vaguely interesting, and too similar to yesterday's photo to be a serious contender.

I was beginning to give up, and heading back in, hoping that one of the photo's of the robin would come out ok, when I realised the Sun was setting. 

For some reason I'd absently assumed that I couldn't point the camera straight at the Sun...I tried a few shots of trees, and a bird on the wire (avoiding including the sun in the shot), but they seemed a little washed out.  

Still, whilst I was there I figured I might as well take a few shots with the Sun, to see what they might come out like. 

I was really pleased to find they'd captured some of the warmth of the light, and I like the aura effect around the Sun too.

In fact, I found that of all the shots I took, I liked those that included the Sun the most.

bird on a wire

Here I decided to frame it a little differently, and catch a little more context.  Again, I'm pleased with the glare below the sun, and the crow sitting on the wire gives the shot some scale.

Maybe as the evenings draw in over the next few weeks, I'll take the opportunity to practise, and refine my sunset skills...

I'll keep you posted!

B-)

Day 289 - Evening Light

too much?!

I nearly forgot to blog today, amidst a load of other distracting head stuff, so we went for a stroll down the lane looking for photo-ops in the deepening gloom of dusk.

I managed to catch a surprising variety of interesting (albeit only vaguely) shots...but mainly I learned that it's not that easy to get good shots in low light...or maybe it's just not that easy when you don't know what you're doing?!

Another thing I learned is that you really do need to tweak the photo's afterwards...and this in itself is something of a gamble...sometimes it produces great images, other times it just looks over-processed and a bit rubbish. 

The one above is a crop from a much larger photo, but otherwise doesn't have much processing other than a bit of (admittedly aggressive) contrast...I can't decide whether it's too processed (yeah it probably is...), but I quite like the depth.

This one was taken 10 or 15 minutes later, and the evening had clearly settled in a bit more...

cotton candy sky

This one isn't cropped - I decided to stick with the original framing...now I'm looking at it thinking I should have cropped it...doh!

I have tweaked it a little for contrast and colour...although I don't really know how to do that, so it's a general colour tweak to try to bring out the pink, which was quite vibrant in reality.

no eye deer

This one isn't cropped either, but was the naturally nicest of around ten photo's I took of these autumnal colours on a 5m strip of set-aside (or whatever) down the edge of this field...there was a deer of some type hiding in there, possibly a muntjac, but I didn't manage to get a shot of him.

In any case, the image is still tweaked a little for contrast and colour...and the light is so much better than the previous shot...if only I understood why that is!

new-ish moon

As we turned for home, the waxing crescent moon presented a rare opportunity...invariably when I notice an interesting or even simply a clear view of the moon, the camera is nowhere to be conveniently grabbed...but tonight, it was right there in my hands!

I've tweaked this a smidge to try to bring out some of the detail on the surface, and cropped it down too.  I think the out of focus foliage gives the shot some context...especially as the moon wasn't super bright and detailed.

Finally, a flock of seagulls flew overhead...

flying v

...and not the 80's New Wave band, much to my great relief...nobody needs that.

I think conditions were all wrong for a wildlife shot like this, but I took my chances anyway to see what would happen. 

I've cropped this, adjusted the contrast, and sharpened the image a little too.  

Still not a great photo, I grant.

But, it's a new species for the ongoing Bird Species of South Warwickshire Series, which threads its way back through this blog. 

Nice...

B-)

Day 257 - Smear Test 101

stride

A day out at Cratcliffe and 'the Stride today...Robin Hood's Stride that is, in North Derbyshire, in the south eastern corner of the Peak District.

It's a beautiful place, a jumble of rocks and trees and boulders and cows on a hill in the middle of nowhere...lovely!

style

We have some good memories there...it's the first place we climbed outdoors, as it has lots of easy bouldering (a rarity in the UK)...it's also where I broke my leg on one of these easy boulders in May 2012, not 5m away from where the photo below was taken.  

sun dappled

Of some significance, it's also where we started to really get a feel for climbing on gritstone, the hard, abrasive rock that is largely confined to the Peak District, and is heavily symbolic of what Peak climbing is all about. 

Gritstone is generally rounded and weather worn, which means many of the cracks and edges have been smoothed off.

When first trying to climb on grit, it just seems impossible - there's no holds for hands and nothing to stand on with your feet either!  And it feels very abrasive, so cuts your hands and arms to ribbons, whilst at the same time being slippery and polished to get a grip on. 

A critical skill on gritstone is smearing, which means placing the toe or ball of your foot flat on steep rock, pushing some weight through it, and ultimately standing on it.  

Not only is this physically very difficult, involving fine control of body weight and a significant test of balance, but it's also quite challenging psychologically.

You just don't believe that you can put any weight on that foot without slipping off and scraping yourself down the rock...and this mindset makes you hesitant, which makes you not weight the foot much, which makes you slip off.  

But if you trust that it will hold, and really positively put some weight on it, some sort of mystic magic happens and you can stand, and even push on what seems to be nothing. 

Here's Anna taking her smear test...

delicate

The prescribed challenge here is to smear along this slab of smooth rock from right to left, relying almost solely on the friction you can create between your shoe and the rock, and a carefully controlled state of balance.

easy does it...

The gritstone does feel slippery and damp (not helped by sporadic rain from the turbulent grey sky), and whilst this may look like a simple problem, it really isn't...what it does is force you to pay attention to detail, to climb carefully, and most importantly, to trust your feet.

Here Anna reaches the left arete, and escapes upwards with relief.

phew

Meanwhile, there is a classic climb at Cratcliffe called The Egg Arete, on the Egg Boulder, which I've been battling with for two years now.

As its name implies, the boulder is like a huge, oval egg, and there are climbs of varying difficulty on all sides of it.  As it happens, this is the very same boulder that I broke my leg falling off of!

The Egg Arete is a blunt, smooth corner of this big boulder...it's a V3 problem, which makes it sound easy-ish, but it really isn't.   Just getting on the rock is very difficult...the first time I tried to do this problem, in late 2012, this is about as far as I got:

almost off the ground

During 2013, I tried it 2 or 3 times, and managed to consistently get here:

solid step up

Today I made some more good progress, but still nowhere near getting up the thing...this is about as far as I got:

push/pull/etc

We took loads of videos of each other failing to get up climbs...fortunately (for you!) I haven't had time to upload any. 

Usually, of late, we've looked to do as many problems as possible...but today, we just felt like working a few harder climbs.   We didn't actually complete any of them, but we made bits of progress here and there, and feel as though given the right conditions (cold and dry - basically the opposite of today) we might get up a few things. 

And we wanted to spend a little time on actual rock before Font in two weeks time...

A good day out...and I'm officially very tired indeed!

)-zzzz

Day 253 - Ancient Oaks

treebeard

We took a trip out to see a load of old trees, and this old man oak was the king of them all...he's said to be over a thousand years old!

He really does have an entish quality to him - I can quite see him plodding across the hillside, if he so chose...

We were in Staffordshire meeting Anna's folks for lunch, and went for a walk across what used to be an old country estate, to take a look at all these old trees.

There were a number of ancient oaks, all with their own individual character...

an old oak

Some of them look in fine fettle, despite clearly being a shadow of their former selves.

another old oak

I wonder what changes they've seen over the centuries.  The M6 motorway is a scant half a mile away across the fields, and I wonder how the constant air and noise pollution has impacted the trees over the last half century. 

yet another old oak

I hope someone studies this, to perhaps shed a little light on the invisible damage we do when we treat the planet as though it's entirely our right to do with it as we will, disregarding the needs and interests of all other species...

sweet chestnut?

Someone could perhaps examine the rings in a dead portion of this beautiful chestnut...I'm sure he would gladly make a small sacrifice for the betterment of everything else...

Back in his glory days he would have looked a bit like this...

horse chestnut

So, a fine collection of grand old trees...

Also of interest, this beautiful damselfly, that I tracked for a while until he landed...I crept up and managed to find him resting on this leaf...didn't quite get him in focus, but hey, he's another good addition to the species collection!

banded demoiselle

Finally, we were by a lock on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, and Jack here was watching her boat putter into the lock with keen interest.

when the boat comes in

She's a lovely little thing...maybe we'll add someone like her to our pack as the final terrier addition, in a few years time.

I'm really starting to yearn for another dog...I'm not sure we're going to be able to resist much longer now...

Can't wait!

:-)

Day 247 - Relaxed Ruminants

roe doe or doe roe?

Our evening walks have tailed off lately, so even though the evening was a little windy and rain threatened, we made the effort to take a stroll down the lane to see what's happening out there.

We needed to get going anyway, as we're both still feeling a little tired, worn and generally under the weather, and we were in danger of flaking out for the evening. 

It's Week 3, Day 1 of our Pull Up Challenge too, so we need to muster some energy to stick with that particular (or puh-chick-ullah, as the Tai Chi guru pronounces it) programme. 

So we wandered down the lane listening to the oddly persistent shrieks of a buzzard across the field, and trying to spot where it was and what was up with it. 

We never did spot the buzzard, but this lovely doe roe was bimbling around the edge of the field, and seemed curiously unperturbed by our presence (albeit we were partially obscured by the hedgerow). 

I took about a bazillion photo's, which weren't great in the main, as the light was poor.  But I quite liked these two, which I tried to frame a little differently to the usual target in the middle of the shot framing.

big ears

I couldn't decide which of these two I preferred, so I'll leave that up to you, if it even matters.

We also met this strangely brazen sheep...it had an unusual and slightly unsettling bravado, compared with the usual run away if anyone looks at you attitude of our local lambs.

one shoop

I wasn't even zoomed in for this shot, she was only about 3m away from me...weird!

A propos of nothing much, if the singular of geese is goose, then shouldn't the singular of sheep be shoop?   Several sheep, one shoop...makes sense to me....

Anyway we arrived home and immediately got stuck in to the pull up thing...it was hard tonight, as we are still sore from climbing on Saturday...but we completed our sets, painful as it was.  

For some reason my schedule totalled 3 more pull ups than I've done in a 10 minute session before, which seemed quite a steep increase in difficulty. 

But I just about managed it, so with hindsight I'm treating it as significant progress!

Tired and hungry now though...

:-)

Day 239 - Dark Skies Ahead

bill's mother's

These ominous dark clouds, blocking the sun and threatening to completely overshadow us with darkness, seemed disturbingly apt today.

A couple of my nephews were involved in a horrific accident last night, which has resulted in the younger Ollie being in bandages up to his elbows on both arms, due to burns, whilst the elder Chris is unconscious in intensive care, badly burned on his head, neck and arms...

To make matters worse, they were on holiday in Mallorca...16 year old Chris has been flown to Barcelona, where he will have to remain for a couple of months, and several operations at least...

It's a terrible tragedy, and my heart is aching for Chris, Ollie, and the rest of the family who are having to deal with this nightmare...not least my bro', of course, because, you know, he's my bro'...

It's been a trying day all round...

Somehow, after all the exercise I do, I put my back out pretty badly turning over in bed in the early hours of this morning. 

It doesn't feel like a huge, long term problem, but I'm not sure...certainly today I've struggled to stand up or move around, despite all the drugs I've taken, as well as both icing and lightly exercising it.

I'm really hoping it's not going to cause problems for Fontainebleau...bad enough that it's putting a spanner in the works of my preparation programme!

Then I had to spend a supremely painful hour or so trying to get Orange to give me a PAC code so I can finally give them the boot after 18 years and 8 months of being messed around and over charged by them. 

Still, they offered me £30 to compensate...it didn't...  :-/

Also, after several hours rain, I checked the two last inspection hatches in the drainage systems (old and new) - and neither of them are moving any significant storm water...so where's it all going?!

One tiny bright spot in all of this was a flock of sparrows that were clustering in the hedgerow just outside our lounge...

pair of tits

There are 17 house sparrows in this photo, and a couple of blue tits...more sparrows were out of shot, along the new fence that just went up yesterday, for example...

spot the tree sparrow

They're mostly juveniles, I think, recent broods out and about, and finding safety in numbers. 

So it was good to see them doing well this season, even though the dark clouds were so thick as to drain all colour, barring blacks and blues, out of our day...

Please send all thoughts, vibes, prayers - whatever your preference - to young Chris and family as they face challenging times ahead...

Thinking of you, Bird...

:-(

Day 236 - The Mighty Tree Sparrow

case to rest

I don't know about you, but I thought I detected a hint of scepticism in Andy's comments on a recent post about local birds.

I'd mentioned that we have tree sparrows in the garden, but had failed to provide documentary evidence, and so apparently had not done enough to offload the burden of proof. 

Tree sparrows are much less common than house sparrows, and so I suppose it was fair to demand photographic evidence of my evidently bold claim.

Well, it's taken a while, but as I was getting dressed for work this morning, I spotted this little chap sitting high in the hedgerow just a few metres from our bedroom window.  

"I'm sure that's a tree sparrow!", I exclaimed, immediately failing to grasp the significance and rushing to grab the DSLR...fortunately Anna was there to point this out to me, so I dashed downstairs to get the camera and rattled off a few shots.

It seems I still had a reasonable dose of the usual morning fuzzy-headedness, as I completely forgot to adjust anything at all on the camera...so the pictures aren't great, to be honest...

...but that is definitely a tree sparrow!

cheeky chappy

This is a juvenile, but still you can clearly see the brown cap and the tell-tale dark dot on the cheek.

Thanks Andy, I accept your apology!  ;-)

Moving on...our walk down the lane this evening was notable in a variety of ways.

Firstly, it was distinct from our usual walks in that we hardly walked, instead deciding to travel by skateboard (or is it technically a long board...or both?).

This was good fun, despite getting a slightly scary wobble on at the steepest, fastest part of the lane, trying to avoid random stones thrown all over the road by recent harvesting traffic. 

Down at the bottom of the valley (sans decent camera, of course), we came across the beautiful sight of a pair of deer wandering across the stubble in the evening sunshine. 

At least I had my phone with me, so I got the proof (cough, Andy...) although pretty much failed to capture any hint of the atmosphere...

not too dear

Finally, I got my first 'boarding injury!!

ouch stings

As it happened, this wasn't from careering (or is it careening? Actually, both!!) down the hill, out of control...it was from doing tricks outside the front door...or trying to, at least.

Ok, ok, I was failing to do tricks outside the front door...or is it the back door?  That's a matter of some controversy! 

"What on earth are you doing skateboarding?!" I hear you cry...

Well, I'm not really sure, but I think it has something to do with my age...and a hefty dollop of denial thereof. 

Bah humbug!

B-/

Day 235 - Our House

in the corner of our field

Since our garden was trashed by the cowboy contractors, this is a much better view of our house. 

It's the nearest one in this photo, hunkered down and hiding away behind the wild hawthorn hedgerow in the corner of the wheat field.

They harvested half of this field two nights ago...throughout the evening, until well after dark, the harvesting went on, and our little house sat there under a cloud of dust. 

For reasons unknown (presumably the weather?) they've not been back since, and the field remains half cut. 

We took the opportunity to wander along to the line of trees where Barney the Barn Owl used to live.  We were hoping for signs of him, although without any particular hope - we've not seen him this year. 

Whilst there I took this shot, which is the reverse of the Hole in the Hedgerow shot that has featured a few times in these pages...you can just make out the pale glint of my car through the hole on the horizontal mid-line of this photo, a fifth or so in from the right edge. 

Unfortunately, we couldn't get around to the side of the owl tree where the entrance holes are, as the ditch and surrounding undergrowth were too...well, overgrown!

We did find this brilliant little cave in the bottom of a tree though...

cosy cave

Something had managed to drag a load of hay in there, making a cosy little bed.  Badger is most likely, I suppose...or fox?  Maybe Muntjac deer, we've seen those along here in the past.

This may be a good place to site our trailcam, once they've been back and finished harvesting.

As we wandered back, a large passenger plane was taking a north westerly route, quite low in the sky:

northwestbound

This is highly unusual - the normal passenger flight path is North to South, and quite high...the military flightpath is East to West or vice versa.

As we watched, it banked steeply northwards...being so low and so large, it must have been heading to Birmingham Airport. 

Anyway, to finish off a somewhat rambling and fairly pointless post, I'll mention that we did Week 1, Day 2 of our 6 week 20 Pull-up Challenge this evening.

I had to do sets of 4, 3, 3, 4 and 5 pull-ups, with only 90 seconds rest between sets.  It sounds fairly straightforward, I suppose, but it was actually really hard.  The last two pull-ups in particular were really very hard, and I only just about got enough range of motion on the last one.  

I suppose that's how it should be - those are the ones that will convince my body that it needs to get stronger.  

The previous 17 pull-ups were all just setting up those last two!

:-)

Day 225 - Those About To Rock

we salute you

As we weren't tired and aching enough from yesterdays skateboarding, today we went up to the Peak District to do some Fontainebleau preparation. 

Anna, Jezz and I are going to spend a week in Font in September, so it's time to start getting mentally and physically prepared. 

pad hogs

Set in the southern end of the Burbage Valley, amongst the bracken (head height in parts, at this time of year) you will find a scattering of large, coarse gritstone boulders strewn across the hillside below Burbage South Edge.

There are lots of easy (and I use that word with a single, slightly raised eyebrow) problems here, and in many ways it's like spending a day in Font. 

We spent most of the day padding up friction slabs...

trust your feet

This involves standing on vague bumps and pea-sized pebbles, and trying to believe that your foot won't slip off, should you pluck up the nerve to attempt to stand on it!

faith in friction

On one particular climb, for no apparent or agreed reason, we all decided to do animal impersonations...

stork

Jezz going for the classic left hand and foot close together - right hand and foot far, far apart Stork Pose (I think it might be a yoga thing)...

gecko

...whilst Anna uses opposing hands and feet as she performs The Gecko...

crab

...nobody can explain whatever it is I'm doing...and Jezz had to bomb, natch...

bomber

But despite all of that, it was a successful day of climbing easy (there's that word again) problems, ripping our skin up, catching the sun, and generally having a good time out in the bright, warm breeze.  

We hope it will be the start of a period of progress and improvement in the 6 or 7 weeks until we go to Fontainebleau.

We'll be looking for gains in strength, stamina, flexibility (in my case) and finger skin resilience (Jezz and Anna)...and good losses in body fat (Jezz and I)!

into battle

This large boulder is known as The Tank, for fairly obvious reasons...this afternoon, we couldn't resist the opportunity to climb aboard before we left, and get some photos as we urged the great battleship forward.

It seemed like a fitting cry as we head towards Font...

Onward!

B-)

Day 219 - Reclaimed by Nature

serenity

We decided to go for a walk in spite of not having to for the first time in years, so as to not break the routine...then we walked miles more than usual, in order to break the routine...

Go figure!

It's been a difficult, flat, sad day, and we felt the need to get out into nature and try to find some peace out there in the warm evening sun.

Resisting the temptation to look back every minute or so to see how Jazz was doing, we ended up walking all the way down to the bottom of the lane, quietly remembering him, and pondering the pros and cons of getting another dog.

Idly snapping as we strolled, we caught a few interesting sights, like this balloon peacefully wandering the skies.

By odd coincidence, we got another shot of a juvenile Green Woodpecker, a mile down the lane from where the last one was...

woody

As we got to the bottom of the valley, we came to the little river that Jazz and Bluez liked to cool off in, back in the days when they could walk that far (a couple of years ago probably)..

no jazz

It was very overgrown, and very hard to focus, but it brought good memories of my boys splashing about, happy as labradors in cold water!

One photo I would never have captured if Jazz had been with me was this healthy looking rabbit...

jack

As we started back up the lane, I caught this nice shot of a buzzard alighting on top of a tree...

big ol' buzzard

I'd been remonstrating with Anna for not getting me a photo of a deer when I gave her the camera for two minutes...and then spotted this lovely young buck Roe, who remarkably hadn't noticed us as he strolled across the field. 

oh deer

Handsome young chap, isn't he?

yes deer

I've been wanting a photo of a deer for ages...Muntjac next - we have those around here too.

Well there you are, made it through a whole post without getting too upset about Jazz, even though we're missing him painfully...

Going back to nature definitely helped, as always.