Loch Coruisk

So having past the dolphins and the seals on the boat trip from Elgol on Skye we eventually disembarked from the boat and made the short walk to Loch Coruisk, which was perfectly timed for us to eat our lunch, and what a place to have lunch!

Getting to Loch Coruisk on foot would require a serious walk and while I'm sure that would have been much better exercise I wouldn't have got to see the dolphins so I think we definitely chose the better option!

So I've now done three blog posts covering just one day of the holiday. It was a very good day but there were certainly other blog worthy moments during the week so I'll try and pull at least a couple more posts together for you all to enjoy.

Gent

I realised yesterday that I never showed you anything of my trip to Belgium apart from a beer glass, so here is a panorama I shot from one of Gent's many bridges in the centre of the old town.

As you can see it wasn't exactly the ideal time of year for really appreciating the architecture as a lot of it was hidden behind the stages set up for the music festival. On the plus side there was plenty for me to do in the evenings, besides drinking Belgium beer.

Grasmere

As I mentioned in the previous post, last weekend we spent a few days away staying in Grasmere in the Lake District. While we did have quite a bit of wet weather we were lucky in that we did manage a single dry day for a nice walk around Grasmere; the lake not the village.

At the south end of Grasmere you can easily get right down to the waters edge, which seemed the perfect place to play with automatic panorama option on the new camera. I'm not sure if the quality is quite as good as when manually stitching the photos together (you can take a lot more photos that way), but it certainly is much easier and quicker, with the advantage of instantly knowing if it worked or not.

Happy New Year!

So far I've failed miserably to do any posts about Christmas and New year, even though I do have a few in mind. So having missed blogging about New Year, I decided I had to blog about Chinese New Year, especially as I realised that a post I intended to write back when I visited Beijing in 2010 would be perfect response to this blog post from my father-in-law.

After eating Peking Duck we were taken on a short walk around the edges of Tian'an Men Square and down Qian Men Dajie (Emperor's Avenue) which I described as "a soulless shopping street". One shop did, however, attract my interest: Yunhong Chopsticks Shop. I only had time for a quick glance through the window, but I was determined that if I had time then I'd go back and take a proper look. Fortunately on the last day I was in Beijing I had time and was in the area.

My picture doesn't really do a good job of showing you what the inside looked like. The best I can do is suggest you imagine what Ollivander's Wand Shop from Harry Potter would like like if it was modernized and sold chopsticks instead of wands. Every conceivable wall space and counter was covered in small boxes. Every draw or cupboard opened to revel more boxes. The sales assistants were very friendly and would ask if you knew roughly what you were interested in and would then buzz around the shop collecting boxes from which they then suggested you try the feel of a pair of chopsticks. It was a fun experience and I spent about half an hour choosing what I wanted to buy.

By this point you might well be thinking, what does this all have to do with Chinese New Year? The answer; I bought Bryony and I each a set of good luck chopsticks engraved with our Chinese birth sign. I'm a goat/sheep and Bryony is a horse. They are apparently made of ebony and silver with the Chinese birth symbol as part of the engraving on the silver (sorry about the image quality but I was in a bit of a rush to get the post out today and I forgot to take the photos while there was daylight).

As a bonus, because we are now in the year of the dragon, here is another photo I took whilst in Beijng of the Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City. You can zoom right into the image although the quality of the photo isn't great. For once it wasn't a problem with the photographer or camera but the level of air pollution I was shooting through.

An Uninvited Guest

So, having explained why I'm going to blog about Rob and Rhona's wedding, let's go back to the start of the festivities.

The wedding invite suggested (brides are supposed to be fashionably late) that the ceremony was due to start at 1pm at Lains Barn. Lains Barn is in the middle of nowhere so we arrived by taxi. We actually asked the hotel to book the taxi for noon not knowing quite how long it would take to get there. The taxi was early and we arrived at Lains Barn just after noon. Other than the groom and his best man (Barry, who I also went to University with) I think we were only the second people to arrive. Being early did have the advantage of us being able to appreciate the place without it heaving with people.

The main room (where the wedding and reception were held) is on the left, the bar and a small seating area are in the middle, and the hog (for the evening celebration) was roasted in the open air section on the right. So who was the uninvited guest that we bumped into before entering the barn?

Okay, so it wasn't a guest as such but rather a non-native species of ladybird that I spotted crawling around on a potted evergreen by the main door. Specifically a harlequin ladybird, Harmonia Axyridis Spectabilis. I've seen harelquin ladybirds before (both in the garden and in Herefordshire) but they have both been red varieties that looked more like our native ladybird. Unfortunately, while harlequin ladybirds look interesting they pose a very real threat to the native species.

So having paused to take quite a few photos of a ladybird we eventually made it into the barn (and almost straight to the bar) but that will have to wait for a later post.

Proper Snow

Like the rest of the country we've had snow this week. Not a light dusting but proper snow. This was the view from the front door this morning just after Bryony had left to go to work.

I'm not sure exactly how much snow we have had but, Bryony stuck a tape-measure in a sheltered non-drifting bit and got a depth of about 36cm and on a trip to the shops I miss-judged the edge of the pavement and ended up with snow above my knees. It's certainly a lot worse than it was in January. In fact I don't think I've ever seen so much snow in Yorkshire before.

A Room With A View

Given that we don't go around wasting tax payers money booking expensive hotel rooms when we travel for work I usually end up looking out over a car park or at the wall of another building. I was, therefore, surprised by the view I got when I pulled back the curtains of my room at the Park Hotel Vitosha in Sofia.

Certainly a better view than I had the first night of the trip!

Coral Beach

The weather must have known that our holiday on Skye about to end as the last full day we had there was warm and sunny. We made the most of the weather and headed out to Coral Beach. Whilst it wasn't warm enough to sun bath it was very pleasant.

Whilst the beach looks like fine white sand it is actually not sand at all! Apparently the sand is actually the ground up bleached skeletons of a red coralline seaweed known as maerl.

Lyon at Night

After a productive day at IARC in Lyon I was invited out for dinner. In case anyone wonders why I was at a cancer research institute it's because I'm working on a project that is attempting to use knowledge mined from biomedical literature in genome wide association studies.

It was one of the staffs birthday and I was asked to join them for the dinner they had already planned. I had a bit of time to kill before meeting at the restaurant so I thought I'd see a few of the sights. I headed towards the restaurant along the river which gave me great views of the Basillica Notre-Dame de Fourviere and the Cathedral St-Jean.

From the same bridge the view north along the river towards the foot bridge was pretty good as well.

I didn't want to be late for dinner so I headed off to the restaurant leaving the rest of the sight seeing for the following day.

We had a wonderful dinner at Léon du Lyon. Even on the last day of September it was warm enough to sit out at the street tables and enjoy the relaxed multi-cultural atmosphere. Around the table were (I think) one Swede, two Brazilians, one Russian, two French and me the only Brit. Given the range of nationalities it should be no surprise that the conversation was all in English, although I did need help dealing with the French menu (thanks Mattias). Thanks to everyone for a great evening!

The Brandenburg Gate, The Reichstag, and Checkpoint Charlie

Our short walk around Berlin moved from the Holocaust Museum to the Reichstag via the Brandenburg Gate. Unfortunately they were setting up for a political rally at the Brandenburg Gate and so it was difficult to really appreciate it, and certainly difficult to photograph.

In contrast the Reichstag was easy to photograph from the large square in front of it. We had intended to queue to enter the dome but even at almost 9 at night the queue was long and we decided to spend the time seeing other parts of Berlin instead.

From the Reichstag we walked past the British Embassy (which was well barricaded off and surrounded by lots of armed police) to Checkpoint Charlie. We finished the evening with beer and food (deer goulash) at Cafe Stresemann just a few yards from the checkpoint. A fantastic and educational evening!

Keep Heading West

What constitutes the UK mainland? One definition (that many delivery companies use) would be anywhere you can drive to without needing to take a ferry. Under that definition Skye, although clearly an island, is part of the UK mainland. That means that the most westerly point of the mainland is to be found on Skye and not on Ardnamurchan as I'd always thought (in my defense when I went to the most westerly tip of Ardnamurchan the Skye bridge hadn't been built).

The most westerly point on Skye is Neist Point and we made the short walk from the car park out to the coast. Of course the view west from the very edge of Skye would be just sea so I stopped a few yards short to take a slightly more interesting photo.

I didn't build up the little stack of rocks just to add something to the photo it was already there. In fact there are so many stacks of rock the trick would have been trying to take a photo without including one. Here is the view looking back eastwards and as you can see someone has been very busy.

Apparently they get built up every year and then the first winter storm arrives they all vanish.

The View from the Car Park

The view from most car parks is usually pretty dull. Even in the middle of the highlands of Scotland car parks are often situated out of the way or hidden among trees. There are, however, some notable exceptions. For instance here is the view from the car park you would use to walk the Quiraing on Skye.

The view is looking almost directly west towards Staffin Bay and takes in the Qiraing on the left, all the way around to Loch Leurn na Luirginn, Loch Cleat and the crags of Dun Dubh on the right. I think you will agree that it's quite the view!

Kilt Rock and the Singing Fence

The third photo opportunity on our whistle-stop tour of Trotternish was the Kilt Rock viewpoint.

From the viewpoint the most impressive sight is actually the waterfall which was all the more impressive given that it had rained almost non-stop for all of August.

Kilt Rock is actually the rock formation at the back of the photo. It is apparently called Kilt Rock as the columns look like the pleats in a kilt. I'm not entirely convinced myself but it was a lovely spot in which to stand and enjoy the view and listen to the fence sing.

To stop people leaning out too far while looking at the waterfall and to stop them being blown away when it's windy a fence has been erected along the edge of the cliff. For some reason the tubular metal fence contains a number of small holes. The holes combined with the gaps between the rails and a strong wind make the fence sing!

Diatomite

The next stop on our trip around the Trotternish peninsula of Skye was the Diatomite works at Inver Tote. Diatomite (known locally as Cailc) was discovered at Loch Cuithir in 1886. By 1889 the Skye Diatomite Company was extracting Diatomite from the loch and transporting it via railway to drying sheds at Inver Tote. The remains of the sheds can still be seen today although the railway has long since gone.

For those of you who, like me, have never heard of Diatomite before, I'm told that it is a whitish clay like deposit of microscopic shells. It has a number of industrial uses but it is probably best known as the additive used to make nitroglycerin stable giving rise to the patented product -- dynamite. If you want more details then the Wikipedia page is quite informative.

The Storr

Although we managed a quick photo stop at Eilean Donan on the way to Skye we didn't see much else as it was late on in the day.

For our first full day on Skye we had were shown around the Trotternish peninsula. There are lots and lots of sights to see in Trotternish so there will be at least a couple more blog posts on the subject, but I'll start with the first stop of the day -- a really good view of The Storr and the Old Man of Storr.

A Kind Of Magic

I've always enjoyed visiting Scotland but there is something magical about the landscape of the Highlands. I enjoyed one of those rare moments of magic as we rounded a corner in the car on Thursday evening to be presented with an uninterrupted view of Eilean Donan castle. The only thing that spoilt the view was my first midge bite of the holiday!

As you may have guessed from the last sentence we are currently on holiday in the Scottish Highlands. To be precise we are staying with friends on Skye for five days so you can expect lots more photos and blog postings over the next few days.

The War of the Roses

No I didn't spend the weekend re-enacting a 15th century dynastic civil war or watching a 1989 Michael Douglas film, I actually spent a very pleasant day at Headingly Cricket Ground watching the final day of the 249th Roses Match between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

We arrived in plenty of time as we needed to sort out the tickets on the day -- Dad is a member of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and had vouchers for free tickets which Bryony and I used and then we had to get an extra ticket and temporary members pass to get Mum in as well. Once we were all inside the ground we went straight to the members area to find a seat. Here is the view from the seat I sat in all day.

As we had arrived quite early we saw both teams warming up, which as well as lots of work with cricket bats and balls involved a quite violent game of 5-a-side football from Yorkshire and a game of rugby from Lancashire that seemed to have even fewer rules.

Play got under way on time with Yorkshire finishing off their first innings. Lancashire then came in to bat for their second innings. Given that quite a lot of play had been lost earlier in the game due to bad weather it was very unlikely that the game would end with anything but a draw but that didn't stop the players trying hard to score runs and to take wickets. Unfortunately the Yorkshire fielders dropped at least two catches during the day and at 5pm the match was declared a draw.

This was the second sporting event we have been to this year after having attended the Formula 1 race at Silverstone. Both completely different, both very good in their own way, although the cricket was easier to photograph!

Silverstone, Day 3: Historic Sports Car Challenge

As the F1 race was finishing lots of people rushed to leave the circuit hoping to beat the traffic. We took a different approach and stayed to watch the Historic Sports Car Challenge. At some point I might go through the photos from the race and blog about the different cars but for now I just thought I'd show them lining up on the grid.

Silverstone, Day 3: The 2009 Forumla 1 British Grand Prix

On race day rather than being able to go into any stand or enclosure we had assigned seats in the Luffied A stand -- seats S212 and S213 to be precise. These were actually on the very back row of the stand and with the extra height gave a fantastic view of the complex of corners at the end of the circuit leading into the pit straight. We took an awful lot of photos during the race so I though that instead of just showing some of the photos I'd turn them into a short highlights programme of the race. Turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy the 2009 Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix as seen from Luffield A, seats S212 and S213.

Click To Play

Silverstone, Day 2: F1 Third Practice Session

On the second day of our trip to Silverstone we ended up arriving at the entrance by Club corner. As we had very little time before the cars appeared on track we went straight into the Club B stand and found a seat.

Click To Play

The view from the stand at Club is actually really good and in the end we stayed in the same stand (although we changed seats as we came in and out for food etc.) all day.

The first session of the day was the final F1 practice session before the qualifying hour at lunch time. Rather than more photos I thought I'd share this brief video clip we took which nicely shows the speed and sound of the F1 cars.