Like most families, Ian and Vanessa enjoy travelling together. Since retiring in 2019 we started this blog to allow people to follow our journeys. Hopefully you find the locations we visit of interest.
Author: Ian Bateson
Retired at the end of April 2019 and planning all those trips we never had time to do before.
I’ve said it before, our main concern this holiday is the health of our dog and today was going to be the hottest day of the year. So we decided to have a rest day in the sun. Of course the other reason is that her two aging owners also needed a rest day. The plan was to eat early in the evening and head out for the late evening sunshine. Our first location was a distant view across the Menai Strait to the bridge from a conveniently placed lay-by.
Then we spotted people walking around a small churchyard in the left of the image. So we went in search of a closer viewpoint.
The timing was just about right as the light was fading though the graveyard. So we spent some time wandering around.
Then my thoughts moved to Infrared to see what impact that format might produce.
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and when I turned around… The huge tree that stands at the entrance to the graveyard suddenly stood out with all the gravestones leading to it.
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We returned to the car for one last stop before the light finishes for the day.
Caernarfon Castle from Anglesey in the late evening sun.
The title may seem like a silly question but we have to be very cautious with our 15 year old dog. So I thought a trip to a large National Trust garden just south of Llandudno would help by giving us more shade. So we arrived at Bodnant Gardens – free for us being NT members. First observation was that it was quite hilly, probably not a surprise as we were in Wales, but was now a challenge for me carrying her. Good job we travelled light by leaving our main camera ruck sacks behind. The gardens were extensive with some long walks, but we weren’t spending all day here, so took some shorter paths.
Getting some lunch was a real challenge as the place was packed and from the map there were only 3 refreshment locations. I think Vanessa queued for about 25 minutes and choice was limited, so we had to make do with a sausage roll and a cold drink. I managed to carry Holly back up from the bottom of the valley which I found a challenge in the higher temperature – after all I’m not getting any younger myself. On the way out we exited under a Laburnum Arch which was quite impressive.
Next we headed off to Conwy which of course has a very impressive castle around the town.
To give my neck a rest from carrying Holly (who weighs 12.5Kg) we put her in the dog pram to walk around the town. She wasn’t as happy in this, but at least I was more comfortable.
Conwy is a small town that didn’t take us long to walk around. So we ended up in a pub on the seafront for a cool drink.
We decided on giving the evening sunset shoot a miss as we were a little tired and Holly really needed a rest as well.
We travelled here on Friday after a one night stop over near an old friend who lives in Stoke-on-Trent. We have 6 nights here before moving over to Snowdonia. So we have plenty of time to explore the Anglesey coastline. Getting up for sunrise (at 4am) isn’t very likely, so we planned to look for potential sunset locations. Our first spot was a lighthouse on the eastern tip of the island at Penmon Point. There is a toll charge of a few pounds for a car to travel the last few miles, but £7.50 for a Van and £12.50 for a motorhome (ouch). But the reason became apparent when we arrived. A lot of people camp overnight with many people taking their fishing gear. The café nearby would do very well with the breakfast trade as well.
When the tide is in, all the foreground around the Trwyn Du Lighthouse is covered by the sea as we discovered when we returned for sunset. The island offshore is Puffin Island, but it is protected and only boat trips around it, give any chance to see the wildlife. We had a light lunch in the café before heading up to the north of the island. Note: the toll charge is for the day, so we could return later without paying again.
Our next stop was Traeth Porth Wen Beach which has an old disused brickyard adjacent to the beach. Parking however was very tricky as it is reached via a narrow lane from the main road. There is parking at the junction but then we’d have several more miles to walk (not a tempting prospect whilst carrying our old dog). Unfortunately there was a film crew at the brickyard, so it was closed to the public for several weeks. So we just continued to the beach for the view.
Meanwhile Vanessa tried to capture a lovely little Stonechat that was keeping us company.
As we couldn’t visit the brickworks (which seems popular by the number of people we saw trying to get access) we moved onto the North Stack Lighthouse
Car parking was free for us as we were RSPB members which is adjacent to Elin’s Tower and gives a good vantage point for the lighthouse. It is possible to venture onto the peninsula at a charge, but dogs weren’t allowed, however this wasn’t our intention.
The first image was a basic photo, whereas the second image I slowed the shutter speed down to blur the water. We returned to the café at the carpark only to find it had just closed. So headed back to the motorhome for our evening meal before heading off again for our sunset location.
Unfortunately the sun disappeared behind a layer of cloud for the last 30 minutes before sunset, but that is the norm for us photographers.
If you watched the series “Under Salt Marsh” it was filmed in North Wales. The scene was set in a remote town called Morfa Halen which apparently was only accessible via a tidal access road. Well the actual town it was filmed in was Fairbourne which was our first stop. We arrived around high tide and Google took us on a 25 minute detour around the Mawddach estuary and into the town from the south. In the series this access was impassable as it would have been through a salt marsh. We also discovered that there wasn’t a tidal access road – just a small ferry boat. Well that’s TV for you.
First priority was lunch before we wandered along the sea wall, which also highlighted our first problem we had to manage in this holiday. Our aging dog Holly who is nearly 15 years old now and to be completely honest we didn’t think she would survive this long. Those of you that remember my blog from Cornwall last year might recall I tried to carry Holly in a Dog Rucksack – she wasn’t happy with that and jumped out. Plan B – I purchased a dog sling…
Look no Hands
Surprisingly she liked it and I found it easier to carry her across my front which was nicely balanced with my camera bag on my back. The town itself wasn’t really worth visiting, but it is set is a nice location along the Mawddach Estuary.
We headed back north and planned a small detour to a derelict slate mine.
The first image obviously taken with my drone.
One last stop was to take a few snaps of the Caernarfon Castle from across the river.
So a relatively relaxed day which wasn’t expected as I woke up with a streaming cold and sore throat. But the fresh air has done me some good and tomorrow the weather is set to improve a lot, so we will probably tour around the Anglesey coastline to look for potential sunset locations.
The Autumn colours have finished without us getting any real opportunity to get out more as we have grand children duties and our aging dog has had two bouts of Vertigo which made her very unstable and couldn’t walk far. So we’ve put any more motorhome trips and days out on hold. So we aim to grab a few hours when we can and ventured out yesterday to Denny Wood in the New Forest.
At least we could see the birds in the trees with the leaf canopy gone, but the challenge was bringing them down to our level, so we found a few tree stumps and baited the area with seeds and waited patiently.
While we waited I took a few shots with the Infrared (IR) camera which I had previously packed away for the winter. I attended a talk earlier in the week by Paul Mitchell (www.paulmitchellphotography.co.uk) on Infrared photography who took excellent images throughout the whole year, so I thought I’d do the same. The images below definitely show off the impact with IR on the sky even though the trees are bare.
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After 30 minutes the birds started to appear, initially in 1’s and 2’s then sometimes 4 or five at a time.
I was using a shutter speed between 1/1600 and 1/2500 with apertures between F5.6 and 7.1. The light level wasn’t great so the ISO setting was always quite high which resulted in noisy images which had to be recovered during post processing.
As soon as multiple birds appear the difficulty is getting them all in focus with a narrow depth of field. So I was shooting at 50 frames a second and searching for images where the birds are in a similar focal plane. I ended up keeping 120 images from about 9000 taken in the 90 minutes photo shoot.
I was surprised with the variation of species which included Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Marsh Tit and a Nut Catcher. Robins where in the trees, but didn’t want to be photographed.
Ideally we would have liked more light, so may try again when the light improves. For the technically minded, I was using the ‘pre-capture’ facility of the OM-1 Mk2 with a pre-cap2 setting. With the shutter button half depressed the camera buffers a preset number of images but doesn’t save them to the SD card until the shutter is fully depressed. Once the shutter is fully pressed the camera saves the pre-capture frames and continues to capture until the shutter is released. This feature gives the photographer a greater chance of capturing the inflight images.
Until now I’ve only posted on this blog with our holiday trips, but why stop there I thought. We are trying to spend a little more time outside with the cameras, so when there is an opportunity I decided to broadcast through this blog. Apologies now if these occasional extra posts don’t interest you.
It’s autumn and the colours in the New Forest still don’t quite seem intense enough, so we headed off to Stourhead which is managed by the National Trust. On arrival we discovered that they were opening earlier than 10 am for amateur photographers for a few days (but you need to book). We arrived at 10 am and ventured into the gardens. If you’ve not been there then this is the time to go as the first image you are presented with is this….
You do need the sun on the tree canopy to make the most of the colours together with a minor amount of post processing modification. I also had a polariser fitted to the lens which helps manage reflections and saturate the colours.
As a comparison, we did visit Stourhead in the middle of summer for an entirely different experience. Although the landscape was similar the strong lighting required an entirely different treatment – infrared.
Olympus camera modified for Infra-red
Back to Autumn – you need strong lighting from a low angle for the best images of the canopy and today was a good day, although there was a risk of showers. The low angle of the sun will also introduce larger areas of shade, so some additional post processing manipulation is required as in the image below taken from the opposite side of the lake.
The exposure in the central area needed lifting with the church and bridge brightening a little. But it still lacks the impact of the first image. So back to the other side and walking anti-clockwise around the lake.
The large golden tree in the centre is actually on an island, so moving further round the lake gives us another perspective. But for comparison I’ve presented the image without post-processing followed by a processed image
Firstly I used a polariser and a 6 stop filter to saturate the colours and soften the water with a 1.6 second exposure, then masked out the Pantheon building and softened the trees by reducing the clarity slider in Lightroom, which has introduced a different effect to the image.
Continuing around the lake to the chapel and waiting for most of the people to move out of the way (as there were a lot) we have…
There were 2 extra people sitting on the bench and other objects that needed removing with the Lightroom Ai removal tool – so I can’t really claim all the credit for the cleaner image.
Finally one last image as we walked back towards the bridge
This was taken not far from the Pantheon and out of curiosity I used my Sun Surveyor app and checked the time the sun would have cleared the trees to the east and I’d estimate about 0900 to 0930, so no real need to book for the early morning photo experience.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the images and make the journey to Stourhead (near Warminster) at a future date. For us we headed a few miles down the road to see Vanessa’s sister and husband and ended the day in the pub. So a great day.
When we set out on this recent short break of 10 days we had a list of locations to visit. These were the last two on that list, but first Vanessa wanted to try to capture a few more birds. So before lunch we went out to try our luck again.
After lunch we headed off to Trebarwith Strand, but a very quick survey of the beach revealed that low tide wasn’t going to work and a high tide could provide some dramatic images, so we would return later.
So we headed off Crackington Haven which would have also been good at high tide, but as we can’t be in two places at once we captured what we could with the conditions available.
After a coffee we returned back to the motorhome to give Holly her dinner and start to prepare the motorhome for tomorrow’s journey home. The plan was to head back to Trebarwith and hope we get a sunset this time (as luck hasn’t been with us during this trip).
As we expected the conditions were much better and the incoming tide was making for some great images.
Finally the sun appeared on the horizon, but not enough to give us the warm light we wanted.
You have to look carefully, but there was a narrow gap in the clouds for the sun to peak through. However, we were happy with the results we got today and headed off for our own evening meal.
Tomorrow we head home, so this will be the last post until our next trip.
We are now into our last few days, so headed west to the Bedruthan Steps which we last visited 2 years ago on a high tide. Today the tide would be out and so we hoped for some different images, although the forecast was not hopeful for any sunshine.
We arrived at the National Trust carpark (free for members) just before 12, so thought we’d have a coffee and some lunch. The menu board listed bacon butties available before 11:45. Time on my watch was 11:46, so I dashed in and ordered 2 and thankfully they accepted the order; lunch was sorted.
The weather hadn’t improved, but at least it was still dry, so we headed down the path towards the beach. Unfortunately the access to the beach was closed due to dangerous rock falls.
The sun did appear briefly as we walked along the cliff and the water had a Mediterranean turquoise colour which would have made this image much better. These rocks did make we feel that Black & White would look good, so I had a go at changing another image:-
Compare the colour with the B&W.
We continued along the cliff, but the view from the other end wasn’t as good. Vanessa meanwhile was wandering around with a long lens looking for bird images. We arrived back at the café 3 hours after we left it and stopped for more refreshments. The cream tea was wonderful!
From here we headed off to Trevose Head to photograph the lighthouse across Stincking Cove. There is another National Trust carpark at the top of the hill adjacent to the lighthouse, so not too far to walk this time.
Luckily, there was a glimmer of sunshine in this image, but most of the time it remained overcast. So I thought I’d try another B&W conversion.
Colour conversion to B&W
We’d tethered Holly to my camera bag whilst Vanessa and I wandered across the rocks for the best view of the cove and lighthouse. We soon heard her crying as her eye sight is poor and she couldn’t see us, plus with her being old and deaf it was too stressful, so I packed away my camera and sat with her while Vanessa continued. Just my luck, the early evening sun appeared, so I took out the camera and quickly grabbed a few handheld shots from where I stood.
It looks OK, but Vanessa was in a better position and this was her viewpoint.
Time to head back for our evening meal. Hopefully we’ll have a little more sunshine tomorrow.
This morning we woke up to drizzle which lasted all morning, but we already had on-line tickets for Tintagel Castle so we set off in the car. The castle is roughly level with the village of Tintagel, but you have to walk down a steep path before a climb back to enter the castle.
You enter the castle across a relatively new foot bridge (designed and manufactured by our son’s company in Southampton.
The views from the rock are pretty good and would have been better with a little sunlight. But we had to make the best of what we are presented with.
There isn’t a great deal on the rock to see, but the views are OK. Here’s a few of those images.
We walked down some pretty steep steps which takes us to the beach and café which was made more scary as I had to carry Holly as well. The café was worth the visit and the cakes were superb – highly recommended. Fortunately there was a minibus ride back up the hill, so we took the opportunity and paid the £2 each, but it didn’t take us up the steepest part of the hill. So we still had a struggle for the last 150m – so be warned. Don’t go down if you have real health issues.
From here we returned to the motorhome to collect our long lenses to head out for some bird photography (as the weather hadn’t improved much).
We were hoping for some shots of the Peregrine Falcons which are in the area as well as buzzards, but what we saw was totally different.
This morning we left our camera bags behind and travelled light with a single camera and lens. We walked east along the coast towards the Ladies Window which was about a mile away. The path wasn’t too difficult although I still carried Holly across the difficult patches.
The view east from the cliffs was towards Boscastle with Vanessa enjoying the view.
On the return journey Vanessa spotted a large caterpillar so we spent a little time trying to photograph it.
Haven’t a clue, what variety of moth this may be, but the caterpillar was about 6cm long.
So back to the motorhome for lunch and then off in the car to revisit a couple of coves. Port Isaac where Doc Martin was filmed was the first which we visited and photographed 2 years ago. Then headed to Port Quin just missing a group of canoeists who were packing away. But took this image in the late evening sunlight.
After this we headed off for some shopping and then return back to the motorhome. Tomorrow we will visit the Castle at Tintagel.
Bateson's Travel log 