Category: flickr

Drama

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It’s been a wild day down in Cape Town. Torrential downpours, hail and thunder, interspersed with brief spells of glorious sunshine. It made for a good day to get out and see the huge swells generated by the storm front that made landfall yesterday evening.

Because of last night’s rain, Chapman’s Peak Drive was closed, so it was impossible to do both town and the deep south, thus I chose to drive the kids down around the peninsular, taking in the baboons in Kommetjie, the waves at Slangkop and Misty Cliffs, the “fresh breeze” at Scarborough and the bonking ostriches near Cape Point.

Looks, the waves were great, the scenery fantastic, but I could have done without the ostrich display, if I’m honest.

The photos of the afternoon are here. And yes, some hot ornithological action is included, purely for educational purposes.

Catching up on Flickr

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Time seems to have accelerated somewhat since we got back from the UK. We landed in Cape Town on Monday morning and it’s already November. Or something.

Anyway, I’ve been doing my best to sort through the few thousand photos I took while we were away and I’m happy to say that I have got them down to a couple of hundred and finally put them up onto Flickr in the Heading North 2012 Collection.

That’s a couple of them above and obviously, there are plenty more where they came from, from the sublime to the slightly less sublime. Go, enjoy, make my stats look better.

Headstone

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Not a post about what I want on my grave when I die (although maybe that is a good topic for future ramblings). No, this is a quota photo from the amazing Headstone Tunnel in Derbyshire. Built in 1863 and now part of the Monsal Trail, the tunnel is 533 yards (487 m) in length. It seems like a rather weird thing to go for a walk through a dark (shock), dank and rather damp tunnel, but it’s also a different experience.
The Eastern end is rather uninspiring, but the Western end opens out onto the spectacular Headstone Viaduct [wikipedia pic], which is far more “Traditional Derbyshire Dales Walk”-esque.
Should you ever unexpectedly find yourself on the viaduct, then you may like to know that there is an ice cream van and two pubs on the hill above. It’s worth the walk up, especially for the pubs.

I had intended to blog more than a quota photo today, but then I had intended to do a lot of stuff today that I didn’t do. This one, just because it’s “kinda arty” is hosted at 500px (which I still don’t really understand) and has already garnered one comment, describing it as “nice”.

Thanks for that.

I’ll try and get this and the remainder of the Heading North 2012 photos uploaded onto the more user-friendly Flickr tomorrow, but then again, as I mentioned, I had intended to do that today. And I didn’t.

Wave, Daddy

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Back from Agulhas and although, as I suspected, the stormy conditions last week led to some huge waves battering the Southern Tip. Sadly, while they those waves were doing their thing, I was sensibly sheltering from the rain, playing lego with the boy in front of a nice open fire.

When we eventually emerged, things had subsided a bit.

Still, there was the odd one which reminded you of the power of the ocean. But mainly, today was devoted to finding interesting shells and throwing big stones into the sea.

Perfect.

I’ll upload some more photos tomorrow.

Turtley important

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The 2 Oceans Aquarium today reissued its annual warning about what to do with stranded baby turtles you may find on local beaches.

Not only does this give me a great excuse for a 2 Oceans Aquarium themed quota photo:

Bigger on black here.

It also reminds me that I did my own take on that stranded turtle post last year.