First Evening in Northumberland

We are spending a week in Seahouses, Northumberland and this was the sunset yesterday evening.

 

 

Gibside Chapel, Northumberland

As it was raining heavily on Wednesday, I opted for a visit to Gibside (National Trust) before heading south to Leeds. Gibside is a country estate, near Gateshead and previously owned by the Bowes-Lyon family. The Palladian Chapel had been restored by the NT and is a wonderful example of that style of architecture. Images taken with 10-24mm lens and a 15mm fisheye on Fuji XT10, handheld down to 1/8th second!

Hadrian's Wall

I visited two of the areas (Birdoswald and Walltowncrags) where the wall, which was built in by the Romans in AD122 onwards, are well preserved. Amazing to think these structures have survived over two thousand years.

Birds from Northumberland Coast

A miscellany of birds seen during our week in Beadnell area (excluding Farne Islands), including Eider ducks, Little, Arctic, Common and Sandwich Terns, Fulmar, Herring Gull, Meadow Pipit, Reed Bunting, Ringe Plover and Kittiwakes. The weather has not been great for bird photography as generally needed iso 800.

Sea Creatures at Seahouses, Northumberland

Dabbling in rock pools searching out the strange variety of life that exists there brought back many happy childhood memories. The first creature is Botryllus schlosseri a colonial sea squirt. Each of the 'stars' comprises several individual sea squirts which share a central spout. This is repeated over the whole colony. They are all genetically identical repoducing by budding though they also have a motile sexual stage. Next comes a Sea Slug species with wonderful fluorescent blue tips to the tentacles. Also starring  Sea Anemones, Jelly fish, Sand Hoppers and Shrimps.

Bamburgh Beach, Northumberland

These images were taken on Saturday when the morning rain cleared to give beautiful afternoon light. For some of the images where there is cloud movement, I was using to graduated filters (.9S and .6H) and a 10-stop neutral density to give 30 sec exposure. The first two image were with the 15mm fisheye (without filters!) and the last image with .9soft graduated only. Unfortunately yesterday was a complete washout with heavy rain and strong winds and today does not look much better so time to catch up on processing images!!