Hive Beach Burton Bradstock (NT)

Our first choice of venue for our trip had to be Hive Beach - with its sandy beach, thrift-covered cliff walk, shingle flower specialities at Cogdon beach (Yellow-horned poppies, Sea kale and Sea Campion) and picturesque village (Burton Bradstock) complete with stream and meadows (insects etc to follow). No orchids anywhere but a great amount of the very local Adders' Tongue and wild Foetid Iris

Starlings Leave Roost (Brighton 20th January )

Still catching up on images from trip to Brighton. This was my last morning when my planned walk from Brighton along towards Shoreham was a bit delayed by the wonderful spectacle, first of the starlings leaving the old West Pier and flying off over Hove and then by the colours of the sunrise.

 

Erosion at Happisburgh

My last recorded visit to Happisburgh was in 2011 and I was amazed to see how much erosion had taken place in 11 years - the previous sea defences are now a tangle of iron and wooden posts. You can see from the aerial views that a whole section of the cliff, including the houses (as in 4th photo) and steps to the beach, is no longer there and the car park has been relocated. The lighthouse is unchanged though now a bit closer to the sea! These are quick monochrome conversions of the jpeg files from my Sony RX100 IR-converted camera so a bit of haloing etc

Storm on Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight

Friday was very windy with gusts up to 50mph and near horizontal rain - not pleasant for being out but well worth time spent in a shelter on Freshwater Bay photographing the spray and waves. These were taken with shutterspeeds  from1/3200th to 1/8th second, all handheld, some with deliberate camera movement added. 

Ventnor, Isle of Wight

Much of Ventnor was closed for the ‘winter’ when we visited on Wednesday though, fortunately,  we did find a very good cafe. The cascade gardens were one of the main features in Victorian times while the imposing Winter Garden Art Deco building was the highlight in the 1930’s, now sadly run down. The ivy growing over much of the building were full of ivy bees.