Blaenavon

I was expecting the Welsh Valleys to be littered with remnants of the coal and steel industry. In fact, almost all traces of the former industries have been completely erased - the buildings demolished and the slag heaps landscaped into country parks for mountain biking and such like.

In December 2000 UNESCO named the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape as a World Heritage Site for the following reason:

"The area around Blaenavon bears eloquent and exceptional testimony to the pre-eminence of South Wales as the world's major producer of iron and coal in the 19th century. All the necessary elements can be seen, including coal and ore mines, quarries, a primitive railway system, furnaces, the homes of workers, and the social infrastructure of their community."

We visited both the Iron works and the Big Pit coal mine.

Unexpected birds

While visiting Treorchy to photograph the buildings and cemetery, we were amazed to see both a heron and a dipper in the stream alongside the busy main street. The heron took off almost immediately but the dipper continues to move along the bank dipping into the water at regular intervals. It then rested for a time on one leg giving us a chance to photograph it.

Kite in the Sunshine!!

After Monday's rain and poor light, yesterday was perfect for photographing the kites. They also obviously enjoyed the weather as, at one point, there were 20 of them circling overhead in the thermals. This one did an obliging quick fly past just at a distance to be correct in the frame (small crop behind the bird to decentralise it)

Red Kites

Unfortunately the light was very poor for our attempts at photographing the red kites up in the Brecon Beacons and it was raining!

These two were taken at ISO1000 and therefore have a fair amount of colour noise but they do show the wonderful colours and shapes of the birds.

Old and New

This huge oil refinery at Rhoscrowther has been built close to a small village - you can see the very tall church tower (marked with red arrow) completely dominated by the refinery chimneys.

We visited the churchyard - a very peaceful place in spite of the hum of the refinery close by.

Pembroke Dock

We spent Saturday walking around Pembroke Dock - a town waiting to be discovered by the tourists. They are hoping to get a Harry Potter museum set up there as parts of the films were shot in the area. This will certainly bring in the masses but I doubt they will appreciate the stylish Georgian architecture and Naval History from Nelson's time to the Sunderland Flying Boat station in the last war.

Upper picture is Shipwright Inn and Gun Tower Museum.


Lower picture one of the fine Georgian terraces in the Naval Dockyard

Ramsey Island

We visited Ramsey Island yesterday on a perfect sunny day. The island is off St David's Head, Pembrokeshire. It is owned by the RSPB and takes only 40 visitors a day, so we were pleased to be able to get on a landing trip.

We saw several of their 'special' birds including peregrines and choughs.

National Botanic Gardens of Wales

Today we visited the National Botanic Gardens of Wales built in 2000 with the main greenhouse designed by Norman Foster. It is the world's largest single-span glasshouse measuring 110 m long by 60 m wide.

We then went to Pendine Sands, a 7 mile beach of firm sands used to set four world land speed records, including two by Malcolm Campbell.

Kittiwakes at Mumbles

Swansea Waterfront Museum

Three images from Swansea's museum which we visited in the rain yesterday

From wet Wales

Summer ended again yesterday evening and Monday was back to cool wet conditions. We visited Penarth which has a splendid pier and Barry Island which was a bit bleak in the strong winds.

On Sunday, we visited the Newport Transporter Bridge only to find it has been closed for two years and isn't due to repopen till October 2010. It is one of only two such bridges in the UK - the other being in Middlesborough. You can just see the transporter platform going across - the workmen use it to get their supplies to the workshop on the other bank






We then went into Cardiff and walked round Cardiff Bay area - I greatly enjoyed the Senedd building - wonderful architecture and interesting heat and water conservation features in the design.

Two Monochrome Images from Hereford

Beech tree from river path and a view of the Cathedral reflected in the River Wye taken with Infrared Camera.

Ascari's Cafe Hereford

I was amused by the name of this cafe as Ascaris is the latin name for a family of intestinal parasitic worms. The cafe is actually named after the 1950s Ferrari racing driver.

Cambridge Mobile Cafes etc

As a start to my long-planned project on mobile cafes etc, here are three images from Cambridge.

I hope to add more to the collection while in Wales - good excuse to drink lots of cups of tea and coffee and partake of big breakfasts

Roesel's Cricket

Roesel's Cricket was previously found only on the south east coasts but has now spread to many areas. It is distinguished by the yellow band around the notum and the short wings that only reach half way down the abdomen. This one was happy on top of a piece of wood for a time and then started to lay eggs under the bark. Later it attempted some gymnastics crossing the log.

These were taken with a 100 macro lens plus extender tube and 1.4 converter with a ringflash. They need a bit of cleaning up as, despite being selfcleaning, ny sensor has a considerable amount of dust.

Cambridge United Friendly

Image from inside the main stand during a friendly between Cambridge United and reserve team from Liverpool FC.
Liverpool won 1:0 from a free kick so Cambridge gave them a good run for their money. Having 'retired' from touchline photography, it felt odd to be watching from up in the stand.

Two Images from Paxton Pits

A lady was exercising seven Collies at Paxton Pits so took an infrared wide-angle view of them. The trees on the right are more traditional subjects for infrared.

Cambridge by Infrared

A couple of images taken with the infrared digital camera and converted to monochrome in Lightroom adjusting the various colour channels.

Experiments with Closeup

Peacock butterfly taken with 50 mm macro lens - it was a fairly 'lazy' butterfly and allowed me to get close with 50mm macro lens. Many of the other insects were more wary and wouldn't let me close enough.













Following suggestions from John at our meeting last night, I tried an extension ring and 1.4 converter used together with my 100-400 lens. I needed to manually focus but it certainly allowed me to photograph some very skittish Painted lady butterflies, which wouldn't let me close enough with the 50 mm lens.

Great Crested Newt

We found this Great Crested Newt underneath our wheelie bin last night.

Great Crested Newts are our largest native newt species and have distinctly warty skin of blackish appearance.. They also have fine white spots on their lower flanks, which are more obvious in breeding males. Their undersides are either yellow or orange-coloured and are covered in large black blotches. Males can be distinguished from females by the presence of a jagged crest that runs along their backs, dipping at the rear of the abdomen to a smoother-edged crest above and below the tail. The male’s crest is more pronounced during the breeding season, and lies flat to the body when the newt is out of water. Females lack a crest, but have a yellow-orange stripe along the lower edge of their tails.

You can see a small crest along the back of our friend and the orange stripe along the underside of tail - probably a female - any experts out there?