I'm hoping for another clear night soon, when I can go out of the city and see what I can get. I know that there are better images of the stars just waiting to be taken!
These images can be seen on Flickr in the Sunsets & Skies set.
Saturday was a day of gardening, which for us necessitates taking our lives into our hands and working on a slope (our back yard is a steep slope upwards). It also necessitates pulling my hockey kit out of the shed to give us access to the gardening tools, so I take the opportunity to unzip the kit bag and 'airate the kit' a little. This, naturally, results in another round of 'Spot The Moggy':
Another chance encounter on Saturday in the garden was with a common garden spider, sitting in the middle of his (or her) web, lunching on a ladybird:
I'd never really noticed the cross pattern on the backs of garden spiders, so this one was too good an opportunity not to shoot. At least, that's what I told Yol when I left her sorting out the gardening whilst I faffed about with macro lens adaptors!
Sunday, traditionally a day of rest (except in hockey season), but for Yol and I this week it was a chance to go and explore a couple of locations that we'd had our eye on for a while but not gotten around to visiting. The first of which was Park Hall Country Park, about a mile away from our house - we'd driven past it dozens of times but never ventured in. The first thing to say about it is, it's bigger than you think!
The range of wildlife and plantlife there is impressive, and the scenery is something to behold. Plenty of options and opportunities for the aspiring lensman. We spent a good couple of hours wandering around, following pathways and shooting the scenery, the woodlands, the plants, the birds, pretty much anything that looked interesting!
After walking around the park for more than two hours, we stumbled upon the Visitors Centre and discovered that they sell maps of the Park, along with wildlife guides. In honesty we could probably have benefitted from those earlier, but it has inspired us to return again and explore the areas that we were yet to see.
Our next destination of choice was Caverswall Castle, so off we set to where we believed it to be. Needless to say, it's not there. It's not where the Satnav tells you it is, it's not where their own map tells you it is. So it remained undiscovered (until we went home, looked on Google Maps and spotted it, where it's always been, on a road that we travel down on a regular basis...)
Whilst out looking for the Castle, we came across Foxfield Railway Station, a tourist attraction near Blythe Bridge that is based around steam locomotives. So we stopped off for a look around, and naturally a few photo opportunities presented themselves:
It turns out that we'd stumbled upon the place during one of their 'event days' when the trains were up and running, so our piece of bad fortune at not finding the castle turned into a piece of good fortune in discovering the station!
The full set of photos from our day of exploring can be seen in the Flickr set here.
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