As I Xi It v2.3

I was in Dartmoor last weekend with the intention of wild camping which turned out to be not so wild. We did however pitch our tent in a paddock complete with horse turds. Anyway, it was also a full moon and we had nice clear skies. It’d be the ideal location for star-trails. What these pics are missing though is the aurora. I miss the northern lights.

Another day with blue skies and fluffy clouds. Bodies of water really do seem to give the pics an extra edge.

Sunny day, blue skies with fluffy white clouds. Time for some infrared. I’ve got to say, this was probably one of my more successful forays into IR photography.

Where to?

A tree amongst the chalk heathland

Two paths

Went to Black Park last Monday for a cycle. It was good cycling weather and not too busy either.

This time with Bone up to the Forest of Dean. We actually stayed on a campsite in Mitchel Troy near Monmoth just over on the Welsh side. Unlike the last campsite, our pitch was on nice green grass and had a river running behind us and instead of being awoken by birdsong, we were greeted with the incessent crowing of crows as soon as morning broke.

The weather was pretty good, got rather hot during the day and quite chilly at night with temperatures of around 9/10^oC.

The days were spent walking around, eating Dairylea and cooking.

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Went hiking around the South Wales/England border over the weekend and figured I’d take advantage of the sunny weather and do some IR photography. I’m pretty sure I’ve processed them incorrectly, you can see some posterization here and there. I suspect I need to extend the shutter speed.

Pine trees on top of May Hill

More trees

Apparently, you can see 12 counties on a clear day

More trees

West Sussex again, this time for some camping in Graffham.

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This Saturday, Bone and I went back to Burnham Beeches for a spot of cycling. While we were unloading the car, a dog appeared from nowhere and presents Bone with a stick, eager to play fetch. Of course, she obliged.

The dog (Kerry) followed us for a bit into the woods and I guess got bored and went back home. I suspect she lives in one of the houses nearby.

Last week, we took a fairly gentle stroll around the woods, this week, it all started off pretty well until I decided that we should go off trail and ended up cycling through some thick fallen leaves, past a broken fence and suddenly we arrived on an island of scrubland full of heather and gorse.

More Dorset than Buckinghamshire. As we negotiated through the heather, we arrived on some tarmac roads and came across a whole bunch of european foreigners. They looked like a tour group, pretty far from central London. As we cycled past, one of them was collecting horse turds. I can’t imagine manure to be that expensive to buy anywhere in the world. Bone suggested that perhaps she collects turds like how I sometimes like to collect moss, lichens and rocks. But turds? I can’t imagine scatology to be a particuarly popular field. I guess different strokes for different folks or as Bone says “different horses for different courses”.

As we kept cycling along the tarmac, I found that it’d take us onto a main road and as we’re not road cyclists, we turned back into the woods. We retraced our steps (wheels?) towards the scrubland only to find that we had gone in circles and ended up where we entered. According to a plaque we’d past, the island of scrubland has a moat around it which would explain why we we kept coming across stagnant water. Upon consultation with my GPS, we eventually found our way back to the track which we had veered off. Things soon went downhill…literally.

So, we continued on back towards the car when I spot a steep descent and decided to zoom on down only to lose control and somehow get thrown off my bike, into the mud and ended up being pinned down by my bike over my head. Miraculously, I didn’t suffer any major head trauma, just cuts and scrapes here and there. I was just covered in mud, of all the spots I could’ve crashed into, it had to be that one patch of mud there. I suppose it was a softer landing than had it been on compacted dirt.

Tracks

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