Clifton Suspension Bridge's 150th Birthday

  

A Great Night for Bristol

Sunday 7th marked 150 years since the symbol of Bristol, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, first opened to the public. A hundred thousand people were expected to turn up for the firework display at 7.00pm and judging by the enormous crowds at every possible spot within sight of the bridge, that figure may have been reached. The crowds were treated to a stunning twelve minute display of imaginative and colourful pyrotechnics, when palm trees, gigantic feathers, even Niagara Falls appeared over the Avon Gorge. Isembard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the bridge and in whose honour it was completed after his death, would have been proud.

Oystercatchers on the Glamorgan Coast

Promising weather was forecast for Thursday, so I drove to the Glamorgan Heritage Coast in South Wales, just over an hour from home. It's a wonderful stretch of Jurassic coast backed by dramatic Blue Lias cliffs, with wide, clean, sandy beaches and dramatic headlands such as Nash Point.

A watery November sun shone low over the Bristol channel the whole day and although the tide was on the way up, it allowed me a few hours for some pleasurable beach photography. I had walked about three miles along the beach between Nash Point and Dunraven Bay before turning back along the beach towards my car. By this time the tide was pretty high, up to the boulder line under the cliffs, and dusk was coming on but I knew there was a ladder up the cliffs further along so stuck to the beach.

I'd spotted a few gulls and pairs of oystercatchers on the way out and snapped a couple of unsatisfactory distant shots of them with the 300mm + 1.4x converter set up I had with me, just for the practice. On the way back, with dusk fast approaching, I had given all thoughts of further photographs when I came across this flock of perhaps fifty birds settling down to roost amongst the rocks. They were right in my path and I had no choice but to disturb them but I managed to get the telephoto strapped to the camera before I slowly stalked up to them. They eventually flew off and I managed to grab a few flight shots, of which this is the best.

There is lovely soft evening light in the image and the birds are fortuitously turned with wings mostly on the downbeat to show off their striking black and white plumage but we can still see the red eyes, orange bills and just the odd pair of dolly pink legs. It's a habitat shot too, giving a feel for the wild coastline and the surf. But what makes it stand out from the others in the shoot, is the slight separation of birds in the middle that grabs the attention and saves the shot from being just a jumble of flying birds.

Forest Giants at Dawn

This image was captured at dawn from a lookout tower overlooking the primary rainforest of the Danum Valley in Malaysian Borneo.

On the previous day's trek, I had discussed with our guide Dennys the images I had in mind of forest trees emerging from morning mist. He said he knew a place where we might see just such a thing and that he could organise that but we would need to make an early start. And so it was that we were up at 4 am for the thirty kilometre drive from our hotel, the Borneo Rainforest Lodge, to the Danum Valley Research Station tower to catch the dawn. Indeed it was still a moonlit night as Dennys pulled up at the lookout in the lodge's white four wheel drive Toyota. 

Strangely, the tower's three stories were brightly lit by electric lanterns and there was a Toyota identical to ours parked outside. 'Is someone else here from the hotel?' I said to Dennys in surprise. 'Yes, that's the chef' he replied. He had secretly laid on a chef and waiter from the hotel just to cook breakfast for Jos and myself!

On the top floor of the lookout, a table had been set for two and the chef was already preparing to cook up a delicious meal. I set up my tripod and and we waited for the magic of the tropical dawn to unfold. 

We were not disappointed. As the sun crept above the horizon, the valley was flooded with soft golden light and trees and distant hills emerged and disappeared again in the shifting inversion clouds shrouding the forest.

I spent an enjoyable hour or so shooting with a telephoto lens to pick out sections of the constantly changing scene, my attention caught now and then by the waiter's 'would you prefer tea or coffee sir?' or 'would you prefer your eggs fried or scrambled madam?' and not until the sun was well above the horizon and rapidly burning off the mist did we sit down to one of the most unique and delicious breakfasts we have ever experienced.

Dungeness

This blog was first published in September 2005. Dated but one of my favourites.

At first sight, Dungeness, tagged on to the south Kent coast and one of the world's largest expanses of shingle, seems a pretty inhospitable place compared to the rolling charms of the Downs and the Weald. In reality though, this is a fascinating and fragile landscape, with an eclectic but thriving community of fishermen, artists and city escapees, a haven for wildlife and a great destination for a day out, with two pubs (great fish 'n chips), a gallery, a lighthouse to look round and the little Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway to take a ride on.

In fact 'The Dunge' has two lighthouses for good measure and two rather hard to ignore nuclear power stations, an old 1965 Magnox plant and a newer Advanced Gas Cooled (AGR) 1987 model, right by the sea and sitting on one of the most unstable and shifting stretches of coastline in the UK. So why put them here?

The old and new lighthouses with the old and new Dungeness A and B reactors in the background

If we had to build nuclear power plants, and back in the sixties we thought we did, Dungeness was probably chosen as a good site because it's a) remote ie. not many people live around here to kick up a political stink, b) the land is cheap ie. you can't farm shingle and not so many people want to live on it (though lots do) and c) although it's remote, it's not so remote that you have to pump electricity hundreds of miles to where it's needed in big cities like London.

Dungeness A's twin reactor houses.

Derek Jarman's Garden and Found Art.

One of Dungeness's most famous residents was film director, artist and gardener, Derek Jarman, who lived in the charming Prospect Cottage (below). He created his witty and wonderful 'Atomic Garden' out of a bewildering variety of sculptural objects found on the beach along with plants that tolerate the salt laden winds and drought conditions found on this seaside shingle. His inspiration was the Dungeness landscape itself, for you don't have to look far to find aesthetic associations between native plants and the flints and shells, flotsam and junk that strew the peninsula. Derek died in 1994 but his garden is lovingly maintained and is not so much open to the public as, like most of the houses in Dungeness, completely open plan.

Prospect Cottage and the approach to Derek Jarman's garden.

 Three views of Derek Jarman's garden in April

I don't know whether DJ started a fashion for 'objets trouvees' or 'found art' around these parts but many of the cottages have flotsam and jetsam sculptures adorning their gardens and there are quite a few humorous examples dotted around the shingle banks. For instance, this highly functional 'double wind vane and old boots'. The 'arms' are aligned east to west and the boots point south, so a westerley blowing today.

Double wind vane and old boots.

Iron Bru anyone?'

Or this gruesome dead hand, straight from Davey Jones' locker and still grasping it's last drink (Coke presumably).

The most elaborate sculpture I saw on my last visit in September was this figure with a feathered hat, complemented nicely by a backdrop of nuclear reactor buildings.

Standing figure with AGRs.

Some Flora and Fauna.

Much of the Dungeness dunes make up a National Nature Reserve and there is an RSPB bird reserve centred around flooded gravel pits in the middle of the spit. The shingle supports a surprising variety of plant life, with good growths of Burnet Rose, bearing scented flowers of the palest lemon in May and June. This beautiful shingle hugging shrub has a lethal array of thorns but when the petals drop, they reveal a crimson ovary arrayed with the soft gold of the withered stigma and stamens on a 'starfish' of sepals.

Burnet Rose flower, Dungeness

Vegetation tends to grow in isolated islands surrounded by expanses of bare shingle. These island pockets become richer in nutrients as plants die off and produce water retentive humous, encouraging a wider variety of species colonisation. Gorse and red valerian are quite common and look very attractive against the shingle in June. Shingle gardens have become quite fashionable in recent times and find their inspiration in landscapes like Dungeness.

Red Valerian and shingle.

One of the first forms of plant life to colonise the shingle as with many other inhospitable environments are lichens and many quite large areas of shingle are cloaked with soft grey Cladonia species of lichen, possibly C. portentosa. Amongst these grow rue whose rust red flower spikes make a pleasing contrast amonst the grey. These two plants probably form the basis of the more species rich islands of vegetation.

Rue and Cladonia lichens

The tiny Zebra Jumping Spider on the shingle

The Lighthouses.

Old lighthouse, round house and coast guard cottages.

The new lighthouse is apparently the latest in a succession of six, built to replace earlier lights left landlocked by the growing shingle spit.

Next to the old lighthouse, which is built in traditional style and is open to the public, is the round house, which is the base structure of an earlier light.

Tough shingle coloniser; the Sea Kale.

Sea Kale seedling sprouting through fisherman's plastic matting.

The shingle banks closest to the sea are a hostile environment for most plants and few are able to survive here. One that flourishes however is Sea Kale, a relative of the cabbage and a huge plant over a metre across when fully grown, with wavy edged blue-green leaves, sending up large flower spikes crowned with masses of white flowers.

Sea Kale and the man made artifacts of Dungeness point

A few hundred years ago, the whole of Dungeness point was under the sea and although it has an air of permanance now, it is constantly being reshaped by coastal drift. Because of this, there is a continuous stream of heavy lorries collecting shingle from the east coast of the spit and recycling it on the west coast to help maintain the structure. Worthwhile when there are a total of four nuclear reactors to safeguard and with global warming a reality and a rise in sea levels on the cards, those lorries are going to be kept pretty busy.

At Dungeness you can't help thinking that in a few more hundred years this will all be under the sea again and all its history and industry will disappear along with its wildlife. Let's hope that those reactors are cleaned up in time.

National Geographic 'Thrilling Trails'

I am very grateful to National Geographic for using this shot to illustrate the lead article in its 'Thrilling Hikes' series. The Besseggen Ridge walk was one of the highlights of our trip to Norway in August 2013 and I have to agree with NG author Doug Schnitzpahn that it 'serves up one of the most stunning views on the planet'.

I was lucky to get this image at all, as we were descending through thick cloud shrouding the high point of the walk just minutes earlier. You can see that the cloud base is just above our heads at this point but the sun has just broken through to throw patches of light onto the lake and the distant peaks of the Jotunheimen mountains.

The walk traverses a narrow ridge that separates lakes Gjende to the left of the photograph and Bessvatnet to the right. What is not so obvious is the 600 vertical metres that also separates the lakes! The waters of Gjende are fed by the meltwaters of the Memurubu glacier, which contain microscopic particles that give the lake its milky, turquoise hue, contrasting with the inky clarity of the higher lake.