Tag Archives: Photo

Selfie and seeing out my twenties

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MX-5 Selfie

It has been announced that “selfie” is the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year, so I had a look back through my images from 2013 and chose this as my favourite selfie. I took it while Jen was driving my MX-5 on the way to Scotland and I apologise for the roof being up!

If two posts in a day is a surprise after a lean couple of months it is because I am on a coach to the airport, so have a bit of time on my hands. I’m seeing out my twenties with a couple of trips away, Japan, where I’m heading now, then New York with Jen for my actual birthday.

Although Japan is mainly a work trip, I will have some free time in Tokyo and will also be going to the Tokyo motorshow. I’ve packed my camera, so hopefully I’ll have some pictures to share when I get back. Or more likely when I get back from New York, given I’ll only be home for 36 hours between the trips.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty to share from the New York trip – it must be the most photographed city in the world! I’ll try to blog daily from New York as our families like reading what we’ve been up to each day and I like reading back over past trips.

A day out in North Wales

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Horseshoe Pass

This was one of those trips where lots of separate things lined up making for a brilliant bank holiday Monday!

For years I have wanted to drive the Evo triangle, a notorious route in North Wales, which regularly features in Evo magazine. So, when I found out I had to put some miles on a test car from work over the bank holiday weekend the Evo triangle was my first thought! Jen’s parents had also bought us an “Afternoon Tea” voucher for Christmas, which we were running out of time to use. One of the places we could redeem it was St Georges Hotel in Llandudno – just north of the Evo triangle. The next thing that lined up for us was the bank holiday weather, it was warm and sunny – perfect!

The drive up the A5 to the Evo triangle wasn’t too bad and we were there by mid morning, on the first (anticlockwise) sighting lap we were following a farmer’s Land Rover, so taking it easy, when the police helicopter flew directly above us at low level, as if to give us a “Don’t even think about it” warning. So, I pulled up at the lay by at the top of the triangle to take some photos and wait for a bit. Finishing the first lap, with no traffic in front of us was brilliant, the road more than lived up to the hype and would have been perfect in my MR2 (which was tucked up at work). At the end of the lap, we turned round and did another lap clockwise this time, there wasn’t traffic on either the A543 or the more open B4501, where I was able to really put the test car through its paces.

After the fun of the Evo triangle, it was on to Llandudno for afternoon tea. Despite the detour, we actually managed to get there early, so spent an hour or so exploring the promenade and the pier. Both Jen and I were pleasantly surprised by Llandudno, the town itself was nice and the pier had all the tacky seaside amusements you expect. After playing on the 2p machines it was time for afternoon tea, our table was at the front of the hotel, so had a good view over the beach, which was only obscured by the mountain of sandwiches and cakes put in front of us!

After struggling to finish all the cake it was time to get back in the car and head back to the shire. I’d heard about some tunnels on the A55, but either we missed them, or they were over hyped, but they were soon forgotten when we hit the Horseshoe Pass on the A542 (the panorama at the top of this post – click to see full-size), a great bit of road, with stunning scenery!

It was only a brief visit, but North Wales is certainly somewhere I’d like to visit again, the roads are almost as good as in Scotland but it is day-tripable from the shire!

Evo magazine

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A quick stop by Loch Glascarnoch

I’ve been a bit rubbish at blogging the last few months, my excuses are working on the 119 project, enjoying my MR2 and that I’m really busy at work. It was on a flight for work that I was reading evo magazine on my iPad and came across the image above, of my MX-5 next to Loch Glascarnoch on the A835 and a few words about my 2012 Scottish roadtrip.

I’d submitted the article a while back and almost forgotten about it. The word count I had to meet was quite restrictive, so there’s hardly any detail, but the full details of the trip are earlier in this blog.

MR2

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Toyota MR2 Roadster

 

The lease deal on my MX-5 is coming to an end, so it was time to search for a new car. Jen and I had been toying with the idea of driving down to the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco, so I had been looking for something suitable for a two week roadtrip around Europe. However, nothing with storage space and in budget caught my eye, but I kept getting drawn to the little Toyotas with no boot!

After looking at a few with Jen and confirming that the storage space (behind the seats) would be enough for a weekend away, I saw this one, which had fewer miles and was in much better condition than the others – so I bought it!

As I still have my MX-5 for a few more weeks, the MR2 is going into storage – but I got it insured for the day to drive it home and it would have been rude not to take it for a run out!

The first trip was to Tesco – I can confirm that it can fit a large weekly shop in the storage bins. Then we went for a picnic at Broadway Tower near Evesham. Broadway Tower is an old tower and country park, on the A44 between Evesham and Moreton in Marsh. Aside from the great views, free parking and cafe the other attraction to Broadway Tower is that the road to get to it, known as Fish Hill has some great alpine style hairpins, so was a good place to test out the new car – don’t worry, my standard Melton Mowbray and Uppingham test will happen when I get it out of storage! The return journey, through the Cotswolds, was a good comparison with the MX-5, as I’d driven that route last month on the way back from Croyde. The MR2 isn’t as refined as my mk3.5 MX-5 (more refined than my old mk1 MX-5 though), but being lighter, mid engined and more powerful, the handling is better than either and I can carry more speed through corners. I’m going to have to take it on a track day to see what it can really do! That will have to wait until it is back out of storage and in the mean time I’m going to make the most of my remaining time with the MX-5!

Top five from 2012

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I’d been meaning to take part in the “Your Top 5 From 2012” thread on PistonHeads.com for a while, so once I’d selected my five favourite images of last year, I though they would make a good blog post too.
Rugby cement works – A shot I’ve had planned for quite a few years, as I can see it out of my kitchen window.

Hoffmann’s Woodpecker – This guy woke up up while I was having a post surf nap at the Funky Monkey Lodge in Costa Rica.

Ali’s Z4 – Taken on the A39 near Porlock on Exmoor during our trip to Devon.

Cloud Forest Abstract – Another one from our trip to Costa Rica, this was taking in the Selvatura Cloud Forest.

Fiat 500 – This was only meant to be a test shot, while Jen was shopping, but I really liked the effect with plain car and bright building.

Autosport International 2013

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Ari Vatanen Peugeot 405

 

The evening before I went to Autosport International, at the NEC in Birmingham, I’d been watching a video, posted on Bill Caswell’s Facebook page about Ari Vatanen’s Paris-Dakar Peugeot 405 being stolen from parc ferme, a randsom being demanded, the car eventually found but Vatanen still being disqualified from the rally. This wasn’t a story I’d heard before, but I wasn’t expecting to see the subject of the story the next day. At first I thought it was just another Paris-Dakar 405, but upon reading the plaque I realised that it was the exact same car, what a nice coincidence!

The rest of the show was good, especially seeing a Lamborghini Miura and a Toyota AE86 in the metal, two of my favourite cars, which somehow I’d never seen in real life.

2013

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Old BoatFirst of all – Happy new year! So far 2013 has been pretty good, a lazy breakfast of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup with my friends who had joined us to see out 2012 at my flat, then a roof down drive in the MX-5 to blast away the cobwebs and a walk along the Grand Union Canal at Braunston to make sure they were really gone!

As usual I had my camera with me and saw this barge which was looking a bit sorry for itself, almost as if it had over done it seeing out 2012. Although from geotagging the image in Lightroom, it looks like the boat has been there a while, as it is on the Google Maps satellite view!

2013 is already shaping up to be a busy year, with a house to renovate (and a flat to sell), an new exciting project at work, car shopping (for my best friend, my Dad and the replacement for my MX-5), hopefully some travelling and not to mention my 30th birthday!

I’m hoping to update this blog more than I have been recently, as one of my new years resolutions is do do more photography, including time lapses with the GoPro I got for Christmas.

Scottish Roadtrip Day 9: Back to Perth

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MX-5 at Glencoe

The last day of our highlands/islands adventure started with the now traditional fry up, followed by a warning to watch out for French drivers on the roads! Our goal was to get back to Perth for lunchtime, we couldn’t be late as everyone was waiting for the smoked salmon we had bought on North Uist, we had 100 miles to cover on the A82 and A85! I’d heard that the A82 in particular was good driving road, but on the drive from Fort William to Glencoe ski centre we weren’t really able to enjoy it due to the traffic, particularly caravans, so we decided to stop at the ski centre to have a look around and take some photos (see above), the little huts they had to sleep in looked good, but I’m not too sure I’d want to stay in one in the middle of winter. We thought about taking a chairlift ride to the summit, but the webcam showed that it was in the clouds, so we saved our money and pointed the MX-5 back towards Perth, luckily managing to get some clear road to enjoy. The road wasn’t as twisty as some of the others we have driven this week, with lots of long straights, so probably more suited to something with a bit more power than the Mazda. The rest of the journey to Perth seemed to take ages, as we seemed to be stuck behind slow moving vehicles the whole way, but we did make it to Perth just after midday and the salmon went down well at lunchtime.

The afternoon was spent catching up with my family, mooching around Perth, then a great meal out at the Bothy in Perth to celebrate my Dad’s birthday.

Mileage so far: 1,154

Scottish Roadtrip Day 7: Five islands

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Portree harbour

After another full breakfast, this time overlooking the beautiful white beach on Berneray we decided to explore the rest of the island. It took us all of about 5 minutes to drive from the north east part of the island to the south west, where it was still raining. We donned our waterproofs and took a walk to see the birthplace of the Nova Scotia giant, then to the beach that runs the full length of the west coast of the island, the tide was in, so there wasn’t much beach to see, but it was really peaceful and the rain had stopped.

We decided that we had fully explored Berneray and still had five hours before our ferry so after consulting the map we thought we would visit the three other islands to the south which were all connected by road. First was North Uist, where we stopped at a smokehouse in Clachan and bought some smoked salmon for lunch when we are back in Perth on Saturday, then continued south, past Benbecula to South Uist, where we stopped at Homore, which had some cute thatched cottages and church ruins to explore. By this time we were getting hungry, so turned back north towards Lochmaddy, stopping in Benbecula for a macaroni pie. The main road through the 3 islands was the A865, which wasn’t really a main road, most of the time it was a single track road, but the locals seemed good at letting faster traffic through, the A867 from Clachan to Lochmaddy was a bigger, straighter road which had just been resurfaced and it almost felt strange being able to use fifth gear in the Mazda, until cresting a summit to find sheep standing in the road, we were certainly still in the Outer Hebredies.

While waiting for the ferry in Lochmaddy we took a stroll to the little hut of shadows, a camera obscura in a small building next to the loch, an interesting way to kill time before the ferry.

The ferry took two hours to get to Uig on Skye, which instantly felt different to the other islands, much less remote and with bigger hills. The drive to Portree was fairly short and it didn’t take us long to find our hotel, which had a great view over the harbour and over to Raasay, which made a change from white sandy beaches!

Mileage so far: 920

Scottish Roadtrip Day 6: Harris and Berneray

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Berneray Beach

After another full breakfast, we set off to explore Uig beach, which we had been admiring from our window after since arriving at Auberge Carnish. As the tide was in there wasn’t much beach to explore but we did have a good walk along the white sand, before setting off for Leverburgh on Harris to catch our next ferry.

The first part of the route was retracing our steps from yesterday on the B8011, A858 and A859, then continuing down the A859 towards Tarbert, all great driving roads, perfect! Once we got to Harris the A859 got even better, climbing up the mountains, a smooth new section of road at the top, then a twisty descent down to Tarbert, where we stopped for a light lunch before continuing down the A859 to Leverburgh to catch our ferry. We were now driving along the west coast of Harris, with more beautiful white beaches, but we seemed to miss the 3m high MacLeod stone which we had been planning to visit of the way down, so ended up in Leverburgh about an hour early. The ferry to Berneray was a lot smaller than the Ullapool – Stornoway ferry, there wasn’t a dock, just a ramp into the sea that the ferry pulled up to and opened its ramp for the vehicles to drive off/on.

The crossing itself was interesting as the captain steered the ferry around various small islands before pulling up at another ramp into the sea at Berneray, which is the name of both the island and town (in the loosest sense of the term). To get to our B&B it was a case of following the single track road right until the end, then along a track and over a sheep field, even with the standard 4×4 suspension my MX-5 brushed its undercarriage on a few occasions.

For the second night running the view out of our window is a vast empty white beach (photo at the top of this post), returning to Perth with the view of KFC, a gym and the police station is going to be strange! Much like day 5, we ended the day by exploring the beach, followed by a three course dinner, I could get used to this!

Mileage so far: 835