Ram basking in the afternoon sun
Magnificent 7 links course
Camusdarach Beach
Cliffs of Eigg
Afternoon sun on Isle of Eigg
Stormy exit of Eigg
Ferry heading home
Rainbow over Eigg harbour
Eigg’s guard dogs
Solar eclipse
Normally during half-term holiday we end up working or splitting our days off to look after the kids. This time we decided, back in August(!), to go away to Scotland and to enjoy a proper half-term holiday away from the normality of home. As it is with looking and booking holiday homes on-line there is always a little trepidation when you finally arrive at the front door, fingers crossed, that it lives up to the expectation that the pictures generated. Fortunately, the place we booked turned out to be amazing and a million times better than the pictures suggested. Whilst it was relatively close to a busy main road this was more than compensated for by having a river at the bottom of the garden and a view out across the beginning of the Grampian Mountains. The cottage was on the opposite side of the river to the closest town, but fortunately also at the bottom of the garden was a bridge. How handy!
Joining us for the first 4 days was Mr & Mrs Cakes who were also looking forward to chilling out and forgetting about the daily grind. In fact, the visitors didn’t stop there as one of Mr & Mrs Cakes good friends, a certain lead singer from the group Ladytron and her hubby also came up for a day – although to be fair they didn’t have as long a journey as they now live back north of the border. Us men went for a short bike ride on the Sunday following the Etape Caledonia route, meeting the rest of the gang in a lovely country hotel for what turned out to be a rather late lunch.
Following what turned out to be quite a hectic weekend, we spent the rest of the week enjoying the fantastic Scottish sun and blue sky, and visited a number of woodland walks and spectacular waterfalls in and around Pitlochry. The autumn colours were absolutely stunning and reminded me of my travels around New England each fall when I lived in New York. In fact, I would go as far to say that this Scottish autumn did enough
to rival the New England fall!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures and maybe if you haven’t been to Scotland in the autumn/fall they might inspire you to book a trip in the future. These pictures are only a select few, if you would like to see the rest of the set click the following link.
On Monday evening me and the missus decided that we would make use of the last night of freedom together before the cheeky monkeys come home from their summer holidays with the Grandparents. We booked to see Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, at a new cinema in New Brighton. On the drive over we came over the crest of a hill that presented us with fantastic views of the Bay of Liverpool and out towards the Irish Sea. What presented before us was a fantastic cloud formation of a storm gathering pace and intensity – appearing to hover over the wind farms out in the bay! Now unfortunately I only had my iPhone with me and as good a camera it is for a phone I was cursing that I hadn’t got my proper camera with me; so much so given that I nearly decided to bring it but didn’t feel comfortable leaving it in the car whilst we were in the cinema. Anyway, despite this shortcoming the iPhone coupled with Instagram has provided some pretty intense looking images of the impending storm.
Whilst we were enjoying the film little did I know that the storm I had nonchalantly photographed earlier was wreaking havoc over the northern part of the Wirral leaving roads flooded and rivers bursting their banks. Hopefully no long term lasting damage was caused.
As you can see from the photos that Lou’s eye for photography is mainly on the children – contrasting quite significantly from my perspective. Whilst I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing that we focus (no pun intended!) on different things it does mean that when we go out with the children by ourselves we will end up with either landscape or children shots. Fortunately when we travel together as a family we get the best of both worlds!
Anyway, enjoy the views of Devon as viewed by Lou which includes many photos of my two extremely cheeky monkeys!
Dave Johnson's Photography 