Or should it be, the parked red car? I know there is supposed to be some kind of innate order to English adjectives, but here I am unsure. Anyway it is often seen in this position — this was not a lucky capture. And yes, it tilts to a noticeable degree: otherwise, this shot is faithful enough to the perpendicular.
The Thames breaks up into a number of channels as it flows through Oxford. This one isn’t marked on the map as the main river, but the water, flowing in the direction seen ahead, will be back there, and heading down to London, fairly soon. An unscheduled morning here, but I am home now.
Seems an appropriate shot to mark my last day here. Though, I suppose, this is a descent rather than an ascent, but never mind. Mostly, this has been an enjoyable and interesting visit, but I feel it unlikely I will ever return here.
On April 11th last year I departed on my trip to Namibia, and tonight I should have been in the air again, but instead am sitting out the year’s latest flight delay and am scheduled to depart tomorrow instead. But there are worse places to be stuck, I suppose. The surf was certainly up today, one reason why none of Ascension’s glorious beaches are considered safe places to swim. In the foreground, one of the historic ‘Turtle Ponds’, thankfully no longer used — behind, Sisters’ Peak makes its second appearance.
Ascension Island is greener than I expected, although this is mainly due to the spread of an invasive weed, Mexican thorn, which authorities are trying to control (with some recent success it seems). But the peak in the centre of the island has long been known as Green Mountain for good reason. It was on this mountain that, in the 19th century, botanist Joseph Hooker embarked on a giant horticultural project to plant a forest and bring more rain to the island — and the jungle in the foreground of this shot is evidence that he succeeded. In fact, as far as I can tell this view is shrouded in cloud most of the time — some more is just visible drifting in from the right, but I nabbed the shot in a rare clear spell on my Sunday morning walk up to the island’s summit. Note also the Perfect Crater — that’s its official name — visible to the right of the cone of Sisters’ Peak.
Now that’s a change of scene: from thatched cottages to a desert island. It’s nearly a year since my research funding award and, consequently, my chance to visit Ascension Island, were confirmed, and 73 days since I uploaded the map of this place to the blog. Zoom into that image and look at the westernmost headland of the island, where you can just about see the label ‘Tanks’: those are what you see in the distance.
St Helena doesn’t have beaches, and the tourist industry of that island may well lament this fact. But Dead Man’s Beach is a stupendous swathe of sand, and right by the main settlement, Georgetown. What a marvellously evocative name it has (though it will be explained not by the shipwreck of some 17th century pirate vessel, but because Georgetown’s cemetery lies right behind it). This is not even to mention the turtles, evidence for whom lies everywhere: but they will, hopefully, be pictured on one of the remaining eight evenings that I am scheduled to spend in the middle of the Atlantic.
It’s not easy to categorise a post as both “Interior” and “Landscape” but I’m claiming it for this one. Farewell to Gibraltar, it’s been a decent few days and if things work out I will be returning at some point.
Gibraltar is my home for the next few days. I have been here once before, in 1991 — my “Inter-Rail Summer”, aged 21. Then, one could only enter the territory by walking across the airport runway, and this is still the case, as seen here. Presumably one gets a decent amount of notice before they close it, but let’s hope that one’s electric vehicle doesn’t run out of juice halfway across. The huge lump of limestone that is The Rock has always been a landmark, and a fortress, and the peninsula on which it and the city stands is now one of Britain’s last remaining outposts of Empire: an Overseas Territory that is sort of still part of Europe, only not. A gatepost to the Mediterranean beyond.
I was certainly enjoying the sunshine today — a glorious day. Whether the horse was or not, I can only speculate, but it looks contented enough. Taken towards the end of my first County Top walk for over two months: the houses in the background are part of the village of Huthwaite, the highest settlement in Nottinghamshire.
In 1960 the population of Dubai was 40,000. As of today it is more than 3.7 million, and continuing to rise at around 5% a year (all figures from Wikipedia). In order to accommodate them, the city is also growing physically. What you see here is not ‘desert’, it is large amounts of sand that have been poured into the Persian Gulf — land ‘reclaimed’ because the sea is not a form of terrain that can be bought and sold. Go to Google Maps and search for “Dubai Island Villas”; you’ll find it just offshore from the Al Hamriya Port, and you’re looking at a photograph of it, as of 24th February 2025.
Captured, perhaps obviously, a minute or so after take-off from DXB this afternoon. I was sat right over a wing again and only got this because of the plane’s considerable roll to the right for a few moments, so this was the last I saw of anything except clouds for the next seven hours. That’s the end of this trip, then, but it seems reasonably likely I will be back in Dubai at some point over the next 2-3 years. It will be interesting (but perhaps also a little depressing) to see what this view might look like in 2028, say.
Being 42 