Tag Archives: boat

Sep 19 2017
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Daily Post, Landscape

Saints Bay, Guernsey

Monday 18th September 2017, 9.35am (day 2,216)

Saints Bay, 16/9/17

Thanks to the problems depicted yesterday, my connection in Guernsey could not be made, so I was here for the night and the morning after. But there are worse places to be stranded for a night I suppose.

Other small islands featured so far on the blog (that is, islands like Guernsey, and not islands like Great Britain, or Honshu): Kangaroo Island, Stradbroke Island (Australia); Stewart Island (New Zealand); Wayasewa and Wayalailai (Fiji); Kvaløy, Snilstveitøy, Tromsøya, Sotra (Norway); Æbelø, Fyn, Sjælland (Denmark).

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Nov 28 2016
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Daily Post, Transport

Punting

Monday 28th November 2016, 12.15pm (day 1,922)

Punting, 28/11/16

Did I do punting on the Cam back in January, when I first came to Cambridge? Well, bugger it. I’m depicting it again. There are reasons.

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Jul 31 2016
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Daily Post, Transport

On the Tagus

Saturday 30th July 2016, 2.40pm (day 1,801)

On the Tagus, 30/7/16

The River Tagus (in Portuguese, Rio Tejo) rises in Spain and flows west, splitting Portugal in half as it heads for the Atlantic. A few miles from the ocean, the estuary becomes very broad, but then narrows again, making an excellent natural harbour and explaining why there has been a city here since antiquity. In the background of this shot is the Torre de Belém, one of Lisbon’s most famous buildings.

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Jan 06 2016
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Daily Post, Transport

Punts on the Cam, at St John’s College

Wednesday 6th January 2016, 3.15pm (day 1,595)

River Cam, 6/1/16

By many reckonings, the University of Cambridge is considered the best in the world. Today was my first-ever visit there, and what struck me is that it’s so goddamn small. Even Oxford feels like a city, but this place is just a little town in the Fens. Beautiful though, even on another grey January day (I’ve literally seen ten minutes of sunshine all year thus far). I thought I might struggle to catch a photo of a punt, but there were loads of them on the River Cam, including two for the price of one in this shot. Tourists on the right, but the guy on the left does look as if he is just using the punt as your basic local transport option.

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May 17 2015
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Daily Post, Transport

Ferry across the Wye

Saturday 16th May 2015, 7.10pm (day 1,360)

Wye ferry, 16/5/15

The main reason I have headed in this direction this weekend is to attend the preparatory, ‘training’ weekend for my organised trek up Kilimanjaro, which is starting in late July. The weekend was held where England meets Wales at the beauty spot of Symonds Yat, above the Wye valley, another place (like Aberystwyth) that was a) somewhere I’d never been and b) really, rather attractive. This has got to be the most rustic passenger ferry in England. Or, indeed, Wales.

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May 23 2013
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

Getting the boat back home

Thursday 23rd May 2013, 2.10pm (day 637)

Child on boat, 23/5/13

The boat that took us to the village trip a couple of days ago also serves as a kind of bus service between the two villages on the island of Wayasewa, this little girl was amusing herself while waiting for it to depart this afternoon. My last full day in Fiji, and only three more left in the Southern Hemisphere before I head for home.

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May 16 2013
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Daily Post, Landscape, Portrait, Stranger

Approaching the Yasawas

Thursday 16th May 2013, 10.00am (day 630)

Approaching the Yasawas, 16/5/13

The Yasawa islands stretch in a more-or-less straight line into the Pacific ocean from a point somewhere to the north-west of the main Fijian islands, and are probably former volcanoes. They are also to be my home (and the home of this Californian girl, and everyone else who was on the Yasawa Flyer catamaran out of Port Denarau marina early this morning) for the next few days. The word ‘Paradise’ is often overused, but in this case I think it’s entirely appropriate. This is a good time.

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May 06 2013
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Working on the ‘Kookaburra Queen’

Monday 6th May 2013, 9.55am (day 620)

Kookaburra Queen, 6/5/13

The Kookaburra Queen is a Mississippi-style riverboat that seems to spend all its time moored at Eagle Street Pier on the Brisbane river: this is its paddlewheel. I assume it does see active service but whenever I go past, it’s there, a feature of my daily walk to work at QUT. I don’t have many of those left however – one week to go in Brisbane (and I’m spending half of that away, with three days coming up in North Queensland after tomorrow).

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Jul 16 2012
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Daily Post, Landscape, Transport

Crossing Lake Pontchartrain

Sunday 15th July 2012, 7.45am (day 325)

Lake Pontchartrain, 15/7/12

This is a bit out-of-focus, but it was taken from a moving train. Specifically, a train that was crossing what Wikipedia, at least, defines as the longest railroad bridge in the USA and, at 9.3km, ‘likely to be’ the world’s longest rail bridge over water. It crosses the south-eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain and took me and a couple of hundred other passengers out of New Orleans this Sunday morning.

I got off after a six-hour journey at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I am staying for the next five nights: some others were going as far as New Jersey and weren’t going to arrive until tomorrow lunchtime. And the train guards work all but 4 hours of the full 32-hour journey! Now there’s a group in need of a better union. Remember also that the UK government look to the US for best practice in its labour laws.

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Jun 07 2012
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Daily Post, Landscape

In the fjord

Sunday 3rd June 2012, 11.50am (day 283)

Fjord, 3/6/12

So, finally, I make it into the fjords. This is a narrow passage between the little islands of Paddøy and Hokøyna, north of Bergen on the route up to Mofjorden. I don’t really feel I did the Norwegian landscape justice with any single photo taken today, partly because of a simple lack of good light, and also because for most of the journey we were either on a boat which was moving very quickly (some 30-35 knots), and thus being out on deck was a bracing experience to put it mildly – and focusing was difficult as a result. Or, we were behind glass on the bus home. And how can one choose just one shot to encapsulate this amazing natural architecture. I know, then, that here I do resort to cliché. But what the hell.

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