We had a great time staying with various members of our family in SA—Ralph’s apartment in Cape Town, Caroline and Peter’s holiday home in Onrus River, and Rob and Angela at Watermead. Here are a couple of photo galleries showing our trip to Cape Town and to the farm.

Here’s another gallery: this one is of our visit to Robben Island, the prison / leper colony where Nelson Mandela and many others were imprisoned. The tour is well worth the trouble: the trip through the prison was narrated by a man who was imprisoned there. His commentary was quite understated and matter-of-fact, but compelling and vivid.

The boys had a great time on the farm getting to know their cousins Claire and Emma, picking raspberries, swimming, sailing and playing a variety of board and card games.

Rob’s dairy is amazing—a rotary affair that goes around once every six minutes, and milks over 700 Jersey cows in a couple of hours. I don’t envy him the schedule: up at 0430 every morning, rain or shine!

They are really big—especially the males, which seem mountain-like. The males compete for rank in the colony, and develop deep scarring around their chests, and in some cases all around to their backs. The dominant male in a colony is kept busy chasing off all the other males.

There’s a lighthouse, with a now derelict keeper’s cottage on a low island facing out to sea. It must have been very inconvenient, with no direct access by land, and now it’s automated and the cottage is no longer used.

The gallery is here.

I’ve also put up a few pictures from the UK – Horseshoe Lake. This is one of the many gravel pits in England that have been flooded and are now used for sailing, fishing etc. We used to go to Horseshoe Lake to sail, but on this occasion I think we just pottered around and enjoyed the very tame birds that were hopping around on the bank.

Finally some pictures from San Francisco: the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park, designed by the Swiss firm of architects Herzog and de Meuron. I learned about them from an exhibition at the New Tate museum in London, where there was an extensive display that described their process, including a lot of the work they did in designing the De Young museum.

A bit of a rush job – it’s challenging to get all the pictures edited, organized and posted, and I think some of my edits might not have made it through to the posted jpegs, but here they are anyway. The main page is here.

Over time I’ll try to get in and edit some of the notes so you know where they are from and so on, but I have at least organized them into sub-galleries, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find your way around.

One of the best things we did was a trip to Akaroa, and a swim with the local Hector’s Dolphins in the wild. These are the smallest dolphins in the world, and endangered. The Akaroa Harbour is a sanctuary for them. Here’s the site for the company we went with – their pictures are better than mine! Akaroa was a French colony, and retains some of the French character in the street names, for example. Also some great cooking!

Have fun!

tim

The resort is small enough that everyone gets to know everyone else. We sat around a single large table, and enjoyed an extended happy hour every afternoon, which ensured we were relaxed and ready for dinner.

The picture of the resort is not mine, but you can see my gallery here – a lot of pictures of people jumping / falling into the water, but a few that give you an idea of the landscape. You can download the originals at full resolution from the gallery if you’d like to.

One of the world’s great photogenic places.  Extraordinary beauty, and a quiet sense of isolation make it a great place to visit.

I was there in May, following a conference. May is a good time to visit. It was hot, but not unbearable, and I did a lot of walking. The roads are tiny, and I imagine that in summer it must be very crowded, but it was quite empty when I was there.
Lots of pleasures to be found – the landscape, the architecture, the food, and of course the blue sea, all around.

I’ve posted the first set of pictures from Barcelona. Topics include:

• La Sagrada Familia
• Park Guell and Gaudi’s house
• Exploring the city

I’ll have more as and when I can get them processed. Still to come are Casa Millo, and some of the cathedral and Tarragona.

Enjoy.

tim

What a place! We just came back from a week staying in an apartment in the Gothic Quarter – easy walk to the Metro and many of the sights.

I took lots of pictures – I’ll post them as I get them processed. But if you get a chance, it’s the most wonderful mix of beaches, restaurants, architecture, town planning, art and culture.  We visited Gaudi’s buildings, saw the Picasso and Miro museums, and explored the shops and restaurants. It was warm enough for the boys to swim (not me!).

I was a bit surprised to see everything in both Catalan and Castillian – the two languages seem quite similar to me, although of the two, Catalan seems more closely connected to French (not surprising, I guess…).

We took a day trip to Tarragona – on the coast south of Barcelona. I had wanted to go to see where Dali lived, but it proved difficult with public transport, so we went to explore the Roman remains at Tarragona instead.  There’s a Roman ampitheatre dating back to 200AD, and a cathedral from the 12th century. Most of the city walls are also still in place. The town is quite spectacular, set up on a cliff above the sea.

We’ll be going back – I don’t know when, but we will.

When my family first came to England (I think at the end of 1959?) we lived in a small coastguard cottage in Swanage. Last week we visited Swanage for the first time in many years, and showed our children where I lived when I was younger than them.

On this trip, we stayed in a beautiful cottage – a restored mill cottage with history going back hundreds of years.  With us were my parents, and Marina’s parents, visiting us from California.

We also went to Lulworth Cove – an extraordinary formation where the sea has broken through the coastal rocks, and hollowed out an almost perfectly circular bay.  I was aware of the cove from reviewing coastal charts, but had never had the opportunity to visit.