Returning…with past Winter wetness

Hello!

Firstly, a very big thanks to those who have stuck with this site and have returned on occasion to drop in and view my pages. I very much appreciate. Essentially, I find myself here again after being brow beaten by a certain girlfriend who says I should try to advertise my talent. No, not really but she did persuade me to come back on here after seeing some pictures I took recently in Manchester on a weekend away.

I kind of agree and the blogs I haven’t posted have put me a little behind my usual 12 months behind, so you will excuse the Christmas themed image nearer the end! But it does have a cute animal in it…

Anyway, I shan’t pitter patter on but lunge straight into the meat of the blog. This update and those after it for a few weeks (yes, I plan to continue) consists of some images that I took during the winter of 2013/14 when we had pretty much 6 straight weeks of rain in this area of the world. If you had a leaky shoes, by the time the rain was done, you were wishing you had stilts as it was thoroughly miserable for all…driving, walking, riding, working…everything was a bind.

This first blog is based around some time at the very beginning of this period and has me taking pictures of a couple of my fave things. In this first instance, a lovely jumbly storm coming towards the house….

A forming storm hits its upper limit and starts to spread out, with a touch of mammatus

What do storms make? Rain! Yes, indeed…little did I know there was going to be a ton of it in the next few weeks. But, close to me is the little hamlet of Port Lion (I say hamlet, there are 2 houses…yes, 2) and there’s that lovely stream on there I have featured here before. A quick shower and this gets a significant amount of run off from the local fields so off I trotted…

That oak leaf was there by chance, honest!

The rain and the time of year had conspired to make things a bit messy but I think that the leaves, sticks and like add to the images quite well. I went for a walk down there recently to show Sarah the local haunts and I shocked to see that over last Winter the high winds here had not treated the wood well and absent minded locals, who didn’t want to take the broken trees away for disposal, had blocked the stream and scattered the who areas with dead foliage. I suspect this site might come off the lists for taking pictures for a bit.

The slow shutter speed and bubbles made a nice white “road” of water here

The storms kept coming, small ones though. Always they were well highlighted with blue sky or sun and you could see the structures of occasional mammatus clouds or virga in them….

Another squall heads in…..

This one is a doozy…look at it! If you were even a commercial airliner pilot, one look at this brute is a bit alarming. Never underestimate Mother Nature is the rule. On occasion, these storms chucked a bit of hail at us as well. Nothing anywhere near US standards but it sounded bad enough! In fact one image I took of similar hail was included in the recent Weathernet calendar….

Yikes! Where’s that bus shelter again?

Now on to more cute and furry things…Mischief! Yes, he is still mischievous. Here he is guarding the Christmas presents the other year. For some reason, he has a thing about the Christmas tree box (it’s an artificial tree which is partially decorated). This thing involves him spending an inordinate amount of time staking it out as he is too portly to climb it, as well as always climbing on the box to ride up and down the stairs to the cupboard where it is stored. This happens without fail. If he is nearby all you need to is tap the box and he’s there, riding along. Strange animal…

“You shall not pass…”

Whilst sheltering inside from these sharp showers we were getting that would eventually just become long expanses of persistent rain, there was the occasional glimmer of sunshine that created a lovely natural wonder….

Everyone loves a rainbow

However, around the corner there was always more! Some nice anvils and virga in the distance in this shot I thought. Judging by the position of the sun, this was before I went to work one morning…

A dramatic morning of squalls again, it seems. Where are my boots?

Well, there we are. My return to the blog writing arena. Maybe as well as my ramblings about the pictures, there might be ramblings in general about politics and current affairs? Probably not…some things are best left in my head!

Thanks for dropping in…keep this frequency clear, more to come.

Prolonged silence……

Hello everyone,

Oooh, well, things are quiet on here aren’t they?

Sorry, I just can’t seem to find a whole heap of time to sit down and put together decent entries and edit photos of late, what with a full time job (long story about what’s happening there though I shan’t go into detail…), cycling, a new girlfriend and lovely summer jaunts in the car seem to be taking up my time!

Hopefully, you all miss me?! I have my archive still and plenty to post if you wish me to but I feel patience is the name of the game here. I hope to sit down sometime soon to do this, feel free to join me if you can.

Thanks for bearing with me and once the days get shorter, I’m sure I will be back on with my usual gobble-de-gook. However, in the meantime, the Weathernet photo competition has been on my list of things to do and I have popped in a few pictures to see if I can get on the 2016 calendar. I will let you know if I hear good news!

See you soon…