Has it been a month or more?!

Good Lord.

I didn’t realise that I had left the blog alone for so long, I hope none of you set you calendars or anything by me 🙂 Anyway, hello there, welcome to British Summer Time and the longer days (the main reason I haven’t posted any pictures on here to be honest). I have now passed the 400 mile mark on my new super dooper Boardman hybrid bicycle and with 1000 on my last before I sold it, the total is racking up quite nicely. I recently got it serviced and fettled with at a local business, Enterprise Cycles in Neyland. Should anyone be local and looking for a good bike shop, your quest is at an end. Best place around. Just Google it, I’d pop a link in but the site is under construction….

On to the pictures for this entry anyhow. Last month I promised some pretty awesome cirrus clouds that I was going to post that I saw over my house recently, well, here you are. What’s that? Groaning because of more clouds? How very dare you! Clouds are important and, as you can see below, they sometimes look pretty awesome….

The threads of this cirrus caught the light juuuuust riiiiiight…..

One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles/14.2 billion tons of water…that’s quite a lot. Just think if all that was on the ground and not in the sky? I think a fair few of us would paddling as it’s enough to deposit 30 mm of water everywhere on the planet at once and some places are already pretty wet!

As well as holding water, they provide shelter, little places for bacteria or insects to shelter and travel as well as this important role in the water cycle. Obviously, the ones pictured here are slightly less heavy than your normal storm cloud or anything, but I feel they are no less spectacular.

Same view but with a guest appearance from nearby vegetation

One clue that those in the know can take from these cirrus clouds or “mares tails” is that there is a change in the weather coming. Usually it means it’s going to get wet. I took these images at sunset, so it was due overnight I thought. I particularly liked this last picture as there was an imprint of a shadow from a passing contrail that made a nice shadow as the sun set….

Now that the sun was disappearing, a passing contrail became apparent, creating a nice diagonal line across my view

I got my timing well out for the arrival of the bad weather but, arrive it did. See, these old wives tales do work. Along trundled a nice little storm cloud with an anvil like lip containing a few mammatus clouds on the leading edge…not the best mammatus I have seen or posted here but still, they were there…

This is the weather the next morning, I didn’t edit things to fit, honestly!

Seeing it had got wet, I decided I would go for a quick walk down toward Port Lion and follow the stream there to get some nice moving water shots, seeing I hadn’t tried that for a while. Surprisingly little water in the stream this time, which is why the blurring looks a little blocky as there were quite a few bubbles to contend with, but the colours from dead leaves and the ferns offset things nicely I thought…although more liberal use of a polariser would have been better here.

A smooth stream on the way down to Port Lion and the Cleddau

As I went down the lane, I noticed that the rain earlier had knocked loads of seeds off the larch tree lining the sides, made an interesting colour effect so I had to take a quick snap away from the water..

Port Lion Woods minus a fair amount of Larch seeds…..

But, back to the water, the air was very still so I was able to take a long exposure of this little tumble with a fern around it which didn’t move an inch whilst I was doing it, good fern. Usually I cheat a little and move things aside to suit what I want. Oooh, did I say that out loud?!

I like the way the bubbles made a pattern in this image, can’t get enough of stuff like this

Well, short and sweet this time however, there are more stormy skies and moving water pictures to come, plus Mischief the cat will be making a cameo appearance at some point I see as he had posed for the odd snap, or rather, he was asleep in a cute position…

As ever, appreciate you dropping in. Remember, feel free to suggest anything you want pictures of on here, don’t be afraid to ask! Until next time, enjoy the longer days!

Some pictures for a change

I did promise some pictures, so here I am with a few.

Although the weather has perked up a considerable amount and the temperature has reached the dizzy heights of 10C (there is technically a drought here too), there still haven’t been many trips out as I’m working when the nice weather is about. No great cirrus cloud at sunset either, just a few nice colours now the days have lengthened, so there are a few new images to come. This being the case, I’m afraid I have had to delve into the archives 🙂

However, same theme as before and hopefully I haven’t posted any of these before..my records of saved images that I keep would appear to say that I haven’t. Firstly, going back a good few years, New Years 2010 with my ex-girlfriend (who isn’t appearing in any images before you ask). We decided to go away and spent the evening or at least the weekend in gay Paris. The Eiffel Tower looked pretty cool that night..

Can you imagine the electricity that takes…let alone the wiring!

Now back to my favourite type of images. Sunsets! Well, one of my favourite types..I haven’t yet found a waterfall I can take a picture of at sunset! Ironically and I didn’t realise this until I posted it, this was taken from the ex-girlfriends flat. Fancy that. One of the best I have in my file of sunsets though, I can tell you. No changes on this one at all apart from a change in shutter speed to darken the pinks & yellows.

Again with the industrial beauty card I’m afraid but come one, it’s pretty good

Next, a good old beach wander. I was trying to date this in my head, but all I can do is say that it wasn’t taken in the holiday season as there are no people on the sand or rockpooling which is the main use of this beach once it becomes “less cold” as the local weather reports call it. Mind you, I agree, it is pretty awesome to explore and some of the rockpools are more like swimming pools, but I don’t get to “magpie” pretty shells or stones like I do on my North Pembrokeshire beaches.

Feel tempted for a swim? I wouldn’t. There is a set of currents off the shore which is nick-named “The Bitches” (the name suggests that these are baaaaaad) and even pretty large boats that ferry people to the nearby island won’t go near them..

Marloes beach with no-one on it. A rare site indeed

Finally, a good hazy sunset. Typically, I have taken pictures of the clouds and ignored any foreground silhouettes, so I’m afraid I have no idea where this is, although I can tell you one thing, the foreground was obviously crap, otherwise I would have put it in, I’m picky like that 🙂

A nice layered hazy sunset. More of these in the next few weeks please!

That’s the lot for this week. I may be completely off topic with my post next week as I’m getting a new car which I am super excited about as it’s my first “hot hatch” at nearly 200 hp. I am now officially a boy racer; hold on, can I be a boy in my 30’s? I guess so.

BUT, I am a responsible, safe and defensive driver….Officer. See you soon!