Portsmouth

I had to go to Portsmouth for a work course last week and took the opportunity to take some photos of the impressive harbour area.

First off is Spinnaker Tower, a fairly recent addition to the area. At 170 meters it dominates the sky line from much of the city but also manages to blend in with Portsmouth's maritime atmosphere.

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is home to famous ships from British history such as HMS Victory and HMS Warrior as well as many naval exhibitions and museums. The photo above is of HMS Warrior.

In between the two attractions is Gunwharf Quays, a cosmopolitan shopping and leisure complex with lots of designer outlets and trendy restaurants. I really like it, as it has quite a different atmosphere to anything else in the Hampshire area.

The Harbour area is definitely my favourite place in Portsmouth and I love the sense of adventure I get from seeing all the boats heading out for see. I love imagining the feeling of excitement there must have been when ships set out from Portsmouth to explore the world in the hey-day of the British Empire.

Archive Photos! The Isle of Arran.

Thought I'd try out introducing some random photos from my travels that haven't been featured in the blog before (either because they predate it or from my own laziness) The plan is ever so often I'll pick a certain location or trip and post my favourite pictures with a bit of commentary.

The first post is the Isle of Arran, a beautiful island of the west coast of Scotland which is in many ways my ancestral home. I've been there many times before but these photos are from a trip I made there in summer 2007.

Arran is often called 'Scotland in miniature' and its not hard to see why as it has:

Majestic Mountains

A rugged coastline with beautiful beaches


Enchanting forests


Windswept moors


And even its own castles and standing stones

This is my family's house on Arran, Burncliff, which I am currently trying to paint. Not having too much luck at the moment though.

That's all on Arran for now. In the future I might do a follow up post on a visit I made last year. If you ever get the chance to visit Arran I highly recommend it. More information can be found here.

Chidham Penisular

I visited the Chichester Harbour area again last weekend, partly to celebrate my recent birthday with a friend whose birthday was on the same day. This time we took a circular route around the Chidham Peninsula beginning in the village of Nutbourne. The scenery was very nice although a bit similar to our last few trips so I feel it may be time to move on from Chichester Harbour.

It was a rather warm day and we didn't take enough liquid so as you can imagine we were very relived to come across a pub after walking through miles of fields. Of course when we left the pub we discovered we were only a short distance away from our start point.Strangely enough we did pass a small local festival called Cobstock which had plenty of food and drink stalls but only for ticket holders and there didn't seem to be anywhere to buy a ticket.

By the train station we found this single rose laying on the ground. Wonder if there's a story behind that?

Another Pumpkin Update

Since I last posted about my pumpkins, two of them have sadly withered. But the final pumpkin, the one nicknamed blue, is still growing strong. Hopefully it will continue to flourish and I'll have my very own pumpkin fruit soon. Just in case it doesn't I'm growing some extra seedlings as reserve plants.