Satguru, I love that pic. It's like a piece of modern art. A totem pole.

Christina, that's a beautiful photo. Very calming effect.

Is there anything prettier than a stand of birch trees?

First birch, then palm trees.

Straight Up

Love the birches and the palm trees.

I get a lot of roses from a grower called David Austin. He specialises in roses that are like the old fashioned roses, loads of scent, quite loose flowers, but with the disease resistance and repeat flowering of modern ones. This is one of his that I'm especially fond of as it is more of a gold than a yellow and holds the colour right until it drops.

Thanks Chavs, as the signs became obsolete in 1964 the red triangles have about 10 known representatives left between the south coast and Cambridge, and I have them all now. This is the Squirrel Inn in Battle. I have to admit I don't think I've ever bought a drink in a pub taking photos but are very useful for something else when required.

Wow, Christinap, that's gorgeous!
The trees are great too - although I am feel a little dizzy gazing up through those palms :-)

And Satguru, always enjoy your photos of the 'old country' - dad came out to Oz as a 'ten-pound pom' after World War 2.

Congrats, Dot! Great photo, MG.



Western Ghats

The old city hall in Toronto with some ugly glass montrosities in the background. Most modern buildings look terrible compared to the older buildings.

Wow, Zorba, that's one impressive view!

There aren't many Bali photos left which are of much interest, but I'll see what I can do after that.
This monkey poked his head around the corner of a tour place. Everyone promptly pulled out their cameras. The guides weren't as excited as us, they must have seen it quite a few times before. Another one joined it soon after.

Thank you all for your compliments on my photo. I didn't think it was that good but I thought it was an interesting effect. Here's another one I took at the same time.

Tend to agree with you on moden buildings Howie.I doubt if people will be exclaiming over their architectural beauty in 100 or 150 years time - assuming they even last that long.

Howie, if you're handy with a photoshop program, you could easily crop out the newer buildings to showcase that magnificent, older one.

Summertime in Nebraska, literally miles from anything (even a decent road). The hills in the background look awfully brown from drought (maybe) but, I swear, it was wet everywhere. We almost got stuck in the mud on the road it was so deep.

Essex Police have a Police dog training centre not far from us, and every so often they have an open day. A lot of the photos had too many people in to post here, but when I looked through them this one amused me, I think it's just the whole way the dog is perched on top of the jump

Having covered all the compass points (it goes on a personal map so I can see exactly where I've been), I'm now collecting more spots locally to complete the 4th 10km square. This is the Harlequin shopping centre in Watford, I went a day or two after it opened in the 80s or so and half the shops hadn't been occupied yet.

I love this tree that is located at the US Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, South Carolina. That's hubby standing underneath.

Rear view of Hatfield House in Essex.

Who remembers these? One of the last remaining signs for Rover cars in the country. They only added the 'used' recently as well.

The stalking of the bird by the people on the sailboat in front of the Toronto Islands.

This is a piece of Skylab which landed in Greenbushes and is now incorporated into the children's playground of the Greenbushes Primary School in Western Australia. Greenbushes is a small town (and I mean small - don't blink or you'll miss it), a few hours drive south-east of Perth and until recently my foster daughter was living there. I took this photo in June when I visited her for her birthday.


For those of you who aren't familiar with Skylab, these bits of information from Wikipedia will explain:

Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA (the space agency of the United States) and was the U.S.'s first space station. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979...

Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising of t-shirts and hats with bullseyes, wagering on the time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports...

NASA calculated that the odds of station re-entry debris hitting a human were 1 to 152-although the odds of debris hitting a city of 100,000 or more were 1 to 7—and special teams were readied to head to any country hit by debris and requesting help.

In the hours before re-entry, ground controllers adjusted Skylab's orientation to try to minimize the risk of re-entry on a populated area. They aimed the station at a spot 810 miles (1,300 km) south southeast of Cape Town, South Africa, and re-entry began at approximately 16:37 UTC 11 July 1979...

The station did not burn up as fast as NASA expected, however. Due to a 4% calculation error, debris landed southeast of Perth, Western Australia...

Satguru, yes I do remember those. The garage at the end of our road used to be a Rover franchise - sells any sort of second hand car now.

Howie - that is so funny

MG - Lucky they didn't get the calculation any more wrong! What a great thing to have in the playground though.

At Colchester Zoo you can feed the elephants - which is a pretty cool thing to do. Once you get close up to them, and you are only about a foot or two away, you realise how big they actually are, yet when they take the food from you the trunk is surprisingly gentle, if a bit slobbery.

Wow, Christina, I'll have to get down to Colchester Zoo - elephants are my favorite animal!

Mine too. They do a feeding session twice a day and it is very popular, but if you go "out of season" and avoid school holidays you get a good long session with them as there aren't the same crowds there are in summer.

A country road just north of Battle

I love elephants, too. I remember getting to ride one when I was muuuuuch younger.

Cool boat, Howie. And poor bird being stalked. I hope it wasn't this one.

Talking about elephants, I recall when my daughter was 3 years old, we went to Chester zoo. We adopted a baby elephant for her and she wanted to 'bring it home'. When I said it had to stay at the zoo, she burst in to floods of tears. I asked her where she would keep it and she said, 'in my bed'. It took rather a long time to explain the adoption process etc, and the fact that elephants grew rather large! My daughter still laughs about it to this day! So Christina, your elephant pic brought back some giggles...thank you for the memory jog!

This strange building is the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I went in but did not have much time before I had to return to the hostel and catch the airport bus so I did not pay the expensive entry fee to look around briefly.

In 2012 each Olympic gold medal winner, has had a post box painted gold in honour of them in their hometown. This is the post box in Lossiemouth, in honour of Britain's first gold medalist, Heather Stanning in the coxless pairs rowing.

"This strange building is the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto"

Oh, that's just hideous. How could they have added that monstrosity onto that beautiful old building? I think that's probably the worst case of architectural rape I've ever seen.

Nap time.