Hestercombe II

This has been a while coming, but here's the next installment of new camera at Hestercombe, yay!

See my previous post for some explanation of what Hestercombe is. I went with the lovely Niall.

View down into the formal garden from the round pond (with a Niall in)

Niall's photo, up into the water feature

False orange blossom, it smells lovely

Balustrade + Japanese anemones

A long rhene edged with stone

Lovely red Virginia creeper

More lovely creeper overhead

The central part of the formal garden, from above

Lovely echinops & a well-weathered bench

All my photos from Hestercombe can be found in my Flickr set. These were all taken on my new Canon Ixus 105!

Hestercombe I

Back in September the lovely Niall came down at the weekend and we had a little expedition to Hestercombe. There's a house and gardens but the house is private. The gardens are split into two parts; the landscaped valley and the formal terraced garden. I've been there plenty of times as it's near my house but Niall hadn't so we explored pretty thoroughly.

On the day we were there there was a "family" event going on. This meant that on one of the lawns there were a few stalls selling "gifts", a Punch & Judy show, a falconry display(with uncooperative birds), and a tent full of tasty local cheese, cider & similar products. We enjoyed the latter the most...

There are lots of walls like this

An old mill with a waterwheel

A swan in the mill pond

And pretty views.

Landscape gardens are generally cleverly built so that there are lots of constructed views. You can sit in a little Grecian temple and admire a carefully composed segment of landscape.

The swan the right way up.

Another, more tranquil pond

Wayfaring Tree, which we thought might be related to red currants

Nice view through the trees

And back up the valley

And that's enough for now, formality next time I think...

All my photos from Hestercombe can be found in my Flickr set. These were all taken on my new Canon Ixus 105!

Moar Velvia! - Part II

The photos in my previous two posts (Orford Ness and Southwold) were all shot on Fuji Velvia 100F but I didn't finish the roll there! It came with me to Bristol and there were blue skies...

The moon was in evidence

I saw some pretty trees in the midst of legoland Bristol

And some berries

And leaves

I was still admiring trees in the evening

Are plants becoming a bit of a theme with me?

They *are* pretty...

...and so are Photosoc

All these photos were taken on Fuji Velvia 100F with my Pentax ME Super.

Down The Lane

One of the nice things about living in the countryside (that almost makes up for isolation, lack of public transport, poor internet connection, lack of phone signal etc)is that there's so much pretty about. Just walking down the lane I see loads of lovely trees and flowers and rolling countryside that really puts Bristol to shame. Urban trees can be a nice relief from general concretey greyness and leafy garden-y areas can be pleasant, but nothing beats being surrounded by green with only the sounds of songbirds (plus the odd tractor) in the air.

Bit fanciful? Maybe. But look:

















All these photos were taken on my Pentax ME Super on Fuji Superia X-Tra 400.
For more ramblings see my Gone For A Walk! set on Flickr.