Cutty Sark

At the weekend, as part of my birthday treat, I was taken to Greenwich to visit the newly restored Cutty Sark.  The restoration is excellent and well worth a visit.  The raising of the ship on struts, allowing access to the copper clad hull, is particularly impressive.  Although, personally, when I stood directly underneath it, I couldn't help but give a thought to the engineers who made the load calculations.

 
Outside, the glass skirt around the ship gave some interesting opportunities for candid shots.  Especially of people peering in at the glinting hull.

Fields of Yellow and Green

At this time of year the countryside around Cambridgeshire is dominated by the flowering Oilseed Rape.  Every year I say I am going to spend some time photographing it, and every year I get distracted by spring wildflowers, AGMs, my birthday and various other things.  The fact that it is all around seems to make the Rape easy to ignore.  The tyranny of the everyday.  This year however, I have actually got around to it.  I spent last Sunday afternoon doing a quick tour around local fields.  I particularly wanted to show the counterpoint of the yellow Rape against the dark green of neighbouring wheat fields.  Of course, I am not the only person to have that idea.

Brampton Wood Again

At the weekend, I spent another day in Brampton wood.  The weather was considerably better than the previous week.  Much warmer, with decent light and no rain.  Almost like it was May.

Brampton Wood

These shots were taken during a walk in Brampton Wood on Sunday.  This is probably my favourite local wood.  I think it has a better variety of spring flowers than some of the others.  Conditions were similar to Gamlingay the day before.  On the mudiness scale it scored a 'Napoleon's retreat from Moscow'.  It was also cold.  But, I did get good light for a little while.  Then it rained again.

It was too cold for this little Orange Tip Butterfly, which was completely shut down on a Lady's Smock.

Gamlingay Wood

After the near non-stop rain of the last two weeks, this weekend it finally stopped long enough to allow me to return to the woods in search of spring flowers.  First off, Gamlingay Woods.  Naturally, after all that rain conditions were rather muddy.  On a muddiness scale, I would put it somewhere between Glastonbury and Passchendaele. 

There were good patches of bluebells, still at their best, but they are starting to get lost amongst the ground cover and the leaf canopy is beginning to close over them.  I didn't see a huge variety of other flowers.  There was some Yellow Archangel, but every previous time I have tried to get a pleasing photo of this, I have failed, and this time was just the same.  Fortunately, there is always a bug or two if you look hard enough.

Waresley Woods

Last weekend, between rain showers, I spent some time in Waresley Wood looking for spring flowers.  The bluebells are out, but are still a week or more off their best.  There were plenty of wood anemone, celandines, primroses and even a few oxlips left in their prime.  So far, no sign of any early purple orchids or cuckoo pints.

Another Points of View Day

Last Saturday was the annual CCC Points of View competition.  Five hours to take 5 photos on 5 set subjects.  We were in Cambridge again, but thanks to Mike (the organiser), we were able to visit some parts of the University I had never seen and a part of town I had little visited.  It has taken me all week, but I have chosen my competition images.  As usual I had many contenders for a couple of categories and and hardly any for others.  For obvious reasons I won't be showing the contenders, but here are some of the also rans.

Finally, this picture didn't fit any particular category, but the two signs in combination were too much to ignore.