We had a lovely walk near where we are staying in Knebworth.
I also can see a difference in the photos once they are uploaded to this blog. They don’t seem as sharp. Pity.
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Well, haven’t posted photos for a little while, but I was experiment with Lightroom Mobile yesterday, and finally was able to get syncing working this morning. I had downloaded the Lightroom update for my Mac, but did not seem to able to access it yesterday. My first sync was the photos I took yesterday from our trip to Cambridge. We had clouds and sunshine which make for lovely photos from that very photogenic town.
My walking camera setup as usual was the A7R and 28-70mm lens. These photos were lightly processed from the JPEGs and then resized in Image Bucket Pro. On the Mac, not on my iPad.
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We decided to visit both towns, made possible by travelling by train from Knebworth. We were told that Stevenage was not very interesting, but Stephen wanted to visit a small museum there, so we decided to stop there on our way home. Hitchin has many old buildings and does not really appear to have a new area and an ‘old town’. The town centre was interesting, but too many large delivery vans and some renovations happening made it rather difficult to get good photos. The is a large church, which is about a 1,000 years old, and even then the site was used for earlier churches.
We enjoyed walking around and visiting one of the many restaurant/cafes for a meal. We also explored the market, which was close to the church and town square.
Just a few photos from our visit:
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Knebworth, England. Processed in FX Photo Studio Pro.
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In our area we are experiencing an apparently unprecedented smog. Our hosts had left instructions for some local walks and we tried one of them yesterday. It was about an hour and a half of walking, over fields in into a small wood. We really enjoyed it, and were congratulating ourselves on not feeling any jet lag. We had lunch at the local pub, which is run by a couple, one of whom is Australian and the other South African. We had a good discussion about things to do and see locally. We also enjoyed the food, their menu is very varied and interesting for a pub.
The smog did make for dull photos, although we still enjoyed the scenery and flowers and new green of spring. There are bird sounds the whole day, not just morning and evening.
After lunch we did a small shop at the co-op, then home to have a rest. That’s when the jet lag hit. Our friend Eversley still went to yoga at a local church hall as she had planned. I had a headache as well as feeling groggy. Stephen did not appear to be too affected.
It appears that I will need to make the photos smaller for uploading, and will do that a bit later.
This photo is from October, 2015, and used the new dehaze filter from Lightroom. This would obviously have made a difference last year!
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Our 11 hr flight with Emerites was comfortable. There were lots of empty seats, Eversley had a row of four seats to herself, and I found a row at the front of our section. Unfortunately being next to the bulkhead I could only use two for my body as the arms didn’t lift up for the outside seats. Still, was able to get my feet up. Stephen was able to stretch out into two seats. And I wasn’t trying to get past him all the time. There seemed to be lots of toilets on the plane, and with fewer passengers we could always get access.
We had two meals, a lunch at around 4.30, I think, then a ‘light meal’ about two hours before we landed. We have a couple of hours here at Dubai, and are relying on Stephen’s watch to get us back to our gate.
I lost my handbag, left it on the little train as we came through, and only realised when we sat down. Stephen went in search and it had been handed in to the information desk. He had gone off, and I went searching too, and was directed to the police. I had about 15-20 minutes of anxiety before dropping by our seat to see Stephen and handbag. So went back to the police to let them know. Nothing was missing from the bag.
I feel like I am being given ‘chances’ – I get to be very silly, then am relieved to find nothing has happened.
We had extra seats on our flight from Dubai, and I actually slept full length, which Stephen did the ‘upright’ bit. We also enjoyed a couple of meals.
We did miles of trekking with our luggage to get to the underground, and had to change trains on the way to Kings Cross Station. They have done lots of work on it since we were there last, and we had a sort of breakfast on the mezzanine floor at a Giraffe café (the same café chain as the one in Dubai). I had a look around, and asked about, a place to buy mobile phone sims, but we were out of luck. When Eversley and Stephen bought the train tickets, they asked, and we found there was a Vodafone place across at St Pancras. We went there and got a basic one month plan for E and St, and a 2 gig plan for me so that I can use the ipad for navigation.
Despite being tired we enjoyed the train journey to Knebworth through little towns, including Potters Bar. There was a sort of blue mist about, and on the news later in the day it said that there was quite bad smog, which would hopefully lift later in the week with some rain coming.
At the train station we had stairs to exit, and a rather rough looking man offered to help me with my case. He then offered Stephen help as well. There is a little station house with a coffee bar, very civilized, especially as there are toilets on the train.
We dragged our stuff to the real estate office, then walked up London Road (no street signs so taking it on trust, and we did manage to find a local person to ask). London Road is quite busy and we had to keep the front windows shut because of the noise. The front of the house looks onto a housing estate, which is disappointing, although the aspect is softened by trees. But the side window in the main bedroom looks out over backyards and houses, and rear windows overlook the garden with everything coming into flower and lots of birds.
The house itself is really lovely, with space, lots of comfortable furniture which is a shabby, and a conservatory that gets really warm during the day.
Stephen and I have the main bedroom and Eversley has another room with a small ensuite. There are two other rooms on this level, one a study and one with bunks for the grandkids. There is also a ‘main’ bathroom with overhead shower.
Downstairs, there is another study which is used as a model train room, a big hall way in two parts, a lovely big ‘drawing room’ with comfortable chairs, a well designed kitchen with dining area.
We all feel immediately at home in this environment, partly because of all the books.
Stephen just before leaving our house. This was all of our luggage for the month.
At the Girafe, Kings Cross Station
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PIAF Fireworks at Langley Park.
The next photo is of the stage, I was experimenting with spot metering to get the detail.
This one was taken at South Beach. It’s easy to have sharp hand held photos in good light.
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We caught the bus from home, then walked onto the Island which is in the middle of the Swan River. There are supposed to be kangaroos in this section of the island, but there was no sign of them, and we didn’t see any when we visited before either. There is a special double gate to enter to keep the kangaroos in and predators out. The photos were taken about two and a half hours after dawn, and I did some post processing in Photoshop. There were no clouds and the promise of getting very hot, though it was still very pleasant at 8.30 when we headed home.
