Category: Travel
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Royal Botanical Gardens of Madrid
I went to Madrid this year, partly to visit these gardens which I had read about but never visited on previous trips to Madrid. The gardens were founded in 1755, by King Ferdinand VI, and moved to their current location in the centre of Madrid in 1781 by King Charles III of Spain. The Royal Botanical Gardens…
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This amazing digital age: sampling paintings
It was not that long ago that it was prohibited to take photographs in art galleries like the National Gallery. The reason given was that flash light was harmful to the paintings. Even though flash could be turned off! Fortunately, that policy changed in 2014 for the National Gallery (earlier for some other galleries), although…
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Christmas Eve
Follow me on my walk this evening as the sunset (at 15:53) builds to a climax. Photos, not words. Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, UK.
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A short essay after walking along a country road🤣
Gigantic tractors towing huge loads, irate Tesla drivers itching to get past; Amazon delivery vans speeding along carrying cardboard boxes for the masses, supermarket delivery vans trundling more sedately with their baskets of goodies; the odd badger and squirrel lying dead in the road, chosen at random as sacrificial roadkill; the 3:30 traffic jam of…
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The Monument of the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos)
On a recent cruise (Dec 2023) to Madeira and the Canary Islands, we stopped off in Lisbon (Portugal) for the day (below). This was the first time I had visited this city, and I took a tour around the main sites. The thing that really stood out for me was the Monument of the Discoveries (or…
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Tresco Abbey gardens
People have been living on the island of Tresco, in the Scilly Islands, for over 5000 years, and visiting these islands by boats from the Cornish mainland as long ago as 6000/7000 BC. The islands would have looked very different back then, covered in oak, ash and elder trees, with roe deer and wild boar…
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Birds at the table
The birds at Tresco Abbey Gardens in the Scilly Islands were extraordinarily tame and clearly used to helping themselves to whatever was left over on the tables in the cafe! I took a few portraits as I was having my tea. It’s not often that birds will let you get so close to them. I…
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Soay sheep on St. Kilda
Soay lamb in May 2023. Photo by Raymond JC Cannon St Kilda is an isolated archipelago situated about 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. The three main islands, of which the largest is Hirta, are the remains of an ancient volcano which blew its top about 55 million years ago. The other main islands are Soay…
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Painful wildlife encounters (on a scale of 1-10).
Doctors, and other heath professionals, often ask patients: “how bad is the pain, on a scale of one to ten?” I invariably give a rather low number, say two or three, because I know – or at least I can imagine – how bad pain can be. Being a pedantic scientist, I also ask them…
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