The Thames at Thamesmead is a mix of new build apartments and industries; many of the latter are by the river so they can move materials in and out on ships on the high tide. A number of moored barges sit idly on the water but at night carry much of London’s rubbish to tips…
St Pancras Station
The most exciting building to try and capture.
Sissinghurst on St David’s Day
Having previously visited on a leap day, this is a visit four years and a day later under similarly blustery conditions with the clear light of early spring occasionally lighting up the deep red brick and fattening white magnolias. The place is unchanged. The white garden is green and the other gardens empty apart from…
Chasing oystercatchers and sleeping turnstones
Spring is alive when the oystercatchers start chasing rivals off territories. Two birds twist and turn up and down the beach in close formation. This frenzy is in marked contrast to the roosting turnstones and a single knot that quietly sit out the high tide on the wooden groynes. At the peak of the flood,…
Early spring on the North Downs
The cherry plum is out again in early February; always the starting shot to the new Spring with its blizzard of pure white blossom. The verges are coming alive with celandine and the single badger sett on the top of the bank is freshly dug, spewing flinted earth on to the narrow lane. Swanley village…
A Tale of Two Estuaries
In early January, the Torridge estuary in North Devon is wild and windswept; repeatedly hit by a series of gales blowing in from the Atlantic. Only a handful of walkers brave the elements. The pretty fishing village of Appledore is sheltered from the worst of the weather and looks east to the sand dunes of Braunton…
Red Sea mangroves and shorebirds
October 2023 The south beach at KAUST is full of resting waders and terns; crab plovers, sand and Kentish plovers, curlews whimbrel, spotted redshank, lesser crested terns, a Caspian tern and reef and striated herons. The crab plovers are both charismatic and enigmatic; they breed colonially on sandy islands in the Red Sea where pairs excavate…
Around Tabuk, north west Arabia
The landscape of north west Saudi Arabia around the town of Tabuk is huge and barren. What little vegetation there is, is grazed down by camels. The many herds are cared for by Sudanese herders; these men ride their camels with a slow, graceful rhythm and somehow tolerate the unrelenting heat. The huge sandstone buttes within the…
Postcards from the Ariège – April 2022
April started with a great blizzard and remained cold for a week or so; when the sun returned and temperatures lifted, the fishermen took to the rivers, trees came into leaf and the first flowers appeared on the bare alpine grasslands. The most captivating was Lady of the Snows Pulsatilla vernalis with vivid, white hairy…
Brown hairstreaks on the North Downs
30th July 2023 The walk from home near Hextable in north west Kent to the corn bunting colony up on the downs passes along a tall, ancient hedgerow before emerging onto the rolling arable fields. This year the fields are down to flax and there are no nesting buntings to be seen or heard in…
Catching up with old friends in the South Charente
A few days in the South Charente at Boisjarzeau in late July provided the opportunity to catch up with some good friends. This included the large coppers in the small, damp meadow beyond the lake seen for the first time in 2018 and not found in 2020. Thankfully, a single female was on the water…