Framedlight

It is a long way from Navan to the Dingle peninsula and we set out the next day after a very comfortable night at Vaughan and Truda's. Vaughan drove and we stopped for lunch in a bar, setting the trend of the holiday which contained a lot of eating and drinking! I didn't take any photographs until we got on to the peninsula which sticks out into the sea at the furthest south west of Ireland. We stopped by Inch Beach which has great views across to the Ring of Kerry. The weather was fine with scudding cumulus in the sky and, in true Irish fashion, this was to be the best day of the weekend. Inch beach is enormous and the tide was out leaving miles of reflective sand. I was tempted by a couple of panoramas. We finally arrived at the nub of the weekend, the Tom Crean festival. Tom Crean was a Polar explorer who had been part of Scott's fatal last journey to the South Pole on the Terra Nova expedition, and had also sailed with Shackleton on the En...

As I said we spent the night in Navan, a town around an hour inland from Dublin. It is an area rich in prehistoric places and Vaughan took us to Tara, where there is a long barrow, some standing stones and an ancient well. These sites are behind a church which has a parking area in front of it. There was a beaten up camper van with a strange metal wood burning stove inside it, and a rather jolly inhabitant taking in the vibes of the ancient place. I asked permission to take his photograph and he seemed only too pleased. We went through the churchyard where there were some small standing stones and climbed the hill behind look at the long barrow which has a gated entrance. Tara was once a royal centre of the middle kingdom of Ireland, or Mide. The large standing stone is the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, the inauguration stone of the Kings of Tara. It stands on the top of Tara hill which has a tremendous view over the surrounding countryside. According to legend if a...

In June we had a long weekend in Ireland with our 'old' next door neighbours from 25 years ago, Howard and Madeleine. In fact it was at their suggestion and for a very precise reason which I will cover later. We started our journey from Arkesden and had only got to the A505 on the way to the M11 and t'north when I had to stop to take a picture of some poppies. Not a full field, just a few at the side of the road, but very pretty. Our rather tortuous journey than took us to Derby to visit Mairi and Lizzy en passant. We took the dogs for a walk and were faced with a stormy sky. We finally got underway and reached Howard and Madeleine's house, near Mold, just into North Wales, in time for tea. We spent the night there and set out early the next morning for our trip across to Holywell and the Dublin ferry. From stormy, the light had retreated to dull so the ferry ride was insignificant photographically speaking. On arrival we drove to Navan, inland ...

On our last day in Somerset we thought we would climb Dunkery Beacon. At the massive height of 519m, it is an easy walk along a broad path. There were a number of families doing the same thing and we passed Exmoor ponies on the way down. We ended the day at Wimbleball Reservoir at the far eastern area of Exmoor, before driving to our night stop next to the canal by Tiverton. it was the end of our Somerset holiday and I had a wedding to photograph the next day.

Porlock really is the gateway to Exmoor, even if you have to negotiate the tortuous Porlock Hill, at 25% reputedly one of the the steepest roads in England. All the more amazing that it carries the main A39 which runs from Bristol down to Falmouth. Alan naturally had to cycle it and we did take the camper van up it, although there is a tollroad which, for a small fee, allows an easier passage. When we got up to Exmoor it was misty and the shapes of trees loomed out at us from the side of the road. One of the places we visited was the Tarr Steps near Dulverton, an ancient clapper bridge over the River Barle, which may have been first built in the Bronze Age. The bridge was swept away in the floods of 2013 and has been rebuilt. It lies in some very pretty wooded countryside with plenty of walks. But having struggled down from the carpark with ancient dog Hettie we felt it would be cruel to subject her to more exercise. We did however have a woodland walk to see ...