My G9ii Journey

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The Old Geezers were a bit thin on the ground for today's little trip. I say "little" with some caution as we travelled far enough to see Mars from close quarters. The small number of Geezers didn't stop it being a very enjoyable trip, made even better by an excellent cheese and onion toastie. I'm sure it would have tasted just as good if I'd paid for it but it came courtesy of N - a generous Scot!  ;) Anyway, here are some of my images from the day ... We mustn't forget the workers .. And finally, a couple of monos  _____________________________

  I've set myself a challenge of taking a photo for each letter of the alphabet.  It won't be a photo every day but they must be taken in the correct order. _______________________  is for .......  FIELDFARE A few days ago I saw my first Fieldfare down at Paxton Pits. At the time, my Alphabet of Images was on "E". Thankfully, having moved that on to "F", I saw another one and here it is .... _________________________

Friends J&J had offered to show me where they'd seen Waxwings recently and I wasn't going to say "No". I'm not really a bird-watcher but they're pretty birds and aren't that common in the UK. So at about 10am we headed off to near Corby. It was a fairly sunny day but the wind was chilly at times. But we were lucky with the birds, spotting a group of 5 soon after we arrived. And they stayed around for a couple of hours before moving on. It would have been good if they'd come closer but you can't have everything - photographers can always something they would like to be different  :) Below are some of my shots from the day. I would have liked to use higher shutter speeds but at 1/2000 sec, the ISO was already quite high with the lens wide open. With hindsight, for some shots maybe I should have ignored the ISO and pushed the shutter speed further in the hope that modern noise-reduction software would come to my rescue. A lesson for the future. Aw...

  I've set myself a challenge of taking a photo for each letter of the alphabet.  It won't be a photo every day but they must be taken in the correct order. _______________________ E is for ....... ELECTRONICS To keep myself occupied during these cold, dark days of winter, I decided to teach myself (with the help of YouTube) to program a micro-controller, specifically the Arduino Uno. I don't have any specific goal in mind although I have a few ideas, one of which is water-drop photography. I did dabble with microcontrollers a few years ago during my model railway phase but this old brain of mine has forgotten most of what I learned then 🙂 For those that don't know, Wikipedia describes a micro-controller as :- A  microcontroller  ( abbreviated   MCU  or  µC ) is a  computer  system on a  chip  that does a job. It contains an integrated  processor ,  memory  (a small amount of RAM, program memory, or both), and progra...

If the weather permits,  I try to have at least an hour out in the fresh air each day.  Today,  after a coffee morning with the Old Geezers,  I took my camera to Paxton Pits.  I'm always hopeful of seeing a Kingfisher when I go there but the corner of the lake where I see them most often was frozen so I knew they wouldn't be feeding there today.  So I walked on and I'm so glad I did because I came across a very rare species....  A four-winged swan   😜

 It was a cold but sunny morning so I spent some time at Paxton Pits. I didn't see any sign of a Kingfisher but I did get this sequence of shots of a Cormorant taking off. ___________________

I've set myself a challenge of taking a photo for each letter of the alphabet.  It won't be a photo every day but they must be taken in the correct order. _______________________ D is for ....... DAMAGE The road between Little Paxton and St Neots was flooded for a few days recently. Now the water level has dropped, the damage done to the road by the flood water is revealed. C is for ....  CROSSLEY Crossley Motors was an English motor manufacturer based in Manchester, UK. It produced approximately 19,000 cars in the period 1904-38, 5,500 buses from 1926-58 and 21,000 goods vehicles 1914-45 This photo shows a Crossley T5, manufactured in 1912. It is currently part of the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden in Bedfordshire. When I selected this photo for "C", I'd forgotten that "A" was a similar subject. I promise that "D" won't be for Daimler. B is for ...... BEECH Lots of possibilities for B's but I settled on something seasonal - some...

 I spent the afternoon at Cambridge Botanic Gardens with friends J&M. After coffee and nibbles (not the best) in their cafe, we headed for the Winter Garden and then worked our way around almost all the site. Given the time of year, the garden wasn't at it's best but it was still a very enjoyable afternoon, only slightly marred on the way home by a long wait for the P&R bus and an even longer delay getting back into St Neots (Little Paxton bridge was closed due to flooding which always has a significant impact on congestion in St Neots).  Anyway, I took some photos and was pleased to see J doing the same. A Little Grebe _____________________

Little Paxton wasn't the only place to experience flooding - St Neots did too. Thankfully, as far as I know, no houses were flooded in either place. Here are some more pano shots :- From the bridge looking North The Riverside "carpark" South St,   Cavendish Court, where some friends of mine live.  Normally their car is parked under the building but thankfully they moved it before the water reached it. ________________________

     After all the rain we've had recently, it was no great surprise when the river Great Ouse burst it's banks. The direct road from Little Paxton to St Neots was closed due to the flooding. And here are a couple of panorama shots (made by "stitching" multiple shots together to give a very wide field of view). Firstly,  an approximately 180 ° view from the elevated path that crosses the river, looking east(ish). And secondly,  looking south-west towards St Neots, over what is normally grassland - known locally as "the Common" And finally a short video clip if the water rushing under the bridge. The arches are below the surface. _________________________

The first outing for the Old Geezers in 2024 was to Welney Wetland Centre. After lots of rain recently, the Washes had been flooded to protect homes and businesses on land close to the river system.  Whether it was because of that or other climatic factors I don't know, but there weren't many swans to see. Even at feeding time, there were less than a dozen in sight from the main hide - the only part of the reserve open to the public that day - another result of the flooding. None-the-less, we had a good time, took a few pictures and enjoyed excellent bacon rolls in their cafe. But, as always, the highlight of the day for me was the friendship and humour we all shared _____________________________________ .