May Favourites

I've been having both computer and internet problems this week, so I haven't got any further with sorting through Corfu photos. They're all safe on an external back-up, but I'm not so fond of editing on the laptop unless I have to, and anyway trying to fix the PC has taken too much energy.

So here are my favourite cards from May! It's taken several years to find a panda stamp I really liked - this one is close to what I have in my imagination.

Loutses Cave

  

For C, one of the highlights of the holiday this year was our trip to Loutses cave, on our way back from Old Perithea. I've attached an image from Google Earth - you can see how barren most of the road up to it is - real karst landscape. A lot of it was one of those ridged concrete roads, not so comfortable on a bike, but probably better for us than for the jeep safari we had seen come off the road earlier on in the day!

So, we climb ever upwards through the bare country, with a couple of pauses to admire the scenery and a bird of prey circling not that far above us (a short-toed eagle, we thought)  and at the end of the road when we could drive no further there was a little half-built shelter, and a foot track leading  into the trees. It's quite amazing - you walk along the track and all of a sudden there was a fairly steep path down, as if we were in a bowl. You can see, from Google Earth, how there's a little patch of woodland right at the top of the mountain/hill (about 480 metres, 1500 feet). There must be a rift in the centre. We clambered down and down, and then reached the entrance to the cave. The roof has plenty of stalactites, and the bottom is a bit damp and covered with green algae.
It had great acoustics for singing, which C made the most of - but it was full of rooks who kept flying out.

                            

View from the top of the mountain.

Entering the wooded area

                                               

Perpendicular tree

Rim of the "bowl"

 `

Cliff face

Looking down to the entrance of the cave (sorry, a bit over-exposed!!)

                              


                            

Looking up out of the mouth of the cave

Definitely a place we'd visit again - and if we do, I'll make sure that I'm wearing my trekking sandals rather than just flip-flops. I managed OK, but trying to pick my way down the path with a camera and camera bag - and my not-so-good head for heights - was just a little precarious. I didn't actually venture much beyond the mouth of the cave.

Pros and Cons

...of a pro camera.

I took these gull photos on the way to work yesterday morning.

Not waving, not drowning either ~ simply bathing

I know I wouldn't have got such good photos with my Canon point-and-shoot bridge camera.  I have more zoom range, yes, but not quite the same sharpness and clarity and it's definitely slower to focus.
However,  I now have a sore shoulder from the weight of the big camera in my bag all day. The body with a kit telephoto lens weighs in at 1.5kg/3 lb, and then another lens is necessary because sometimes (especially in the city) you don't want a telephoto, you want (I want) a wide-angle. And if I've gone for a pro lens rather than the kit ones - well, each lens is almost as heavy as the body. That's a definite con. The lack of video is a minor one - I know that the more modern DSLRs do offer video, but mine is just too old for that.
Another definite pro is the weather-proofing and rugged construction!
The reason I'm toting all that weight around on a daily basis now and not just on outings to the park is that my little Canon picked up some dust while we were on holidays, and is in for a good clean. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - some of the time it was just slung over my shoulder while I was on the back of the bike.
The Olympus, on the other hand, while it picked up a certain amount of sand on the outside on our visit to Lake Korission, simply required 5 minutes with a blower brush when we got back to the apartment. Because of the weight around my neck, I was actually carrying it looped over my wrist till I realised how much sand I was kicking up as we walked across the dunes.
Cue photo of C in one of his drama moments. I know he's never read Beau Geste, so his concept of Fort Zinderneuf is based on Snoopy as a Foreign Legionnaire leading his troops through the sand traps!! The hunched shoulders and air of dejection are pure drama; like me, he really enjoys this outing.

He still insists that it's shorter to return to the car-park area via the dunes than back through the juniper groves. Shorter it may be - faster I am not so sure, as it's quite hard work trekking over all the sand, and this rocky outcrop was a rarity. I think perhaps he was deterred by the number of spiders' webs spun between the junipers, which at one stage had me thinking of Mirkwood.

For our trip to Corfu town I just brought the Canon, so here are a couple of  short videos of a group of singers. I'm still not sure what they were doing - they certainly weren't busking, as the lady was giving something out (mostly to the shopkeepers as opposed to tourists) from her little basket. The second video shows an onlooker who borrowed the lead singer's hat and danced along with them - after C had joined him for a duet of O Sole Mio. You can't see him, but there was a very good piano accordionist. It should be possible to click on them to view them full screen, and I hope I've set the sharing permissions correctly this time.

Hung Out to Dry

We had just one rainy morning and two dull ones while we were away. On the first dull day we planned a trip to Corfu Town, and had a lovely time just wandering around. The old town is a warren of tiny little narrow streets, as you can see from a couple of these photos.

And yes - after taking a wrong turn when we left the car park, we ended up coming down the centre part of the street in the above photo! Not for the faint-hearted, I will say.

However, there are also plenty of wide open spaces - the first photo is the Liston, looking out over the cricket round and a very trendy place to sit and sip your coffee, and the second photo is one of the main streets in the old town.

Canal Walk

Thursday was a real summer day here - sunny, blue skies, just beautiful. I was on a day off, too, and if the car wasn't so problematical at the moment I am sure I would have gone to Farmleigh or the park. As it was, I had a lovely walk along the canal enjoying all the birdsong and greenery.

I don't think I've ever seen so many sparrows along there, as well as the usual chaffinches, tits, pigeons, blackbirds and robins. Down by the train station was a hen mallard with one single chick, and on the bank was another hen with an older brood of about five, no longer chick-like. And down at the marina was a swan with two very young cygnets.

Alkanet

Hawthorn

Moorhen

Sparrow

The holiday weekend has at last given me time to read the second chapter in my Elements book, so the next batch of Greek photos won't have crooked horizons!

(The current blog header is a photo from the Bois de Vincennes in Paris last June)

Arillas

Arillas is a little village on the north-west coast. They do, so I read, have a heritage trail that runs through a small farm showing the old methods of cultivation and finishing at the microbrewery, but it was only being signposted for the new season after we visited. If we go again, it will definitely be on my to-do list. As it was, it was just a short detour off our main route to see if we could actually find the brewery (no), but the scenery was just beautiful. Despite what it looks like in the third photo, C says he barely got wet at all, and not when he was sitting at the end. If I remember right, this was a very windy day. First beach we went to, the surfers were out and it was too cold for me to get in. It was still very surfy with a lot of undertow on the beach we visited after this, but we both got in and really enjoyed it.

Still learning Photoshop Elements, so I haven't yet worked out how to rotate photos to straighten crooked horizons. I will get there soon!!

Hot Sands

We're just back from two weeks in Corfu - a lovely break. 1000+  photos are going to take a bit of culling before I get round to editing the best ones, but these are from possibly my favourite place. C likes the mountains and the olive groves, but I love Lake Korission, and it was a pity that this time we were staying too far away to visit it more than once. Don't worry - it's not all sand! My favourite part is along the fringe of the lagoon and through the juniper grove. .But even on the bare sand there's plenty of life. We saw a lot of bird tracks, both large and small, and then spotted this Little Ringed Plover. I  can only guess it was hunting insects, which were abundant. We also thought we saw a snake track, quite possible since we saw a dead snake. Last time we visited we saw a hare racing across - no such treat this time, but we did have another  real treat when we first got to the lagoon, but sadly I had not brought my point and shoot so wasn't able to zoom in as much as I wanted too. I'll save the surprise for another post, though!

Hot off the Needles

It's my nephew's birthday this week, so this has just gone off in the post to him. I'd originally bought the cotton to knit something for C, but after knitting the gender-neutral top for his colleague who was expecting a baby back in January, there wasn't enough left for him any more. So George gets the benefit.
I've been loving knitting in the round and top down - no sewing up at the end is a winner in my book. I even treated myself to a book on knitting in the round, I just need to find time to read it properly.

Faded Beauty

I'm not always the best at throwing flowers out when they start to fade.
But when I spotted this lovely dead head a few days ago, it was worth waiting a couple of days for some better light!

April Cards

Favourite cards for April!
Not too many, I was so tired that I felt most of what I made was on the bleah side...

I loved the robot one, though. When I started making it I was thinking of my youngest nephew, but actually I think it will do very well for an adult engineer who studied robotics. Can't you just imagine a robot-style voice saying "Seize the cake"? I could.

Either my computer is ageing even faster than I am, or the new release of GIMP is very resource-intensive, I'm having a lot of trouble editing photos these days. Since C gave me PhotoShop Elements 11 for my birthday, I think I badly need to find time to load it and learn it and see if it reduces the amount of crashes I'm experiencing.