Leeds Castle

Have just spent a lovely day here with Julia. We went earlier in the year so now we can go as often as we like for a year. I love this place , it's on the door step for us and is a good place to just wander round or chill out. Now we can go whenever I'm hoping to visit out of season so we can see what it's like in the Autumn and Winter. Today we took our car blanket so we could find a shady place to sit and eat the wicked ham sarnies we bought in Asda. Still pretty busy even for a weekday before the school holidays , a couple of school groups and lots of foreigners wielding cameras. We went inside the castle again and the dog collar museum which is fascinating. Looking forward to the rest of my week off work especially as got my Paddington tattoo on Wednesday morning , hoping that where I scraped my leg in the garden yesterday has healed before he kicks off on Wednesday !

Julia & James at Lynton.

Here's a quick snap of Julia and James sitting outside a shop in Lynton. We visited Lynmouth and parked up before having a wander round. Then took the cliff railway up to Lynton. Out of the two places Lynmouth was the more picturesque I think. The railway is water powered and actually travels fairly quickly. Its been a lovely sunny day and we're just chilling out back at larkstone before having a wander around Ilfracombe. Just waiting for Julia as she's cat napping !

Relaxing at Larkstone.

We arrived at Larkstone just after 3pm after a fairly uneventful journey. The apartment is beautiful and has lovely views looking over the cliffs and harbor. Hopefully if it's dry later we can go explore.

New Smart Phones???

Headed off to Vodafone on Friday after work to re-new Julia's contract and add myself for a couple of brand spanking new smart phones. After much deliberation we had opted for the HTC Sensation for Julia and the Samsung Galaxy S2 for moi. Although I currently have a rolling monthly SIM only contract with Tesco’s I thought it might be time to treat myself to some new technology before I fall too far behind! I've been practising using the QWERTY keypad on Julia's i-touch and am slowly getting to grips with it, she's already used to a touch screen phone but this will be the first time we've had what are deemed "smart" phones so should be pretty damn cool! Think for both of us usage will mainly consist of Facebook updates, email and web browsing so shouldn't be too taxing on the data monthly allowance and both phones have Wi-Fi so can use them at home for free. The Galaxy S2 also came with an offer of a free boxed set of Pirates of the Caribbean so all in all a good deal. Both phones get rave reviews and are at the top end of the smart phone market, Julia just preferred the look and feel of the HTC whilst I thought the Galaxy looked very i-phone-ish.

However having decide to go back to the Savacentre Vodafone it transpired that whilst they had the HTC Sensation in stock they most certainly didn’t have any of the Galaxies for moi :-( I’ve set up my contract, got my SIM and the free DVDs but sadly no new shiny toy for me to play with. I’m on their list for when they come in and hopefully I won’t have to wait too long but the warehouse was only showing ten units and so far I’ve dropped a quick email to Vodafone but am still waiting for a reply. Hope it arrives before we go on holiday, was so looking forward to having it this weekend to play with so my disappointment is quite palpable.

Leeds Castle

This is Julia and me at Leeds Castle, we went there yesterday and spent a good day walking round the Castle and its grounds. Admission now covers a whole year so though it seems alot at £18.50 per adult, over a whole year that's not too bad really and Julia got in a bit cheaper on her Uni Student ID. Hopefully we will pop back reasonably often and see how the place changes over the course of a year. Had a few hiccups getting there after the satnav sent us down to the golf course entrance but the chap on the gate re-directed us back to the main entrance, we've always gone by bus before and even then it was a long time ago. Not sure the bus still runs by there anymore which is a real shame 'cos its a good place to visit and is just on our doorstep.

You are free to take photos in the Castle itself now (apart from the Chapel) which I'm pretty sure you weren't allowed to when we were there last time. Grounds wise I think there may be a better selection of flowers later in the summer time and this late we've missed the spring bulbs, so opportunities for floral displays were thin on the ground. I've visited in the summer time before and seen loads of lovely dahlias so I know there's more to see later in the year. The Great Lake is being drained and repaired so even that looked a tad sorry for itself but I'm sure once it's finished it will look impressive once more.

We walked as far over as the maze but didn't go in, I've only been in there once and got completely freaked out as I lost my way. Think they have a member of staff in the centre and at the time I went in he helped me find my way to the centre and then out through the underground grotto but I'm reluctant to go in again! We sat on our car blanket and enjoyed some Spring sunshine albeit a bit too windy to be really warm. Still we watched the birds of prey show from a distance and enjoyed munching on some sweets from the small Maze Cafe that's located at that end of the grounds.

It will be good to try and go back in the Autumn and maybe even the Winter if we dont get too much snow this year. I've never seen the Castle at those times of year only on their postcards so would be good to get some photos of my own.

The photo above was taken using a new tripod I've just bought, a Hahnel Triad 30 Lite with ballhead, and a radio remote that my Dad bought me a few years ago. The tripod was pretty easy to carry round for the day, better than my new camera strap which allows the camera to hang to one side, but should be easy to bring up to your eye for shooting. Only real trouble is that the strap gets in the way of my glasses when the camera is up to my eye so most of the time I ended up unclipping one side. It's a cheaper version of the Black Rapide strap so wondering if that's why it doesn't work so well. Will try and persevere for now as it's a bugger to attach to the camera but if I cant hack it then it will be resigned to the cupboard and my old neck strap will have to go back on. Not sure I really want to fork out over £50 for the posh version of the strap and find that it's no better!

Anyway more photos of the day's visit can be found on Facebook.