Out early enjoying the novelty of a snowy day, I took this snap of the deep unbroken snow at Burford Bridge.

Isle of Wight

On a recent trip to the Isle of Wight, I noticed that the footpaths often had numbers on them, written on the signs, for example here’s a picture I took of Footpath BS76 st map reference SZ 397 840. This strikes me a as a very good idea; it makes navigating on foot possible without referring to the map so often.  If we number roads in this way, why not also footpaths.

There were still a few squares left to grab on the Isle of Wight this year, but I suspect when I return next year they will have all been taken.  The South is fast filling up on Geograph now, and I think I probably would need to drive for more than an hour to find a square that hasn’t already been photographed.

The Leek Show

One of the last country shows before the foot & mouth crisis hit (again).  Cranleigh was the week after, and they couldn’t  show any animals due to government restrictions on moving cows and sheep. 

Cherkley Court

I’ve known for some years that Cherkley Court was tucked away in this little corner close to Leatherhead, but until now it hasn’t been open to the public.  I’m pleased to be the first to upload a geograph of the building, even though the square was already taken with a rather ordinary picture of the A24.

London Orbital Car Park

 The M25 near Heathrow yesterday, before I joined the queue myself to go home.

Sussex Beacon Half Marathon

Once again combining my passions for running and geographing, I took a few pictures while taking part in the race yesterday.  You see here (on the left) one of the race leaders, and if you look carefully you can see that he’s floating in mid air. 

Brighton is actually carpetted with geographs, and hardly needs any more: There is obviously a very ative geogaph community there.  However, out of all the pictures I took yesterday, I felt this was the one that needed to be added, showing a bit og the geography and at the same time an important annual event.

Deep Snow

Up in Leek in Staffordshire, some heavy snow had blown in just prior to my arrival.  The thaw happened quite quickly and here you see some of the snow drift and meltwater. I took this picture while around some country lanes on a trainining run.

Snow Day

 

Hard to believe, but it did actually snow today in the South. 

See TQ1850 and TQ1951

Revisiting Old Haunts

Yesterday, I drove over to Redlands Wood (near Coldharbour in Surrey) to go running.  It’s a beautiful spot of dense woodland, but also it’s on the edge of a high hill, so it has views of Surrey to the East.  As it turns out, it’s nearly a year (all but 6 days) since I first took a photograph here, and claimed TQ1545 on the Geograph site.   You can see the picture here, taken with my Treo phone. 

Anyway, I’ve added another three pictures to this square for a bit more depth, and I also strayed a little bit into TQ1645 and TQ1546, and added a couple of pictures there.  On this trip I had a real camera with me, the brilliant (and now discontinued) Fuji Finepix F10, so the latest pictures are much better quality.

The Age Before Digital

Somewhere I have photographed a lot over the years is the town of Leek in Staffordshire, where I have family ties.  I’m relatively new to digital photography, but have boxes full of 35mm negatives going back to the 1980s.  Sorting through some pictures the other day, I found some shots of Tittesworth Reservoir from 1999 (all my negatives are already sorted by date from a project a few years ago).  This one was nice, so I fired up the 35mm scanner, and scanned it in.  The square (SJ9959) already has a first geograph, but I thought it was nice enough to warrant uploading another one.

I also found a historic picture of a rather beautiful building that got demolished for the Glaxo Smithkline HQ in Brentford,  London (gridref TQ1777). 

Taken on B&W film, this looks like an ancient photograph (actually the negatives are not in a great state), but it was only taken in 1990.  For some reason the moderator didn’t think this warranted being a geograph so it is only classified as a supplemental image.  Arbitrary, and a bit dispiriting really.