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

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.

Spring has Sprung

It looks to me as though Spring is here anyway .  This week I was down in the New Forest for about the 4th or 5th time this year and was greeted by blue skies and sunshine, rather than the normal low cloud and rain.  I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures for geograph while I was there.

Closer to home I also got some pictures of Norbury Park.  When I was there the temperature was around 15C (around 60F), and the daffodils are starting to put their heads up in various places.

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.

South of England in Geograph

This map from Geograph today shows that around London to the South and West is pretty much done (claimed Geograph sqares are in red). So to find unclaimed squares (for First Geograph photos) is tough now, needing a trip in the car. The number of people Geographing has ramped-up pretty fast during 2006: back in 2005 when I started, I could walk out of my door and claim squares, but there are many more cameras clicking away now, and of course in the densely populated (and rich) South, people tend to have digital cameras and broadband Internet.

Currently on Geograph, you only get points for First Geographs (this is the competitive element). Of course you can add further geographs to already taken squares, i.e. adding depth of information to a square, but there are no points for that, only the satisfaction of having added more interest to a square. There are also pictures classed as Supplemental, which to summarize means that they are technically good photographs, but just not showing a characteristic feature of that square, or not with enough context. For example you will find pictures of butterflies and farm machinery, but of course these things can move from one square to another, and they do not identify the square or help to recognize it again. Supplementals also carry no points.

Looking at the stats today, 47% of the country has so far been photographed, but a lot of the open squares are in rural areas (Norfolk, Wales, Scottish Highlands etc). So far over 303,000 pictures have been uploaded, which I work out to be a database of around 58 Gigabytes of UK photographs, an incredible legacy for the future, showng how the UK looked in the 2000’s.

Fog Bound

This is now the fifth consecutive day of freezing fog.  I did manage to get out and take a pic of the M25 at Leatherhead though.

Of course this geograph square (TQ1756) was taken long ago, but my picture will bump up my depth score, and adds more information about what that square is like.