PigPog

Another day, another walk. Not as long as yesterday’s BigWalk, but not bad. We started by heading into the town centre again, taking a cut along a narrow sloped path that brings us from the bottom of Canal Hill to the multi-storey car park.

I love the telegraph poles and electrical system here in Devon. It all seems very unplanned.

At the bottom of Canal Hill, I took a time-lapse video of the roundabout – one minute of the roundabout in a three-second video:

Along the narrow path, one section of rusty metal fence was tied into an interesting shape.

Near the multi-storey car park, I liked the texture of the crash barrier. I think I may have had some strange looks from passing motorists, standing at the side of the road, intently photographing a crash barrier. Maybe they thought I was from the Department of Transport carrying out some intricate investigative work on the crash barriers, but it’s more likely they thought I was just an idiot.

They may have had a point.

The car park wall:

We stopped at Marks & Spencers for water, and sat down for a while on Phoenix Lane, and watched the pigeons courting. The courtship was a success, so we watched the pigeons having sex.

Yes. I did video it. It doesn’t last long.

We decided to walk along the old railway line, to Tidcombe Lane, and then back along the canal. After all the excitement of pigeons getting it on, I was back to my usual form. Here’s a tedious photo of my own shadow:

Then a little rusty metal bridge over the stream at the start of the old railway walkway:

There’s probably some history to this bridge – it seems a bit over-engineered for a small footpath over a stream.

There was a dragonfly along the walkway a bit further on. I took quite a few shots, but only one turned out well. It’s difficult to get any camera to focus well on something so small, especially when it keeps moving. A compact camera is worse, too.

The walkway used to be the railway line between the main line and Tiverton. The Tivvy Bumper ran a regular service taking people between the main line and Tiverton. It now rests in the Tiverton Museum.

We’re back to bridges that seem a bit over-engineered – this used to be over the railway line, now it’s just over a footpath:

This bridge also has a set of steps that lets you get from the old railway line up to the road (Tidcombe Lane). We used that to get up to the road, then walked up the road to meet the canal. We passed under Tidcombe Bridge.

The reflections made a pretty pattern on the bridge, but it wasn’t so interesting still, so I shot a little video:

I managed to grab a shot of a Damsel Fly, which doesn’t happen often.

I also happened across a moorhen who was very happy to have found an apple, and was apple-bobbing.

It seemed like fun, but I didn’t join in.

As we got to the Canal Basin, the horse-drawn barge was preparing to leave. The horse was waiting ready.

For the little bit before they get to the horse, it’s a people-drawn barge:

We had lunch at the Canal Tea Gardens, then headed home. Quite a bit shorter than yesterday’s trip, but an enjoyable walk.

Note: this article is out of date now – it’s not referring to the current design of the site.

Well, anyone who visits reasonably often has probably already noticed that we redesigned again a couple of weeks ago. I’ve finally put aside my dislike of fixed-width designs, and used one. It’s based on the 960.gs implementation, turned into a simple Drupal theme.

The choice of fonts was aided a lot by a couple of articles:

• 8 Fonts You Probably Don’t Use in CSS, but Should
• Complete Guide to Pre-Installed Fonts in Linux, Mac, and Windows

Putting these two together, we’ve picked fonts that should display well on all major platforms, and fail over to something reasonable on anything else.

We’re still experimenting a little with the ads. Just a little while ago, we replaced the big ad block in the top left with a random photo. We like the money they bring, but we don’t want to make the site unpleasant to read, either.

Hope you like it – if not, I hope it’s at least readable and not too objectionable.

We went out for a nice long (for us, anyway) walk yesterday, starting with our usual Saturday brunch at Mad Hatters, Tiverton. After ordering, we went to sit out in the garden, and wondered if we should have gone for the duck – it was very fresh.

It was drinking from the water bowl left out for dogs.

Mmm. Coffee. And Doppio. A good start to the day.

Rather than walking around the town centre as we usually do, we then headed down Angel Hill, and over the bridge, into West Exe, and up Leat Street. For some reason, I always get the urge to photograph the houses on Leat Street – they’ve very traditional terraced houses, deep and narrow, and opening straight out onto the street, but these are covered in satellite dishes. There’s no cable coverage in Tiverton, and reception isn’t good in some places, so satellite TV is popular.

I played with the colouring on this shot in Adobe Lightroom (these are all processed in Lightroom), and added a vignette effect.

We turned to head towards Morrisons, but crossed the road to see the swans with their cygnets on the town Leat.

A couple of gulls were very vocal about wanting their picture taken, so I obliged.

Again, the vignette (the darkening towards the corners) is added afterwards in Lightroom. All these shots were taken with my Canon G9, which doesn’t have any (noticeable) vignetting, but I got used to the effect with my Nikon 55-200 VR lens, and I quite like a bit of vignetting on some shots now.

This duck was sleeping:

One of the cygnets seemed to enjoy eating grass from the bank.

Want to see it in action? I took a little video of it too:

Here’s another of the swan and two cygnets swimming:

We found a path, and we had no idea where it went, so we decided to follow it to find out. I found a yellow hoop.

So I jumped in it.

Just after that, a well worn path disappeared up to the side of the path we were following

I had to know what it lead to, so I climbed up it. Well, what do you know? I didn’t expect that.

It lead to a digital mammography unit.

We found a small area of concrete with a drain mounted in it, with interesting patterns all around the drain.

Well, ok, maybe interesting is the wrong word there.

We found ourselves cutting through the grounds of the High School, which had gargoyles on the walls in several places.

As we left the school grounds, we found a little lost kitteh.

We cut through the Moorhayes estate next, and right near the start watched a buzzard being mobbed by a couple of crows. No photos, I’m afraid, as it was happening a bit too fast. Buzzards are really crap birds of prey. There are loads of them around Devon, and they spend most of their time being beaten up by crows and seagulls. One day we’re going to find one having the shit kicked out of it by a young blue tit, I’m sure.

So, no pictures of all that excitement, but I did get a picture of some concrete steps. Fun, eh?

Oh, and grass.

And a buttercup.

I’m usually in the habit of pushing the contrast and saturation up to make really ‘punchy’ images. When I processed this lot, I experimented with actually reducing the saturation in quite a few of them. It seems to work well here. Taking away the bright yellow gives a more delicate result.

Yeah, there was quite a lot of grass.

And some chimney pots that put me in mind of Madonna’s conical phase.

I liked the little ‘shooting star’ graffiti on the sign here, but when I went to take the photo, the rest of the wall wanted to be included too, so I obliged.

The colours are pushed somewhat, but the yellow at the bottom is quite bright in reality.

We stopped at the small Tesco store for drinks and ice-creams. As we got towards the far end of Moorhayes, I could hear falling water, and went to investigate. Unexpected waterfall!

Wherever you go in Tiverton, you never seem to be more than ten feet from a river. They’re everywhere. This little river follows near the main road through Moorhayes, then turns sharply right to follow the main road again, then suddenly turns left at a right-angle, and disappears under the road. It follows the edge of the business park after that, before wandering off into the countryside.

A few dead leaves and a fly.

I’m always careful to take photos of only the most pretty things.

Along the main road, here’s the same river:

Here’s where it turns sharply and cuts under the road:

The hedge further along had some pretty and bright honeysuckle, along with the occasional nettle.

The Michelin Man had done a poo by the side of the road.

By this time, we figured we’d earned a drink, so we stopped off at the Tiverton Hotel (a Best Western).

I had a pint of Bass, Sam had a glass of wine.

I took a couple of shots of my little Sheaffer Touchdown Tuckaway (Tucky) while there.

We then crossed the main road to Old Road, and cut up through Lewis Avenue, ending up back on Canal Hill next to the police station. We stopped off at the canal to visit the Ducks Ditty for another drink.

Again, I had a beer, Sam had a glass of wine.

Further along the canal, bees were enjoying the flowers in their own special ways. Check out the bee’s knees:

This one looked like Starbug from Red Dwarf:

When we got home, a sparrow was making a lot of noise on the corner of our building, and wasn’t going to be deterred by us being there.

It was a good walk. Around five miles, which is quite a lot for us. Lots of photos, though, and I’m quite happy with how many of them have turned out. The Canon G9 is doing good things for my photography.

Well here I go again with yet another attempt at a full week on plan. Fell waist deep in a bucket of wine and chinese food on Thursday night after group and didn’t manage to winch myself out and back onto plan until yesterday. But I’m back in business now, yesterday was a green day and contained my favourites – potato wedges for lunch, and noodles and mushy peas for dinner. All free on green, and all lovely and comfort food-y.

Today, then, is original (or red). I find I get the best results when I stick to a red/green cycle throughout the week. Mixing it up sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. And as Katrina, my new consultant, said at group last week:

Don’t play with the Plan, because the Plan will play with you.

Don’t I know it… there’s no point in “cheating”, tweaking things to squeeze in that extra biscuit or glass of wine… but it is possible to fit these things into your Syn allowance. 15 Syns a day is plenty for a normal day, and on those odd occasions when more Syns are needed you just do the flex thing. What you don’t do at any point is stop counting or stop thinking about what you’re doing.

Hm. I think it’s time for a much needed Note To Self:

*Guv Voice* – “there’s no bloody excuse! *slaps self* Just bloody well get on with it!”

Yes Inner Guv. Sorry Inner Guv. My Inner Glutton considers itself well and truly kicked.

Back tomorrow and if I’m good I might treat myself to a vid or two.