Perhaps because Britain is a relatively small island, many of us are drawn to the sea. After all, we nearly all live within a few hours drive of the coast. We grew up with seaside holidays, day trips to the beach. We are known as a ‘nation of seafarers’, based on those days when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’.
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We had already seen and loved the coastal redwoods in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. But while those are the tallest trees to be found anywhere in the world, they are not the most massive overall. That honour belongs to their cousins, the giant sequoias (as measured by a combination of height and width).
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I am very definitely a 'cat person'. I admire the independent spirit of cats. They can be affectionate but always on their own terms, and unlike dogs, don’t constantly seek attention. Their behaviour can be quixotic, their thoughts hard to fathom, whereas most dogs are open books. And I find cats really beautiful to look at: elegant, with expressive eyes and distinctive colours and patterns on their fur.
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I remember many a snowy January as a child, including some very bad ones. And well into my adult years snow was a regular occurrence. But in recent years we’ve seen it less and less, although northern England still gets its fair share. This January it probably got more than its fair share, as storms hit the UK, but in London we saw only a dusting of snow first thing one morning, gone almost as soon as it got light.
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Wherever we travel in the world we find cities building and rebuilding themselves. From Pyongyang in North Korea to Seattle on the west coast of the US and also back at home in London, there is no dearth of modern architecture to love or loathe.
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If you have any interest in photography and in the great masters of that art, you will know the work of Ansel Adams. And if you know Ansel Adams you will know Yosemite Valley. His photos of the landscape there are stunning and iconic. And while few if any of us are able to match his creations, we can certainly visit the places that inspired them.
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First, a disclaimer: in calling this gallery ‘colours that complement’ I don’t mean 'compliment'. They won't be telling you how great your latest blog post was or how good you look today! No, today we are looking at colour theory.
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Our world is full of geometrical shapes, many of them created by ourselves. Doors and windows, roofs, walls and fences, containers, art of all kinds … You will find geometry wherever you look in the manmade environment. But what about nature?
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T is the twentieth letter in the English language. It is, according to Wikipedia, the most commonly used consonant and the second-most commonly used letter in English-language texts. So it should be easy to find photographs of objects that begin with T, shouldn’t it?
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While Yosemite Valley is very famous and much-photographed, another area of the national park, the Tioga Pass, is rather less so. The Tioga Road runs for nearly fifty scenic miles surrounded by the high Sierra Nevada peaks and domes. The Tuolumne River flows across the sub-alpine meadows of the same name which offer wonderful views and some lovely walks.