St Mary the Virgin Buckland

This week the Church Explorer takes you to St Mary the Virgin Buckland, a church that you would miss because the main road takes you past it but is well worth the visit to see the amazing mosaics in the South Transept chapel.

Moon and the Mist

Some of the photo's I took the other week of the misty morning, the moon was in the morning sky

With the mist covering the ground

Giving the lake an eerie look

Later above the lake the sun shone on the surrounding hillside

The sheep watching me not caring about the time

Happy Skywatch 

Dream on

Number 1500

Today I will be showing my 1500th post You can see the 500th post in this link and the 1000th in this link  for the 1500th post I will show some from Wales taken during the morning and after noon one day when I was there last week. I took my copact camera but the battery died before I got to the lake so ended up useing my phone and that died after the second photo

The mist was burning off the lake

 You can see the duck house floating in the middle

 Later in the day and battery's recharged I went off to see something else and took this photo down the valley

Walking back I stopped to take a panoramic of the lake with the yurts in the background

Clouds and Blue Sky

Been struggling with my Skywatch photos of late but always on the lookout for a good subject and one of my favourites are the clouds. A couple of weeks ago I was looking at them from my garden

I could not tell you the names of these clouds but I do know a certain someone who lives across the pond who does

At one stage the sun disappeared behind the clouds

and a plane burst through them

 These were very high up

clouds above clouds

More hing ones reminding me of a cuttlefish 

Nothing too interesting about these

But this guy of should I say guys as they are tandem were somewhere above the clouds

Like this guy. They were skydiving about three miles away as the crow fly's at Chiltern Airdrome and my compact was on full zoom hence the fuzziness of them.

Happy Skywatch

Seven years Blogging

I started this blog was seven years ago on the 12th September It was not the first blog I had written, I six  months before I started off with Spuds Rural Explorations with Pillboxes along the Thames
The blog only came out when I had material to use in it like about once a month.  After I thought to showcase some of my photos in a daily blog and I went straight in with a 365, posting everyday for a year, this was a little too much and I soon changed to the present format. The Church Explorer started a week after  this one with a blog called Joe It was first called My Grave Place but I soon realised that I was more into looking at churches as well as headstones so changed the name to The Church Explorer though you might have noticed I missed the l out on the name by mistake but I'm afraid I could not change it. The Church Explorer is 7 years old today.
 So in Seven years blogging I thought I'd show some photos of when I first started.

 This was the photo from my first blog, taken at Buscot Weir

Wales is always a favourite place for me to get photos

Taken with a smart phone of the Town Crier at Newbury

 Swan looking over the floods at Wallingford

This fellow did not like his reflection in the window and kept attacking it

Didcot Power Station at Sunset, all that is left of it now is the tall stack

Fireworks over the place I used to work

 The place which was my home from home for the last 15 odd years of my working life

And the place where I worked all that time watching it being built to how you see it here.

Those are just a few photos from the blog you can see more if you troll through the archive. Check out my other blogs as well

Taking Part in Our World Tuesday

All Saints Faringdon

This week the Church Explorer visits All Saints Faringdon for the first of two visits. The church had so much detail inside that I split the blog into two parts.

Cloud in the Brecons

Driving back through the Brecon Beacons in Wales a few weeks ago we encountered rain and low cloud which obscured the mountain top. I took a few photos out of the car window as we drove through

You can see the cloud going over the top of one of the mountains we pass on the way up hill

On the way down you cloud looks lower

You can just make out the outline of the hills in the distance, we passed through the band eventually and got home to some fine weather

Happy Skywatch

Dragon Stone

From the Eye

Bit behind with taking photos for Our World Tuesday so digging in to my Archive and showing some scanned photo's from the London Eye back around 2000. The quality is not so good as I was taking the photos through the Plexiglas dome.

 View along the Thames

 The one place that is in Turmoil at the moment because of Bumbling Boris

 Another view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

 Looking across from the London Eye

 Down at Old County Hall

and a last look along the Thames before we landed again

Taking Part in Our World Tuesday

St Giles Great Coxwell

This week the Church Explorer visits Great Coxwell and St Giles Church a church which dates back to 1200AD with some interesting features

#