Travel
I'm lucky enough to travel a lot but I also aim to understand a place in some depth. So I like to find out about the local history, sociology, wildlife and local arts. I prepare for a trip by looking up photos of the famous sights, they're usually a good guide both about the local visual interest and also a warning of what has already been done or over-done.
I try to use the tools of modern photojournalism and photography to communicate how I feel about a place. You’ll see that I have used Portrait, Street, Interior, Historical, Abstract, Landscape, Historical, Wildlife, Phone-camera and Selfie genres at different times for specific effects.
Some views of Oxford this afternoon, walking back from a business meeting in Summertown on Banbury Road. The weather was more for the ducks so the punts were unused on the river Cherwell. Autumn colours in University park, with sport to complement the city's business of learning and serious thinking.
Autumn mist and drizzle didn't dampen our visit to our visit to Tyntesfield, Bristol. The sumptuous colours of the garden and estate were still brilliant; with the new boiler warming the house, chapel and National Trust guardians, it was a cheering visit as the skies go grey. I used to cycle past the estate as a school child, though you have to leave road to glimpse the main house; now there's an ample new car park and visitor centre and of course, the National trust gift shop as you exit.
The Alpilles are a diminished continuation of the crumple of land that makes the Luberon mountain on the eastern side of the river Durance, south of Avignon.
The Alpilles take and break the full force of the Mistral as it tears down the Rhône valley on its way to the Carmargue.. Quintessentially Provence, the Alpilles have groves of parasol pines as well as groves of cultivated olives.
The quiet country roads between Aureille and Eyguières are a fine place for a picnic, once the summer restrictions on account of the risk of fire have been lifted.
The rocks are light grey limestone that takes the colour of the sun and the sky: when Paul Cézanne painted scenes from the Alpilles he used colours to portray the moods so we have purples and blues that are entirely non-naturalistic but entirely appropriate.
My postcard also shows the fine ruins of the Castelas de Roquemartine, from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries: it's superficially similar to the popular château at Les Baux de Provence but became ruined as part of the complicated history of the Alpilles.
We drove up Mont Ventoux, the giant limestone mountain that towers over Provence. The summit, 1909m., has a radio communications tower which is an inaccessible military installation painted red and white like a lighthouse. The television signal broadcast from there went fully-digital in July 2011, which made useless a generation of French television receivers.
The view is truly panoramic with 360° visibility over all of Provence laid out below like the folds of a crumpled tablecloth: the delta of the Rhône river and the Carmarge, the Étang de Berre and over to the Garrigues of Nîmes. Also the massif of the Vercors, The view of the Alps includes Mont Pelvoux and the massif of the Ecrins, Mont Blanc several hundred kilometres away and Mont Visio, itself a couple of hundred kilometres away, on the border with Italy.
The sky seems almost as dark blue as the view from earth orbit!
Our hired Audi A1 was good fun to drive the roads that once were a famous motor racing hill climb course (Course-de-Côte du Mont-Ventoux) but are now more renowned with the pedal cyclists.
Just half a day's drive East from Beaune, the French Jura are the low limestone mountains where the land finally stops being France before the Alps rise up from Lac Leman/Lake Geneva.
A refreshing breath of clear air, with vista of lakes and trees, These days the gentle Jura is the province of beef, veal and dairy cattle, precision industries like watch-making and spectacles having been lost to cheaper territories.
And the calves are fitted with an interesting nose-ring which maybe helps them graze deeper in to the green grass.
