I've got my eye on you

April Streets

Street photography continues to be a favourite genre. It's not been easy in the past few months, the weather hasn't been inspiring with people rushing out into the cold to get what they need and then rushing back to their warm homes. Also, after taking so many street snaps locally finding something a little bit different isn't easy. Hoping I've managed it with these pics taken in April at Ipswich, Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds

Maldon Mud Race 2013

What a great event this was to go to, the sun shone, everyone was smiling and some were getting muddy. Got carried away and took loads of photos...

Holi: Hindu Festival of Colour. Ipswich 2013

Didn't quite know what to expect from this event held at Holywells park in Ipswich. The festival of colour is an event to mark the end of winter and the start of spring. Glad we went though, it was a fun event with a really good atmosphere. So many (colourful) smiles were to be seen on the day.

Weekend Gypsies - Bikers and Babes in the Wood

Today we went to Watton in Norfolk. This was somewhere we haven't been to before. There was a bike event in the high street which we thought would be good for a few photos, but we hadn't been there very long at all when the heaven's opened, rain and hail poured down! I got a few photos of the bikes but we spent most of our time in and out of shops trying to avoid the rain. Eventually the rain stopped so we made our way to Wayland wood, a nature reserve about a mile outside of the town. Wayland Wood is the setting of the centuries-old tale of Babes in the Wood. (Wikipedia info here.) The woodland was a delight for it's mixture of trees and the wild flowers nestling under them.

Weekend Gypsies - Stepping Out Along the Lark Valley Path

We don't always swan off miles on a weekend, sometimes we stay relatively local. On Sunday we did just that and decided to visit West Stow country park. We wandered around the lake then back along the river Lark towards West Stow's one and only bird hide. The hide is very near the Victorian pump house, such an elegant building considering what it was once used for.
Whilst there we spotted the signs for the Lark Valley Path so we decided to follow it for a short way, but first we needed refuelling so it was back to the cafe for coffee and cake, then back to where we had seen the markers. The path is a bit confusing in that initially it lead us away from the river, but we carried on following the markers and eventually ended up back by the river. We'll explore more of the Lark Valley path another time....

Weekend Gypsies - Sunshine, Aldeburgh, Captains Wood and Various Flying Things

On Saturday morning we woke up to a glorious blue skies - and a ground frost! Cold not withstanding we decided that it was too good a day to waste much time indoors, we have waited so long for sunshine. So donning warm jackets we headed of to Aldeburgh. It was cooler on the coast of course but we weren't the only ones making the most of the crystal clear blue skies and sunshine. Have you noticed that the sun always seems to put a smile on people's faces? I swear the birds and the animals were smiling too. After a while we moved on elsewhere, but first here's an assortment of photos taken at Aldbeurgh. (The slideshow is sometimes slow to load initially)


Early afternoon and we decided to head inland for a while, we took ourselves off to Captain's wood.
Captain’s Wood is a most extraordinary wood quite different to any other wood owned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Unlike the dense thicket of the coppices of Bradfield or Combs Woods, Captain’s Wood has an open airy feel with space between the trees where fallow deer roam through one of the greatest expanses of bluebells in the county.
We were too early in the year, especially with the late spring, to see bluebells but we did see two herds of fallow deer (at a distance of course.) We also saw lots of butterflies, in particular quite a few peacocks were fluttering about.