And now for something a little colder

Meanwhile, back in January

When life gives you snow, make snowmen

At least that's what they were doing when I got home last night.

It's quite an impressive snowman, isn't it? Putting the head on must have been quite a job.

Now I think I'll go somewhere warm.

It's not normally like this

A slight change in the weather, and suddenly cars were moving slowly sideways at traffic lights, and sliding down hills. We're not used to this sort of thing.



Finally it looks Christmassy. Some of my neighbours were even building a huge snowman last night.

Elephants at Pinnawela elephant orphanage

What I did on my holidays

Some pictures from Sri Lanka...









There are a few more stuck on my phone... I did say they might have to wait a bit :-/

Greenbelt 2007

I wasn't quite prepared for the sun - in fact with the delay in arrival of my luggage I wasn't prepared for very much. But I'm surviving just fine.
More about greenbelt later - have to rush to the next event!

11th Night

There were bonfires all over Belfast last night.
From the hills, the view over the city was quite impressive. It would have been more impressive without the drizzly haze - though the fire brigade were probably quite thankful for it!

Skiing in Schladming

Eclipse

Total eclipse of the moon over the UK. You can't see it too well here, but the moon now has a distinctly reddish tint.





Terrible pictures - maybe I "need" a better camera?

Edited to add the moon coming back again...

Onwards and upwards

On a couple of trips into the surrounding areas we saw some spectacular views, and some very atmospheric ones -- for which read "so much mist we couldn't see a thing". World's End is supposed to have a huge drop and an amazing vista, but for us, the word ended in a wall of grey. I'm assured that's very rare! And the views later on were pretty spectacular...

...until the sun set while we were some way from the carpark!
On the way to the Rest House we were getting directions from a local. The road was pretty bumpy, so the driver asked him if it was like this all the way. "Yes," he replied, "it's a good road!" We eventually made it (after avoiding a place that looked like it had an hourly room rate), and had an excellent meal, a hot shower, and a fair room. The blankets were clean too - we'd just bought a pile of them earlier in the day.

Back to work on the scenery the next day...


Another night we stayed in an old Tea Plantation owner's bungalow, converted into a guesthouse. Apparently it has spectacular views... so the manager dug out his laptop and showed us what we would have seen if we'd come on any other day of the year.

The plantation manager was telling us that the tea plantation is still in operation, and they try to run the estate on fair and just principles, with decent salaries (by local standards) for the workers. It seems that many plantations keep their pickers in one-room houses, pay them a pittance, and give them few if any rights. He also had an interesting take on the benefits and drawbacks of the Fair Trade movement.


That's the road to the plantation. It's an excellent road!