Inch Lake in the frost

A stroll along the shore of Inch lake, on a beautifully crisp and frosty winter's afternoon. Inch island sits in the Swilly, a long fjord-like inlet in Donegal, near Derry/Londonderry - it is connected to the mainland by two dams, with the lake being formed by the stretch of water in between.

The route taken follows the mainland shore of the lake, down past the southern dam and briefly along the Swilly proper. In the distance can be seen the ruins of Inch Castle (15th centrury), and, on the rounded hill, Burt Castle (16th century)

Coastal Skipper!

Finally, I've got round to doing my RYA Coastal Skipper exam! After 4 years' sailing with CUY, I set aside a week's holiday for an excellent practical training course, run by the main club instructor, Hywel. The course covered an impressive range and detail, and was great fun to boot, despite the weather. In fact, the training turned out to be rather more intense than the exam, despite (or possibly in some way due to) winds gusting force 8 on the exam day!

In any case, a very successful week, with the result that I finally have my Coastal Skipper, and can look forward to running my own trips :-)

Family Fun

Back in August, I went down to London, to visit my eldest brother Alistair before he headed off to Aus. Despite it being a rather grey day, we still had a wander round doing the touristy thing. The most impressive bit, though, was his apartment - in the building next to St James Palace. Not often that your next-door neighbour is quite so posh!

At the start of September, the rest of the clan turned up - mum, dad and Rob from Ireland, and David and Jess from Aus. We had a fun weekend punting and touring around Cambridge, and then out to Thaxtead and Saffron Walden - very pretty little towns.

Duxford, August 08

On Sunday, my brother Alistair came up from London, and, it being a pleasant and sunny day, we went to visit Duxford for the afternoon. Or rather, the Imperial War Museum, at Duxford Airfield.
On the way we stopped for dinner at the Rupert Brooke, an up-market pub/restaurant in Grantchester. They served a pleasant if unspectacular (for the price) Sunday roast. At any rate, plenty of fuel for 3 hours of museum!

Duxford houses a very impressive collection of aircraft from the history of aviation - both military and civilian. There is a focus on British designs, but it is far from exclusive. Unsurprisingly, there is also a lot of coverage of World War II, especially the battle of Britain; during the war, the airfield that the museum is built around was an active RAF and then USAAF base. There is in fact an entire section of the museum dedicated to the Battle of Britain (both sides; there are a number of German aircraft on display) and another to the USAAF and USAF.

The highlight exhibits are probably a Concorde, a TSR2 (prototype supersonic bomber), the World War II collection, and the USAAF/USAF collection; in addition, there's a small collection of artillery, tanks etc.

While we were there, a few of the planes were actually properly on display - as in, flying! Again, they were representatives from World War II: a British Spitfire, an American P51 Mustang and a German Me109. They make a great sound :-)

Norway 08

Photos from the CUY trip 'Nautical Norway', from Bergen to Trondheim. Great trip, especially the hurricane-force bit!