Mostly photography and some other musings.
Three more pictures from Dover. It was a weird day in terms of light, I think. Some pictures have a better daylight quality in them, others are duller. Anyhow, I really enjoyed that day. The fractured landscape is amazing and I managed not to fall over the cliffs!
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It must be quite windy over the white cliffs of Dover.
I liked the shape of this little bush. All the vegetation on top the cliffs is combed this way. The day I went here it wasn’t windy, but I couldn’t stop wondering how this place would look in a storm. I hope you all have had a good weekend. I spent mine visiting some National Trust places, here in UK, and took loads of pictures. I will post them as soon as I end my processing and editing. I also spent some time changing my blog theme. Any feedback is welcome. Really busy this days! 🙂
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These metallic shapes with rust, sea anemones and barnacles are what is left of the Steam Ship Falcon, that caught fire in 1926 and ended wrecked in Dover coast, in front of the Langdon search lights, precisely.
Little remains of that ship but its steel frame is still there. The pass of time has created its own biological ecosystem in the old structure. Rocks and stones have engulfed the steel, integrating this man-made object in the stone floor. This structures are only visible with low tides. There is even a film from the event. Silent and in black and white, of course:
And this is how the remains look from the edge of the cliff. It is amazing how these shipwrecks look when enough time passes.
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I took this one in In my visit to Dover. It is an abandoned search light battery used in World War Two, situated in Langdon Bay just to the east of Dover Harbour.
This place was used to light possible enemy ships coming by night. The Langdon battery, on the top of the cliff, could shoot these ships. In this map you can see these strategic placements:
The Langdon battery doesn’t exists any more. A Coastguard station was built in its place. The remains of this search light batteries are still in quite good condition. To visit them, you have to climb down a zigzag stair carved on the vertical wall of the cliff. Worth the effort, I think. Initially there were three, but a cliff fall destroyed the one closest to the harbour. Those cliff falls are very dangerous, and it is advisable not to get very close to the edge, something I did a few times.
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There is a lighthouse in the white cliffs of Dover.
I ended there after a long way that started in the National Trust visitors centre. After having a nice coffee and a home-made muffin I wandered around the place a bit. There are paths to nearby fields, and this one grabbed my attention. Why those rocks in the middle of it?
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Another picture from my visit to Dover.
The views from the edge were amazing. Vertigo inducing. As you can see, the path gets quite close to the fall, and you should watch were you put four feet. At some point there is a way carved in the vertical wall that lets you go down the beach. A wrecked boat and an old bunker can be visited. That day, the weather was all right, a bit chilly maybe. Not completely clear though, there was a bit of haze. I didn’t have a polarizing filter that could help a bit removing that bluish cast, but I like how that helps with the depth of the scene. As I said earlier, everything looks a bit dry to me. Not as green as expected.
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Today I went to Dover. I spent all the day walking the white cliffs.
I took lots of pictures. Most of them of the views from the cliffs, some birds, and a World War 2 beach bunker. Almost at the end of my visit, a couple were walking much faster than me, uphill. I liked the curves on the ground, so I stopped a bit to take a breath and this picture. It didn’t look to have rained since ages. Everything was much drier than I expected. The usual pictures of this place, white walls with green pastures on top, were not seen today.
