The McKenzies' Blog…

Last year just before Christmas I bought a new Nikon D5000 kit from ebay. 

Every time I’d bought a new camera over the last 5 or 6 years I’ve wanted to get a DSLR, but I never did solely because of the cost.  Well, I finally decided to pull the trigger and jump in.  The D5000 was a good starter DSLR, perhaps one day I’ll upgrade to something closer to professional, such as the Nikon D7000 (or whatever is out when I’m ready to buy again).

Anyhow, as with most hobbies there are always little things (and not so little things) to add-on, and photography is without a doubt a hobby full of add-ons.  The extra bits you can buy are truly endless.  I think the thing that has kept be from buying too many add-ons is, again, the cost.  You can get lens from a £100 – £10,000, flashes, light boxes, reflectors and countless other items.  Another reason that’s held me back is my current lack of skills to make full use of the kit.

I’ve taken around 7,000 photos with my Nikon since I got it about 10 months ago.  Pretty good going I suppose.  I’ve tried to play with all the features of the camera and figure them out on my own, usually with the help of videos on Youtube or from forum postings.  This has worked quite well for me, but I’m still missing some hands on instructor led sort of learning, professional guidance. 

Back in the mid’80’s when I was, well, much younger, I’d taken a photography course while I was an Air Cadet in the R.C.A.C #7 Penhold (Markerville) Squadron.  This was a 2 week course if I recall during the summer camp at CFB Penhold.  Without a doubt, those were was good times.  Anyhow, that course while clearly not working with Digital cameras really got my interest going in Photography.  I remember we’d all used the Pentax K1000, a very popular 35mm camera back in the day.  We’d had to learn to develop our own photos in the darkrooms provided, I’m not sure to this day which was more fascinating for me … taking the photos or developing them and printing them. 

Oh well, back to the now.  As I said I’ve been adding to my camera collection so aside from the D5000 and it’s stock 18-55mm lens I’ve also bought a Tamron 70-300mm lens.  It’s very nicely priced lens that gets some mixed reviews but I think overall it’s mostly positive.  It’s a decent compromise of cost and quality.   I’ve also got some of the other usual bits, a couple of tri-pods, and a recently purchased camera backpack all nicely compartmentalised for the safe storage and protection of the gear inside.  I’m not 100% how I feel about the backpack yet, but it does work better then how I use to carry my camera and lenses around.  I’m sure it’ll grow on me.

So, in the interest of trying to get back into photography and hopefully end up with better photos I’ve signed on for a two day course with Red Cloud, being taught in Nottingham this coming weekend (Oct 8-9).  The details of the course sounded interesting and designed for newbies and the cost wasn’t out of this world either.

I’ll close this posting off now and hopefully I’ll get more posted shortly after the course with an update / review of the course and hopefully show some photos taken during the course of the weekend..

Watch this space …

Wow, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve updated my blog.  Since my last update on Dec 15th there’s been loads happening.  Lets see.. we had Christmas, New Years, I’ve been to South Africa with work and now it’s March already.

I’m planning a lot of walking trips for this year, now if only the weather and time are kind to me I will actually be able to complete them.

The longest walk I’m planning is a walk around Lake Windermere, which is 45 miles.  That will be a multi-day trip with camping along the way.  I’m planning for 4 days but expect to complete it in 3 days. No idea when this will be but I’m guessing not until May.

Another walk I’m looking at has been inspired by this site Walkmate.co.uk – The Cheviot and The Big One. While it’s a single day walk, albeit a long one, I’m planning to take it slower and do it over 2 days with one nights wild camping (on the Scotland side of the walk near Windy Gyle.  We’ll see how that one goes.  I’d rather not do that one alone given the remoteness of it all, but then again it would be a nice confidence booster alone too.

Closer to home I’m looking at some walks along the Norfolk coast and even closer to home along the river cam.  One circular walk I’ve planned out is about 20km, it starts in Waterbeach, walking up the one side of the river and returning back the far side.  I’ve also looked at doing an 18km walk starting in Waterbeach ending in Ely then a quick train ride back to Waterbeach back to the car.  Both of these are known to be quite wet and mucky so I will have to wait for some nice dry weather, not interested in getting covered from head to toe in mud

More updates to come, I hope at more frequent rates then I have been for the last 6 months.

On Friday I left work at 1pm to meet up with my pal Dave (M0VMC) to head up to the Peak District to do some walking.  On our way we’d stopped off to check out a huge hole in the ground that was left as a result of about 3500 tons of stockpiled explosives all going off at one time.  It’s known as the Fauld Crater, located next to Hanbury, Staffs.

It was a short walk (check out the GPS log – 2.9km /1.8mi ) across a couple of fields to get to the craters edge.  It’s quite the hole, and must have been one hell of a bang back in the day when it up, then apparently came back down, all over Staffordshire.

After that it was off to Nottingham for the night before heading off to Bakewell, Derbyshire.

We’d got a bit of a late start on Saturday so it was pretty long day.  We’d started our walk at about 1130am, should really have been about 930am haha but meh it’s Saturday after all.

I’d parked at the Bakewell Bridge car park.  It was only £4.00 for the entire day (Midnight to Midnight).  Check out the walk and GPS log here (21km / 13.1mi).

In the above photos you could see the sun was shining nicely, well that didn’t last too long.  Shortly after walking past the old train station we’d got into rain and took shelter under a tree for about 15 or 20 mins not wanting to actually having to dig out our wet weather gear, we’d just wait it out.

We’d stopped at Hobb’s Cafe that has a spectacular view of Monsal Dale and the Viaduct in the valley

Having enjoyed a coffee and a chance to get out of the rain again we’d set off down into the valley below.  We’d actually ended up taking the “wrong” way down, it wasn’t the way down we’d planned to take but it was still just as nice.  We did get a bit worried when we’d approached a place we thought we should have been using to cross the river and were faced with with this…

This was clearly not going to be our way across the river.  We’d figured we might have to head back up the hill and down the other path.  But since we’d come this far we consulted the map more closely and it appeared there should be either a small bridge or more likely some stepping stones to get across a bit further down stream.  We were relieved to find a small bridge.

The rest of this part of the trail until we crossed the A6.  We’d search for another Geocache just on the other side of the A6 and after about 20 mins of chasing the GPS needles we had to admit defeat.  I didn’t bother loading up my phone with the details of the cache so we had no clues to work on and no phone signal to be able to look it up.  So, it was a good time to stop for lunch here.   While looking for the cache we’d found this cave near by.

Having consumed our lunch and had a nice break we set off on what would be the worse part of the route, little did we know it (we should have I suppose, but meh, why bother paying attention to all those brown contour lines on the map).  Well, to be honest it wasn’t so much a bunch of brown contour lines, it was more like big wide brown streak haha

There was quite a significant climb up of about 700 or so feet on a 35-45 degree slope, made extra nice going by the rain we’d had that morning.  All I can say is I’m glad we were going up and not down, that would have been a hell of a ride down over all those rocks.

Looking up the slope

Looking down the slope

The photos don’t really do justice to the actual grade on the hill.

Having finally gotten to the top and totally winded from that we had a pretty uneventful few miles with nothing but just some awesome scenery provided courtesy the Deberyshire countryside.

The rest of the walk back into Bakewell was pleasant except for when we had to pull our out rain gear.  With nothing to shelter under and about 300 meters of open fields to cross before getting to anything that might have helped us, the choices were clear haha.  Typical too, the rain had only lasted about 5 or 6 mins, we’d have been soaked without the rain gear but what can you do.

The last 2 miles or so were a real slog, everything was starting to ache from the pounding we’d been giving our legs and feet.  Interestingly enough though, neither of us were suffering from blisters or anything.  The soles of my feet were 100% fine, which for me was a first after a long walk like this.

We’d arrived back in Bakewell around 7pm and stopped for dinner in a pub in town before heading back to the car park and heading back to Cambridge.  Our total time from leaving the car and getting back to it was 8h 27m, of that included about 1 hour for dinner at the end and about another 90 mins or so of stops and breaks.

We’d arrived back in Cottenham around 1030pm after a very long day.  I had a nice hot bath after getting my pack unloaded and wet gear hung up to dry and dirty clothing into the wash.  Then it was to bed for a very nice sound sleep.

All of the photos from day can be seen HERE

I can’t wait for the next walk….

It was only a short time spent in Bonnie Scotland, but each time I go there I find the draw to return stronger and stronger.  It’s always been part of my life long plan to return to my patriarchal ancestral home of Scotland.  While the big cities aren’t dissimilar to the big cities anywhere else in the world, it’s the smaller towns and villages out in the county side that are the real draw for me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mega Scotland 2010 was very good to say the least. We’d got ourselves checked in about 11am or so I suppose.  We had a bit of a lazy morning on Saturday, but who can blame us after the 10hr marathon drive from Heathrow to Kinross.

Read the rest of this entry »