Valensole, France ~ 8th & 9th July

Monday, 31 July 2023



 Had a great weekend in Provence around the lavender region of Valensole, France 8th & 9th July ..

Flew with EasyJet to Marseille Airport which was cheap enough then hired a car with Europcar which definitely wasn’t cheap £388 for two days .. Pants down ..

It’s only an hours drive to Valensole then spent the day driving round to the many lavender fields looking for my sunset location which I found on the Plateau to return to later ..

My hotel was Les Chambres d hotes de Valensole through booking.com checked in etc and a short drive back for sunset …


Sunrise was from the main D6 road near Terraroma and with plenty of other people with the same idea getting a model in your image was fairly easy ..



Nice weekend away a bit more expensive than I expected it to be still better than staying at home ..




Vienna, Austria ~ 1st & 2nd July

Tuesday, 18 July 2023

 Spent the weekend of 1st & 2nd of July sightseeing in Vienna, Austria ..

Flew out early Saturday morning with Austrian Airlines and then travelled around with trains and the underground going to all the major locations in the city …
















Unfortunately some of the locations were closed like office buildings for spiral stairs etc ..

Getting around was so cheap with a city pass but forgetting to buy a train ticket back to the airport and getting fined €105 wiped that out …

Enjoyable trip …

Hamburg … 24th & 25th June

Thursday, 29 June 2023

 Flew out Saturday morning with EasyJet 24th June arriving early afternoon and got the train in to Speicherstadt, the old warehouse region.

Two trains and one underground later all on time, clean, modern and cheap unlike the Uk ..

Really easy to navigate and move around using offline map of Hamburg on Google maps.

I visited quite a few photographic locations  ..


Above is the courtyard of the Sprinkenhof building ..


Below is the Chilehaus building and the other glass building is across the main road ..



Had the best Vegan burger at Vincent Vegan right outside the main Hamburg Station before trying my luck with a couple of office buildings but as it’s a Saturday I had my fingers crossed, Hirschfeld-haus I just couldn’t find after walking up & down a few roads in the area, the other Esplanadebau was closed and as the temperature was 28 degrees I had a cold beer before back tracking ..

Sunset was 10:10pm and I watched as it set at the well known part of the warehouse region of Spiecherstadt,  I took with me a Gorillapod to wrap on the railing but this picked up every vibration so definitely needed a tripod which I didn’t bring in hand luggage.


I waited till gone midnight for the lights to be switched on but gave up finding out later that they start in August blue hour only and October fully on so a winter visit is needed..

My hotel for the night was Elbgalarie Hotel near to my morning location..

A walk to the underground and one stop later I’m at Uberseequarter subway station, either end of the platform are escalators as you can see below ..




A bit more sightseeing like the Elbtunnel & more of the warehouse region then some lunch before it was time to get the train back to the airport..





Bulgaria ~ May '19

Monday, 27 May 2019

This trip was from Sofia airport on Thursday 16th and back on Sunday 19th with the original plan of some alpine birding around Maljovista but the weather put pay to that, so we followed the better weather conditions and started towards the Plains and Steppe around Pazardzdik ..

Black-headed Bunting

Red-backed Shrike


Hotel for the night was Villa Santa Maria at Batak overlooking the lake with great views at sunrise 



We then drove up towards Dospat highest point at only 1,600m but finding Ring Ouzel, Firecrest and Crested Tit, back to the hotel for breakfast ..

Firecrest

Firecrest

Firecrest

Crag Martin


Aldomirvtsi Marsh and Dragoman Marsh were other locations which produced some good birding ..

Stonechat

Black-headed Bunting

Great Reed Warbler

Red-backed Shrike

Black-headed Wagtail 

Black-headed Wagtail

Stonechat

Savi's Warbler

Savi's Warbler


And Sunday morning was from a hide with Traventuria this is there link ..

Sofia bird Hide

Tree Sparrow

Sombre Tit

Tree Sparrow

Tree Sparrow

Tree Sparrow

Tree Sparrow


Due to the recent rain there was plenty of water about for drinking so we only had 4 species come in to the pool hide but this has the potential to be good but with a limited light window due to its orientation facing south ..

This trip was a month later than last year and the bird photography was a lot more difficult probably due to this .. 

Cape May, New Jersey ~ U.S.A - Apr '19

Wednesday, 8 May 2019

So the plan was to have an evening session birding but a small flight delay from Houston to Philadelphia put pay to that ..
We tried a few locations around the Cape but it was relatively slow going, from first light till mid-afternoon on the 29th April before heading back to the airport ..

 American Robin

 Killdeer

 Killdeer

 American Robin

 Chipping Sparrow

 Northern Mockingbird

 American Oystercatcher

 American Oystercatcher

 Carolina Chickadee

 Prairie Warbler

Song Sparrow

Birding and bird photography is so much more enjoyable abroad than it is in the U.K just need to do more of it ...