#worldwindows2020

[riotraze]

Adding my (slightly late) contribution to @gumnut-logic​‘s World Windows 2020. Welcome to Sleaford Bay, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. We'd planned to give my DSLR a good workout, but got out here and realised the batteries were flat so had to settle for some phone photography.

[godsliltippy]

World Windows 2020

Welcome to Topsail Island!

This is one of the islands lining the outerbanks of North Carolina.

The waters are a little chilly, but worth wading into.

Surprisingly, there are not a lot of tourist areas around this beach. Most of the structures are homes or villas. We were hard pressed to find a hotel. Honestly, this is one of the most peaceful beach towns I've ever been to and we loved it!

Hope y'all enjoy the images!

[lisas-song]

I’ve been enjoying the #worldwindows2020 posts, and thought I’d add in the place where I grew up: Southwestern Virginia (US).  My hometown is an itty-bitty place - seriously, we only had two traffic lights when I lived there, and I’m pretty sure one of them was for show.  They put in a third when Walmart opened.  :-) 

First pic is of the town, Pearisburg, from the top of a nearby mountain.  Our house was kind of just off the right side of the picture.  The Appalachian Trail (a 2160 mi hiking trail that goes through 14 states) passes over the mountain and through town.  The river is the New River, which ironically is one of the oldest rivers in the world.

And here’s the mountain itself, which is called Angel’s Rest.  This isn’t quite the angle from my bedroom window, but it’s close.

Not far from Pearisburg is Mountain Lake, where part of the movie “Dirty Dancing” was filmed.  In the foreground you can see grass/weeds - the folks running the hotel were alarmed to discover in 2008 that the lake tends to drain itself every few centuries, so for a while there was a mountain without a lake.  I understand it’s slowly refilling now.  (My mom and step-dad got married on the gazebo!)

And last is the Cascades waterfall, at the end of a 2 mile trail.  I’ve been up there a few times and it never disappoints.

Hope everyone enjoys!

[olliepig]

World Windows 2020

Here’s my little contribution for the lovely @gumnut-logic​ world windows - Edinburgh, Scotland 

This is where I was lucky enough to grow up And even though i’m not based here any more, it’s only a 50 minute drive to my parents house in the south of the city. (All of these photos are actually my dads as he is a vastly superior photographer to me and has kindly given his permission for me to borrow them for this)

Edinburgh castle and city taken from the Braid Hills which is where my parents house is.  Although it’s zoomed in, this is essentially the view I have from my bedroom window when I visit. The river is the Forth and the hills on the background are actually in Fife which is another county.

The Forth bridges, again taken from the Braid Hills. The big pointy one is the newly completed Queensferry Crossing which takes road traffic north from Edinburgh to Fife and beyond. Behind it, you can see the towers of the old (and imaginatively named) Forth Road Bridge which the new crossing replaced. Nestled almost under the bigger bridges are the red humps of the Forth Rail Bridge which is 130 years old now and still going strong.

Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags in winter, still looking north from the Braid Hills. A lot of the topography in Edinburgh comes from the last ice age where  the volcanic rock of the city formed an impenetrable barrier to the ice sheets. The softer rock was gouged away leaving the old plugs from long extinct volcanoes exposed. Arthur’s Seat and the Crags are great examples of that, as is Castle Rock.

Another view of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags, this time from closer to the city centre and with a sliver of the castle rock in the picture too. One thing I love about the city is that you’re never far from green space and a walk up the various hills is a popular activity on nice days  

The city centre. The dark rock on the left is Castle Rock again so this is right in the heart of the city. The giant rocket shaped thing on the right is the Scott Monument which was built in 1840 to commemorate the writer Sir Walter Scott, and the big building with the clock tower is the Balmoral Hotel. The columns in the background are a national monument to the Scottish casualties from the Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately when they were building it they ran out of money so it’s been unfinished since 1829. Next to it is Nelsons monument which was once used as a timekeeping device by sailors in the Forth river as there’s a ball on the top which slowly rises to the top and then drops at 1pm every day. I think it still works although don’t quote me on that! 

Anyway, there’s a wee tour around Scotland’s capital! Sorry it turned into a history lesson  - apparently school wasn’t completely lost on me!

[gumnut-logic]

World Windows 2020

Today’s windows:

Visit Long Bay, Auckland, New Zealand with @onereyofstarlight​

Visit Adelaide beaches, South Australia, with me.

This is for @plantmuffin​ , stemming from a brief discussion about beaches this morning.

Adelaide sits on the coast of St Vincent’s Gulf, facing west. This makes for great sunsets and moody ocean. The majority of our weather comes from the west/south-west, so that leaves our side of the gulf a little more vulnerable to the weather, though most of the time it is mostly sheltered surf. But as you can see in the ‘mild’ storm at Glenelg above, the jetties all along the coast, can take a pounding and most of them have lost their ends and used to be much longer in sailing days or the early nineteen hundreds.

Above: Cranky Glenelg Beach 14 Apr 2018. Glenelg is the main tourism beach in Adelaide. It is where the colonists landed back in 1836. It is the destination of the only tram left in South Australia. It doesn’t usually look like this :D

Below is Somerton Beach, first looking south, then north, my closest beach (about 7.5kms from my house). Somerton Beach is the next named beach south of Glenelg (really it is just one great long beach from Outer Harbour in the north to Kingston Park in the south, but we give bits of it different names, usually associated with the suburb attached to it. You used to be able to walk the length of it in one go, but they have since built marinas and things that interrupt the coastline.  If you head out directly west, about 50kms out, you’d hit the Yorke Peninsula.

West Beach, to the north of Glenelg, looking north...

As you move up the coast (north) the sand strip gets wider because of longshore drift. This is Grange Jetty (in 2006, haven’t been there for sometime as I live towards the south of the city).

There are multiple jetties jutting out into the Gulf the entire length of the coast. This is a thing for South Australia because before roads were built, the only way to get anywhere was by sea. Many of these jetties remain and are used by fishermen. Walking the jetty is kinda a tradition. See a jetty, you walk out to the end of it regardless of the weather. There are so many jetties along the coast in Adelaide, you can see them from each other. This is a shot of Henley Jetty to the south of Grange Jetty, from Grange Jetty. In the very distance you can see the hotels of Glenelg and beyond that is the Adelaide Hills which meet the sea at Kingston Park, ending the massive Holdfast Bay.

The most northern beaches are massively wide with sand. This is Largs North (I think). It again was a very windy day even though it was December at the time.

But the closest beaches to me are Somerton and Brighton, to the south of Glenelg, and these are the beaches I grew up visiting to ‘swim’ as a kid.

Brighton Beach...

Beyond Brighton Beach to the south is Kingston Park and the coastline dissolves into a rocky shore that has its own beauty.

From Brighton Jetty...

Kingston Park rocks...

And yes, I like taking photos at sunset :D

So, yeah, manhandled beaches, but these are the beaches I grew up with. To the south we have the Fleurieu Peninsula and our connection with the Southern Ocean. Travel a good 100kms north and you reach the top of the Gulf and can turn onto the Yorke Peninsula that has its own beauty, but these are the Adelaide beaches. The beaches of my home :D

[gumnut-logic]

World Windows 2020

25 April 2020

Today’s Windows:

I’ve lost a post from @lightning1999 I can’t find it :’( Will repost it if I can (I dropped the ball badly).

Visit Piccaninnie Ponds, South Australia with me.

These posts take a considerable amount of time and with my return to work, I haven’t been able to fit them in :( I may continue them about once a week if I can.

If you have some favourite places you would like to share while we are all stuck at home, simply post some photos and tag #WorldWindows2020 (tagging me also helps so I can add your Window to the list). Remember, your backyard is exotic to people on the other side of the world (like me).

Today I have dug up an event from March 2006. I was in the south-east of South Australia on a beach where the Piccaninnie Ponds release into the ocean.

Map for Piccaninnie Ponds

The south-east of South Australia is a geologically fascinating area with a combination of Australia’s youngest volcanoes and a limestone landscape full of caves. I’m not going to go into depth about them here (plenty of time for that later), but I will mention that the limestone that underlies the area transports water in the form of springs. Piccaninnie Ponds is one such major spring. It is a world famous dive site and an important karst wetland.

But anyway, funnily enough that isn’t what this post is about.

This is about me arriving on the beach where the wetlands drain to the sea at about 5pm towards the end of March 2006.

This is what the beach looks like during the middle of the day (this photo is from my most recent visit in October 2018).

The water in the foreground is fresh water gushing into the ocean from the springs.

In 2006 we were on our way back from Nelson, Victoria, just over the border (this beach is the last bit of South Australian beach before you hit the border) and  we stopped to walk on the beach (one of my favourite activities). I took one look at the sky and decided we were staying for sunset (approximately three hours away...yes, my hubby is the most patient man on the planet). I am so glad we did.

This is where the springs emoerge from the bushland.

I got somewhat fascinated by the light on the water.

And the sky.

There was a change coming in and it was perfect.

Towards the end there were some boys playing cricket on the beach.

It was an absolutely magical sunset. Hubby ended up dragging me off the beach as the sun finally started to disappear.

There are plenty more photos, but I’ll leave it there. I do have to say that, taking the moment (or the three hours) to watch the world around you...it’s worth it.

Nutty

(the world is a bloody amazing place)

[gumnut-logic]

World Windows 2020

19 April 2020

Today’s Windows:

Visit Lucas Creek, Auckland, New Zealand with @onereyofstarlight​

Visit Christchurch, New Zealand with @onereyofstarlight​

Visit the Great Ocean Road, Port Campbell Coast, Victoria, Australia with me.

Thank you wonderful peeps for participating. If you have some favourite places you would like to share while we are all stuck at home, simply   post some photos and tag #WorldWindows2020 (tagging me also helps so I can add your Window to the list).  Remember, your backyard is exotic to people on the other side of the world (like me).

Today I’m going to throw many, many photos of ocean and rock at you. In fact, the day you travel the length of the western half of the Great Ocean Road, otherwise known as the Port Campbell Coast, you will be so sick of rock that the world famous Twelve Apostles will just be meh :D

So starting from where we left off last time travelling west from Apollo Bay, you wander through some more temperate rainforest, through some rolling hills and then things start to change. As the road turns north-west, you come up against a sandstone coast that is subject to the full power of the most violent ocean on the planet.

The majority of the weather that hits our southern coasts comes from the west to south-west. Consequently, any coast facing in that direction takes a pounding. The eastern side of the Great Ocean Road still has open ocean to contend with, but it is a little more protected. The western side is not.

Check out the satellite image and zoom in to see all the rocky and wobbly coastline.

Hey, look, it is the Twelve Apostles as you will never see them in the tourist brochures. This is because I was there in the middle of winder. It was a trip to Melbourne for Hubby’s birthday and since he managed to get born in the depths of the coldest parts of the year in one of the coldest capital cities, yay, we get to visit in winter.

But at least it makes for moody lighting.

It should also be noted that there are not twelve apostles. They keep falling down. I don’t know if there was originally twelve, but I’ve only counted eight and I know at least one has fallen down in my lifetime.

There are a large number of spots to stop and look at on the side of the road.

This is Island Arch. (EDIT: Um, while looking up the London Bridge collapse, I discovered that this collapsed in 2009. It is now two islands. This photo is from 2007.) It is a part of a group of formations that include the Razorback, Mutton Bird Island (yes, it has a colony, I think) and Loch Arde Gorge. Loch Arde Gorge has been used for film making several times in the past, and in the actual past it was the sight of a shipwreck. The video at the top of this post was me on the beach in Loch Arde Gorge, with my kids (hence the interruption part way through) in 2015. Just some wave action. It is a very moody beach.

Back in March 2007, just outside Port Campbell we encountered something else along side that road.

Port Campbell is one of a few towns on the stretch of road. I want to actually stay there one day. It looks like a fascinating place to explore, but we usually drive straight through as we view the Great Ocean Road in transit, rather than a destination.

This is the remains of the London Bridge rock formation. It fell down.

Here is a Wikipedia article on it. I did manage to see it as a teenager. It collapsed in January 1990. I think I saw it in about 1986.

The last thing to see before you make it to Warrnambool is the Bay of Islands, which is lovely, but I don’t seem to have a great shot of it.

So here is someone else’s drone footage :D

I hope you enjoyed this World Window ::hugs you all:: Thanks for reading and watching :D

Nutty

(this is about 700kms from my backyard)

[godsliltippy]

A Whole Lotta Green

Since we can't really go anywhere, here's as close to a natural view as I could get :3

I live in farm country and when spring hits, we get a tone of green before the crops start coming in.

(plus if I take a step back, I'm in the road XD)