Charlie's WorldSummer in England 2015 – part 3: High Rocks at Tunbridge Wells
Posted on September 12, 2015
At least forty years ago, my Grandparents took me and I think my middle sister to play on some rocks in Tunbridge Wells.
I remember my Grandads white Daimler with red leather interior and that distinctive Daimler/Jaguar leathery walnut smell and I remember looking out over the rocks from Mount Ephraim.
Near there, there’s a place called High Rocks which was supposed to be pretty fun, so off we went to have fun and see if my memory could guide me back 40 years. Read More
Summer in England 2015 – part 2: rowing on the river at Tonbridge
Posted on August 29, 2015
The next day was overcast and had rain forecast, but we’re made of tough water resistant English stock – no hiding inside for us!
We had wanted to hire a boat and cruise down the river at Tonbridge, but the exchange rate was terrible and my $AU are now worth about 30% less in £GBP than last year, so we had to downscale our ambitions a little bit. Read More
Summer in England 2015 – Part 1: Arrival.
Posted on August 29, 2015
It’s that time of year again when I go back to spend some quality time with the kids in England.
English summer is a magical time and really shows off the country to its absolute best – if you’re going to go – then July and August, even though it’s probably the busiest time, is probably the best. Read More
Experiments with motion
Posted on July 25, 2015
Timing is everything.
Usually, work and my commute dictate my timetable and I don’t get an opportunity to get to the beach with the camera, but weekends are a different story.
And as luck would have it today, timing lined up perfectly and I got down to the beach with the versatile little X100T to take some abstract sunset pictures. Read More
First signs of spring
Posted on July 19, 2015
Seasons are a bit vague here in Perth.
If you judged Perth climate by UK summer – we have summer all year round.
Autumn is a week of changing leaves between 35 degree summer days and the start of rain and a cool change
Winter comes and goes, but only exerts itself hard enough to warrant a jacket for a few weeks. It can be wet though – much wetter than a UK winter.
Which leaves Spring. Spring is hard to pin down – it can be wet and cold but also hot and dry like summer. If viewed by the calendar Spring definition, Perth has 2 or 3 seasons during that time.
The Aboriginal Noongar people that inhabited the Perth area before colonisation had defined 6 seasons. We should use these really, they make a great deal more sense here than the English seasons the settlers brought with them. Read More
Sundays on the bike
Posted on July 11, 2015
Winter in Perth has been a bit two faced this year. If it’s not lovely sunny and very unwinter like, it’s been hammering it down with rain and utterly miserable! Anyways – after an whole weekend of torrential rain and damp overcast skies, the sun poked through around lunchtime on Sunday and the afternoon was perfect for a ride and scrub in that new back tyre before I took it out off road Read More
The mighty DR650 gets a new shoe (and other farkles)
Posted on June 21, 2015
The sheer power of the mighty DR650 means that tyres don’t last long..
Ok, thats a total lie, it only has 40bhp, but after a year and maybe 10,000km on and off road, the rear tyre was shot and it was time for a new one.
One of the things I need to be able to do is fix a flat when I’m off on one of my adventures, so I thought I’d kill 2 birds with one stone – change the tyre myself so I could practice the procedure for getting the wheel off and fixing a puncture.
Now in theory, a motorbike is exactly the same as my mountain bike.
Disk brake, chain, knobbly tyres, inner tube. So it was going to be easy, right?
Ha!
Winter sunset.
Posted on June 4, 2015
As winter approaches, the skies become awesome again.
Not that clear blue skies with endless sunshine over summer isn’t awesome – it’s just that autumn and winter do sunsets better.
I was on the roof at the weekend, clearing out the guttering, as you do (well, as we do here in Australia – the gutters are stupidly designed and can’t cope with the rainfall we have) and I spotted that the sky was looking pretty interesting out over the ocean (which I can see from the top of my roof!) so I packed up the ladder and headed out to the beach. Read More
More inky goodness – sheen and shading
Posted on May 24, 2015
As I previously mentioned in this post – I love fountain pens and the effects that various inks have on different kinds of paper.
Typically, cheap paper just absorbs ink and causes all kinds of nasty effects like feathering (where the line bleeds out and becomes feathered and not clean) and bleed through (where the paper can’t take the ink and it just soaks right through.
When this happens, the other properties of the inks get lost.
But get decent paper and something else happens.. Read More
Storm season
Posted on May 23, 2015
You know winter is coming to Perth when the rains arrive.
We have a remarkably livable climate here.
For most of the year it’s pretty much awesome – can be a bit too hot in the summer, and the lack of insulation and central heating can make winter a bit chilly, but for the most part – it’s peachy.
But did you know we get more rain in Perth than in London?
Most people in Perth wouldn’t know it either, because for 4 or 5 months, it hardly rains. But it catches up. Oh boy does it. And Winter is storm season. Read More
Charlie's World 