A Sunday morning walk that took us past Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge. The bridge opened in 1864, and I always find it quite something that the bridge can still carry modern vehicles (though nothing larger than cars).
Photographs
Hot air balloons over Bristol yesterday evening. The weather was glorious for a week into October, but I imagine that it was cold up there. 🥶
Bath is a beautiful city which itself became a World Heritage Site in 1987. I’d forgotten how much so. I haven’t visited for many years. It is only fifteen minutes up the track from Bristol. By chance some friends from Maui were visiting there last night and so my wife jumped on a train to have dinner with them. Afterwards we wandered back through the city, a city of Roman remains and Georgian architecture, to the train station.
Bath Cathedral
Walking through the city
City center
Hot baths
Georgian columns
Got to keep those visiting, thirsty dogs hydrated.
Good morning Bristol.
We spent the day in Bruton, Somerset, exploring the town, having a delicious lunch and visiting the Hauser & Wirth Museum with gardens designed by Piet Oudolf.
Catching up on some photographs from the last few days. We went down to visit Windmill Hill City Farm a few days ago. Set on four acres in the center of the city of Bristol, it has grown so much over the decades that I didn’t recognize it. An inspiring venture and the first of its kind in Bristol.
I never feel as though I have arrived in Bristol until I have taken a walk across and am standing on The Downs.
Thursday, September 29, 2022 →
I love this.
Haleakala on Maui with Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawai’i visible while flying out of Honolulu. You might have to zoom in for a better look.
TWA Hotel, JFK
Restroom signs, Hawaiian style, at Honolulu airport.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022 →
A Tuesday evening rainbow (a second is just visible) 🌈
We went for a late morning walk in Waihou Spring Forest Reserve in Olinda. Being up country, the air was fresh and cooler. A short but very pleasant walk.
And this little character was waiting for us when we got back to the car.
A Sunday rainbow…
…and a little later a double rainbow. 🌈
Clouds covering the moon last night.
Your Thursday evening rainbow 🌈
I was happy to see this this morning, nine days after testing positive for COVID. I’m still not feeling 100% - fatigued, that taste in my mouth - and so I’m pacing myself right now. However, I felt just well enough to pop out and pick some groceries this lunchtime. Small wins.
I love the smell of a freshly fallen lime.
The moon rising last night…
The moon setting this morning…
This evening’s rainbow 🌈
Saturday evening’s picnic table.
I’m not sure what is going on in this photo, taken in Tibet in 1995. I believe that it was taken near to Drepung Loseling Monastery and that the monastery just visible in the middle right might be Nechung Monastery, home of the Nechung Oracle. Both monasteries have been reestablished in exile in India, Nechung in Dharamsala in north India, and Drepung in the south in Kanaktaka State.
Given that it is center stage, I think that I was trying to capture the run down tractor/cart in the middle of the photo.
Another slide coming out of my evening going through old travel photos. Like yesterday’s image, this image is a photograph of a slide projected onto the wall.
The photo was taken at Drepung Loseling monastery in Lhasa, Tibet in 1995. At the time of the Chinese invasion, Drepung was the largest monastery in the world with 10,000 monks - a small town.
The picture shows my Buddhist teacher, Ven. Geshe Damcho Yonten (on the right), speaking with an old monk who had stayed behind in Tibet following the invasion. This was Geshe-la’s (as he was affectionately known) first and only visit back to Tibet having fled the country in 1959.
This photograph shows the village of Zhöl at the foot of the south wall of Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The photograph was taken during a visit to Tibet in 1995, and is actually a photo of the original slide projected onto a wall a couple of evenings ago while I was going through pictures from my travels. I have left in the clipping in the top left so that most of Chagpori Hill can be seen. The Tibetan Medical Institute used to be on top of this hill, but was destroyed during the Chinese invasion in 1959.
I had known that Zhöl was under danger of having all its inhabitants moved out, but did not realize that this had happened. It turns out that in the summer of 1995,
the families residing in the village were evicted from their homes and resettled to the North of Lhasa. A number of buildings that were not deemed part of the monument at the time were demolished in the inner Shol while the additions comprising the outer Zhöl were razed.1
Opportunistic rosemary plant growing on a dead Hāpu’u tree.
Spending this evening going through some old slides from travel back in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Emphasis on some. I have a lot of slides.
Sunrise through the window this morning.
Interesting clouds floating over the house.
I have just made use of my step-daughter’s infrared sauna to help rest some weary muscles. Yesterday was an extremely exhausting day, while at the same time also being very satisfying, as I trimmed and leveling off our hedge under a hot sun.
