At the start of last week I had a weeks vacation from work, from the Monday I took a 4 night, 5 day break along the coast. I returned home on Friday with very sore eyes, but as it was a bright day and I’d been doing quite a bit of driving, thought no more about it. I’ve spent this last week feeling absolutely crap with the flu. Turns out the sore eyes were just the start! Hence the lack of posts this week – sorry about that! I’m pleased to report that although I still have a chesty cough that sounds a lot worse than it is, I’m finally starting to feel a bit better.
While I was away I shot a few rolls of film, it’s what I do, how I interact with things, highlights what grabs my interest. 3 rolls of colour (pre-dating my trip) and 2 XP2’s are at the lab, I’m awaiting their return. 8 rolls of Foma 200, bulk loaded, have been developed in a new batch of Barry Thornton (Metol) Two Bath developer, and I’ve now scanned the first 3 rolls.
Whenever I drive to a holiday spot I always try and break the journey, not because I have any trouble driving 70 miles in one stretch, it’s more that it’s an opportunity to see something that I wouldn’t necessarily drive to from home. This time, Portchester Castle was the target, and I’m pleased to report was well signposted, and a car park with a working and easy to use meter all in place! The castle was built about 1740 years ago, plenty of time to erect a sensible road sign, but I’m always amazed how bad that often is! Anyway, apart from the road signs and the parking the next pleasant surprise was the castle – it’s huge! What I hadn’t realized it that the outer walls are a Roman fort dating from about 280AD, apparently the best preserved north of the alps! The area enclosed is about 36,000 square meters. In one corner the Norman castle was built.
The keep was heightened sometime in the mid 12th century and has now been stabilised and exhibition spaces made inside, via quite a few stairs it’s possible to get right onto the roof!
In the photo above (left) we are looking south towards the sea, in fact in the top right of that photo, you can make out the Spinnaker Tower of Portsmouth. The right hand photo shows the white Paulsgrove Hill Cliffs. Back inside the tower, the steps going down seemed worse than they were going up, so I stopped here and there to look at the rooms.
Then finally back at ground level I had a look around what was Richard II’s palace, then outside the castle, the church and gatehouse – that’s another post!
Chatter: For this series of posts I used the Canon EOS 30 with the Canon STM 40mm lens. I use this combo a lot! The film was, once again Foma 200, bulk loaded, although I’m nearing the end of this 30.5 meters already, especially with the help of this trip! Film developed at the kitchen sink in Barry Thornton’s (Metol) Two Bath developer, I’m liking the combination of the two! I give 5 mins on bath A and another 5 in B, the stop and fix in the usual way.
