Posts in category "Video"

UK Detour: Day 13, London to Ullapool

Mike ini­tial­ly told me I could stay with him for three days, because he soon had to trav­el to Scotland to film a doc­u­men­tary. Over the phone before I even arrived to meet him, how­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that I come with him to Scotland to make it the trip of a life­time. I could­n’t say no; to see Scotland has always been a dream of mine. And see­ing as how we used the same pho­to equip­ment, I could give him a hand with his film while cut­ting my teeth on using a lot of gear I’ve yet to afford.

So we loaded up the Range Rover with a ridicu­lous amount of gear, and left by 6am just so we could make it there before too late and to record the tran­si­tion from sun­rise to night. swing­ing by to pick up Liverpool Liz as anoth­er cam­era oper­a­tor before leav­ing. Mike set up his 20D to take a pic­ture every 10 sec­onds, and we made this stop-motion video.

The jour­ney took 13 hours by car, straight up to the north-west coast of Scotland to small town called Ullapool, where his friend Jean-Marc lived, who was also a sub­ject in Mike’s per­son­al project. We made it as far as Inverness before the bat­ter­ies died, which is about 900km (and anoth­er 90km to Ullapool), and took about ten and a half hours. If you watch the GPS in the video, you get a fast-for­ward­ed view of our path through the rain and the Scottish moun­tains.

M&S egg sandwich

This was a pret­ty damn good sand­wich, from a Marks and Spencer road stop. They had a huge selec­tion of types too.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

A passenger in London

To get from loca­tion to loca­tion, Mike took us around on his yel­low 500cc Yamaha T‑Max, my first time on a motor­cy­cle. It was a sen­sa­tion­al feel­ing to be mov­ing so freely in the open air, even in a London win­ter (you can see ear­ly morn­ing con­den­sa­tion on his wind­shield in some shots and the win­dows of some cars). I’d be lying if I said I was­n’t now con­sid­er­ing a bike for my next vehi­cle.

I thought I’d have to keep hold­ing onto the side rails to pre­vent myself from falling off, but quick­ly real­ized it was­n’t nec­es­sary, as I felt sta­ble at every turn and on every bump. The physics still baf­fle me.

One advan­tage of using the bike is that you don’t have to pay a con­ges­tion charge, some­thing used by the admin­is­tra­tion of London to dis­cour­age traf­fic and fund the trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Otherwise, it’s an £8 fee when enter­ing the down­town-ish area on a week­day between 7am and 6pm (and a £150 fine if you dri­ve through with­out pay­ing). Also, you can weave between the gaps in cars and make your way to the head of traf­fic lines.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

UK Detour, Day 11: London

Mike was between jobs, so I got to shad­ow him with­out being too intru­sive. That not only meant I got to check out his favourite haunts, but meet more impor­tant peo­ple in his life.

At one point, I had to with­draw some cash (since Mike had pre­vi­ous­ly lied to me about my cred­it card not work­ing), and it was strange to sud­den­ly find three dif­fer­ent kinds of cur­ren­cy in my wal­let.

men on benches

So close yet so alone.

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France: Day 9, Rochefort-en-Terre

It’s so nice to be accept­ed into anoth­er fam­i­ly, and to be able to live the way they do for a bit. You get a taste of some­one else’s life and habits. That’s when a trip is more than just a vis­it to a dif­fer­ent place, and becomes an expe­ri­ence.

And on our last day in Rochefort-en-Terre, there were still things to do and dish­es to eat.

cleaning mussels

Cleaning the mus­sels for steam­ing in white wine and onions. This is how Frédéric won Misun’s heart.

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France, Day 8: La Roche-Bernard

La Roche-Bernard is a small com­mune 30km due south of Rochefort en Terre, with about the same pop­u­la­tion. It’s said that the town has more boats than peo­ple; the rich leave their ves­sels in the port until they have a few weeks of vaca­tion, and take off from here after arriv­ing by car or train.

It was orig­i­nal­ly a viking colony, tak­en up as a fort because it con­trols access to the riv­er that runs through it. The hills above are still pock­marked with stone walls and canons on the hills above.

La Vilaine

La Vilaine is the main riv­er run­ning through La Roche-Bernard, flow­ing out into the Atlantic Ocean.

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