Posts tagged with "travel"

UK Detour: Day 16, Ullapool

We suc­cess­ful­ly wrapped up prin­ci­ple pho­tog­ra­phy the pre­vi­ous day, which freed up the next for get­ting b‑roll footage. This was also the day we had to make the 12 hour dri­ve back to London, and after all was said and done, this jour­ney began at 4pm.

It was just me and Mike on the way back, shar­ing more and more our­selves, as we dis­cov­ered that exhaus­tion makes the best inter­ro­ga­tion tool. We kept each oth­er awake for the entire dri­ve, though I start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing by the last hour. By the end, I think we knew each oth­er bet­ter than some of our own friends.

baby crab

Found this baby crab on the beach, hid­ing in an oys­ter shell, and small enough to fit on the tip of my fin­ger.

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UK Detour: Day 14, Ullapool

Mike, Liverpool Liz, and Jean-Marc con­sumed a bot­tle of wine each the night we arrived, owing to good spir­its and good friends. The result of this meant our sub­ject was­n’t in top form to be filmed or inter­viewed, so we spent the day loca­tion scout­ing in near­by towns instead. This includ­ed Achiltibuie, which had a post office about the size of my bed­room, open only from 9:00am–12:30pm. Not that Ullapool itself is much big­ger, at around 1200 inhab­i­tants. The air here is won­der­ful.

I got to use Mike’s beau­ti­ful lit­tle Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 L prime, which is a lens I’d nev­er buy for myself, or even con­sid­ered using before because the focal length is between where I like to be. But it’s per­fect for land­scapes and tack sharp.

sunrise

The view from the back porch of Jean-Marc’s rus­tic house, nes­tled on the edge of Ullapool. A great thing to wake up to.

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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

UK Detour: Day 12, London

By my third day in London, which was essen­tial­ly my last, I was push­ing myself to the lim­it of exhaus­tion. We had to pri­or­i­tize each activ­i­ty, as we there were so many things to do in such a short amount of time.

My impres­sion of London is one of diver­si­ty, his­to­ry, and para­noia. CCTV cam­eras are every­where, thanks to Britain’s dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being the most CCTV mon­i­tored coun­try in Europe.

London Night

Rainy London nights.

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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