Category: Photo essays

Fruit at a market near Mike’s where most of our picnic supplies were purchased.

Metro stations in Paris have some odd names.

Basilica of the Sacré Cœur

Dramatic hair, dramatic expression.

Most of the best graffiti we saw in Paris had a colour wheel beside it. Does anyone know why?

With its inside-out appearance, the Pompidou Center reminds me of the Lloyds of London building.

One of the best things about Paris is how there always seem to be people out and about. This was taken at about 1:00am.

Mike on a big stone head.

The plaza containing the head. I almost broke my leg taking this photo, as I had to do it standing inside a fountain. The metal grates at the bottom that seemed firmly fixed actually shifted aside quite easily, plunging you into the shaft under them.

A man vaguely resembling Lenin stands on the Pont des Arts.

One nice feature of the Louvre is how contemporary art is included in the middle of some of the galleries. Along with these statues, there was a huge polished silver mirror installation in one of the Egyptian galleries.

Brass and marble sculptures are my favourite form of visual art.

It is interesting to watch living artists working from the examples provided by dead and venerated ones.

Along with art and historical artifacts, the Louvre includes the apartments of Napoleon III. This adds something like a palace tour to the whole experience.

Even the graffiti near the Louvre is none too bad.

The 96 acres of the former Wadham estate contain a lot of nice plant life.

They also have a flock of decorative black sheep that wander in the valley that runs down to Branscombe and the sea.

The light on our last evening was especially lovely: warm sunset light, filtered through a translucent cloud that reduced the contrast.

More interesting looking plants.

With the support of the Wadham Foundation, we had tasty food throughout our week.

This house, just across the back alley from the place where we were staying, looks exactly like the white rabbit’s house from Alice in Wonderland doesn’t it? We’ll smoke the monster out!

Braced against the wall, this photo shows John contemplating an interesting archway in the former home of Dorothy and Nicholas Wadham.

The former bedroom of Dorothy Wadham, though the bed is a recent reconstruction.

While I was concentrating on getting my thesis written, most other members of the trip were more concerned with reading. While much was academic, Harry Potter and crime-fighting monks were not wholly excluded.

In my hermitage, I worked to compile notes and thoughts into a thesis draft.

For those who were confused, the photos appearing while I was in Devon were not, in fact, taken while I was there. I had set them up to appear at regular intervals in my absence, so as to have some kind of new content appearing on the site. These are the first images from Devon that I have posted on this page:

This is the main area of the converted barn in which we were staying. I was the only group member to sleep in the smaller, quieter, and much colder ‘annex.’ We visited the main house once, for dinner.

This OS map shows the countryside surrounding the Edge Barton estate, where we were staying. On our first full day in Devon, we walked down the valley to the coastline.

The path down to Branscombe was a muddy one.

Here is the south coast of England. If this picture had been taken in the opposite direction, a large grounded ship could be seen.

Pheasants are pretty fearless animals. The camera was about a foot away when I took this.