Somerford Park Horse Trials

Alastair BegleyEquestrian Short Link

Today I headed up to Cheshire to take pictures of my sister, Katherine Begley, competing at Somerford Park. She was competing at Intermediate level and this was her first intermediate since getting her new horse, Gorgeous George IV. I have been to many events but few that ran as quickly as this one, once the dressage had been completed early it was straight onto the show jumping and then after that straight onto the cross country. It was lucky I had my lunch early before the dressage! I really struggled with the sun today as it was very harsh and I was not able to get into the positions I would have liked to cope with the harsh sunlight so there were some interesting shadows to deal with (typical Brit, complain when the sun isn’t out, complain when it is!). I have also decided that George is a difficult colour to photograph as I have now taken pictures of him twice and both time found it very hard to edit the photos, something I have never encountered before with other horses. The dressage went very well despite George sticking his tongue out for a. Read the full article…

Mountaineering in the Austrian Alps

Alastair BegleyAlpinism, Austria, Landscape, Scrambling, Walking Short Link

As you may be aware from my previous blog post I have just got back from a family holiday in the Austrian Alps, we went to an area called Saalbach-Hinterglem to do mountaineering, walking and downhill biking. This post will cover the mountaineering and walking and at some point some waterfall and river photos may or may not appear. When we left for the holiday we were hoping to be able to climb Austria’s heighest mountain but as with all the best laid plans, that fell through due to the weather not being good enough in the second week and due to the height of the peak it is not a good idea to be up there in bad weather! And also as the hut for this route was at 3400m we could not do it in the first week as we had to acclimatise. It was however still a great holiday for walking and mountaineering as we managed to do a couple of great Via Ferratas, one of them being the first one that I have actually found challenging and by the time I got to the top I could hardly lift my arms. Read the full article…

Downhill Biking in the Austrian Alps

Alastair BegleyAustria, Sports Short Link

I have just got back from a family holiday in the Austrian Alps, we went to an area called Saalbach-Hinterglem to do mountaineering, walking and downhill biking. This post will cover the downhill biking but the other two will be appearing at some point over the next few days. It is great biking in the alps as instead of having to spend ages pushing heavy downhill bikes to the top like in the UK and just because you do not cycle uphill does not mean it is not tiring, Especially when the runs have up to 1000m vertical descent and in a few hours you do 5000, of descent! The biking there was great and I did a mixture of biking with people I met on the lifts, with the owners of the chalet we were staying in and my family/friends. It is the first time I have ridden in the Alps with my camera and I am very pleased that I did! The runs were a great mixture of fast flowing open sections and very technical sections in woods. When I rode the x-Line which is the route with. Read the full article…