Blog Posts in Category: Sports

Since my last blog post where I went out on the back of one of my friends motorbike around Somerset and Cheddar gorge, I have headed back to Exeter where I finally got a chance to go on the back of another friends bike down here so got to go on the wonderful roads around Devon and on Dartmoor. I knew the roads across Dartmoor were good driving roads in a car and good fun too as when I got my new car last year I drove across it many times for fun and to learn how my car handled.  On the back of the bike they were even better, crusing along the twisting roads on the top of Dartmoor on a beautiful spring day was amazing. Unfortunately we could only spend a few hours out as we had to get back to Exeter to meet up with some friends and head out for a walk along the river to the pub, it’s a hard life! But it has left me greatly looking forward to the weather getting good again and providing another chance to head out on the bike again. Read the full article…

Today on my rest day after getting back from my holiday last week winter mountaineering in Scotland I met up with one of my friends in Bath and we headed to the Mendip Hills in Somerset to have some fun on his motorbike in the sun, a Honda CBR 600. As usual since being on a bike my car now feels incredibly slow and boring, so am already planning a trip out on another friends bike next week, so there will probably be some more photos appearing shortly! While we were in the Mendips we met up with some friends so got the chance to take some photos looking out of the boot with my friend following the car which was much harder than I thought it would be due to the seemingly small bumps in the road making it extremely hard to keep the camera steady! We also headed to Cheddar Gorge which I always thought was fun in a car but on the back of a bike it was amazing and I can’t wait to go back there again sometime soon.

With the weather feeling more like summer than spring this weekend I decided to take a break from work and head to Bude to see a friend and while I was there attempted to do some surfing photography. Though while the air temperature may have felt more like summer than spring the temperature of the sea certainly did not! As usual I braved the surf with my camera and was standing up to my waist in it and having to jump over the waves to keep the camera dryish in order to get closer to the surfers.  The surf however did not want to play ball and wasn’t great which lead to not many surfers managing to get up on the waves and this is obviously problematic for getting pictures of them! But thankfully the surf kayakers were being more successful and enabled me to get these pictures.  Unfortunately while the weather was lovely it wasn’t great for pictures due to being very directional harsh light that I was almost shooting into which was also mixed with a very hazy day, so these are what I managed to make of the time I spent in the water.

Today I went paintballing with some friends for his birthday with Skirmish Paintballing in Exeter, and after I ran out of paint or got shot and was out I took some pictures.  I discovered that it is a great challenge to get into a good position due to having to avoid all the paint that is being shot by the people that are still in the game, though thankfully I managed to avoid being shot too many times and my camera only got hit once.

Yesterday I joined up with a local biking club to do some downhill mountain biking which is another of my hobbies, though due to being busy I haven’t managed to do any since the alps this summer. We headed down to Tavistock to ride the downhill tracks built by the Woodland Riders one of which being ‘Gawton’ and the other ‘Tavi-Woodlands’. I forgot how hard work it is biking in the UK without the benefit of having ski lifts to take you up to the top and instead having to push 18kg bikes to the top! This has been my first attempt at taking pictures of downhill biking and I found out the hard way that in woods you really have to use multiple off camera flashes as even on bright days with fast glass there isn’t enough light to take action photos without off camera flashes.  Unfortunately when we headed over to Tavi-Woodlands for some tracks which are more open the sun had already dropped below the trees so the light there wasn’t great either but was still significantly greater than in the woods.