Blog Posts in Category: Sports

“Wonderful” Christmas Snow

Alastair BegleyEquestrian, Sports Short Link

Well with the second batch of snow in under a month cancelling my second job in 2 weeks due to the snow and horses not being able to compete when the ground is all frozen and covered in snow I have been trying to make the most of it for pleasure purposes as although it is a pain it does make for some stunning scenery, though unfortunately there has been no more snowboarding (Snowboarding in Bath). So during Christmas week I went walking with my family and family friends around the Cotswolds which were stunning in the snow. Then for Christmas I headed up to my Gran’s with the rest of my family which is where the horses are kept so I went out into the fields while they were exercising them there as the roads were too icy to go out on and finally on Boxing day we went for a very atmospheric walk in the snow covered Malvern Hills with our cousins. And thankfully the snow now seems to be thawing extremely quickly, with tropical temperature of 9 degrees at home today!

Snowboarding in Bath

Alastair BegleySports Short Link

With all the snow that has hit the UK recently it has converted many places to look more like ski resorts than British cities, with Bath being one of them.With this in mind,  a friend and I decided to do some snowboarding in a field literally right next to his house! Unfortunately without the creature comforts that real ski resorts supply in the form of lifts up there was a lot of walking and the occasional begging on people with cars to get to the top.From the photos it is hard to tell that these were actually taken at the outskirts of a city in England at the start of December! The photos were very fun to take and running down icy slopes camera in hand was an interesting experience!

Yorkshire Caving

Alastair BegleyCaving Short Link

This weekend was the annual meet up of lots of university caving clubs, and this year it was up in Yorkshire at the Dalesbridge Center. It was a very cold weekend with snow forecast but we decided to go caving anyway and headed up to Gaping Gill. I went to Gaping Gill with a specific photo in mind, but overlooked the fact that it is winter up north and it gets dark early so when we got to main chamber it was dark outside which was fairly disappointing but I tried to make the best of the situation and came up with these photos. It was so cold outside that the waterfall that is normally the main waterfall was barely flowing due to the water at the top freezing and all the water coming down the waterfall that is normally the smaller of the two. This also meant that when we left the cave the hour long walk back to the car at -3 degrees was a fairly cold experience and our caving oversuits froze while they were on us!

Hunting with the North Herefordshire Hunt

Alastair BegleyEquestrian Short Link

On Saturday evening myself and David from Vero Photography were booked to shoot the North Herefordshire Hunt ball in the evening  so we decided to go along to the hunt (hound exercise and trail hunting) in the aim to get some more business and have some fun while we were up there. I have hunted all my life on horse back but we discovered that it is a lot harder to follow the hunt on foot, especially when you don’t have a four wheel drive car, my poor focus went to places that it just should not have been! The weather was stunning on Saturday though with the low autumn sun this lead to very contrasty light which made photography very difficult as it was hard enough keeping up with the hunt, let along making sure the sun was on the right side relative to us and the hunt! Though the warm weather due to the sun did make it a much more pleasurable experience at least! Overall it was a great day out and we learnt a lot about following the hunt on foot and we are looking forward. Read the full article…

Single Rope Technique

Alastair BegleySports Short Link

Today some of the members of the caving club I am a member of were doing some Single Rope Technique (SRT) training with ISCA Outdoor in preperation for our trip up to Yorkshire in a few weeks time.  SRT is where you go up and down vertical ropes to enable access to cave systems which involve large changes in height such as Gaping Gill and Allum pot as shown in my portfolio. As I had to drive them there I decided to stick around and take some pictures.  Though unfortunatly due to a lack of club SRT kit one of my friends had to borrow my harness and metalwork which meant that I had to stay with my two feet firmly on the ground which made positioning myself fairly difficult as they were going up a rockface.  I am hoping to rectify this next week and take some pictures while I am hanging on a rope!

NHHPC Indoor Showjumping

Alastair BegleyEquestrian Short Link

On sunday we were attending the North Herefordshire Hunt Pony Club’s indoor showjumping event at Kings Equestrian Center with David from Vero Photography running the print station. The day involved 12 hours of pretty much straight shooting which is ok in itself but when you mix it with running around after horses to get them over as many jumps as possible it starts to get very tiring! It was a great albiet tiring day which over the whole day may have ended up with en excess of 3000 photos being taken! Though we are looking forward to returning on the 19th December with a few improvements from the lessons we leart this time, including a seperate viewing station so my assistant does not have to manually show people every image they want to see and can focus on printing!

Caving in the Mendips

Alastair BegleyCaving Short Link

Last week I had some free time and was looking through some of my old photos, and I found these from a trip to Swildons Hole in the Mendips during August 2009.  Swildons Hole is one of my favourite caves as there is so much to do there, it has a waterfall which you have to climb down on a ladder, an active streamway with places to jump into and sumps along with the usual climbing that you get in caves. Last year I did not get to do much caving photography, but this year I am hoping to rectify that due to the wonderful sights that you can see underground that very few people ever see, and showing people the photos is a far easier way of explaining why I enjoy caving!

Vintage Sports Car Club Western Rally

Alastair BegleySports Short Link

On Saturday I was invited along to the Vintage Sports Car Club Western Rally which turned out to be a great day out.  I was there with one of the competitors and as such there are a fair few pictures of that car as I couldn’t stay in the same place very long as once they passed me I had to jump into my car and drive an alternate route to get ahead of them so I could get another photo. It was great to see so many old cars in good condition and people actually enjoying driving them rather than just having them sit in a garage!  Though a few rain showers did mean they all got a bit wet!