doof.me.uk

Last week doof.me.uk brought you coverage of fog. This week we bring you yet another weather phenomenon: snow!

What to take a picture of to demonstrate “snow”? How about the Maidenhead bridge? A favourite of this blog, here it is covered in snow yesterday morning:

Not wanting to be accused of bridge favouritism, here’s a picture of that other excellent Maidenhead landmark, the Brunel railway bridge:

The fast trains make a nice wooosh effect with the snow when they go past, but sadly I couldn’t hang around to photograph it as I had to hurry to the station to go to work. Here’s my train!

A problem: how to stop snow photos coming out blue? I play with the white balance setting and this seems to help a little.

When I got up yesterday morning someone had turned on the fog! Here is a picture of the Maidenhead bridge featured several times previously on this blog now with added fog:

No fog today so I’m going to Slough: updates to follow.

The weather has been terrible this weekend here in Berkshire: very wet and windy. However, the forecast promised sunshine this afternoon, so being optimistic, I decided to go for a walk up to Marlow. I really had fun, despite getting a little cold and muddy. First I went through Maidenhead Thicket, which is a nice wooded area by the A404.

Here’s a mushroom which I found. Lots of mushrooms around at the moment but mustn’t eat them as they might be poisonous.

An hour or so later on I’m walking through Bisham wood. It’s a bit eerie as all the leaves are gone and it’s starting to get dark.

I’d originally planned to go and visit Bisham abbey but it was getting a little too dark and cold so I decided to go straight to Marlow. I’ll leave the abbey for another outing.

I really like Marlow. You might remember I’ve been here before on my way to Henley. I defy anyone to visit and not think it’s one of the loveliest English towns.

Marlow has, by any standard, a rather fantastic bridge. This is the only bridge in the town and separates the Berkshire side from Buckinghamshire.

A few more photos from my walk here.

Afterwards I got the train back home to Maidenhead. Oh, the happy Marlow train! It trundles back and forwards all day; always on time and with a smile on its face. Even when the rest of the FGW network is in meltdown the Marlow train is always punctual.

While it’s been raining and winding outside I’ve been thinking about going on holiday next year. Since I really enjoyed by trip to Prague earlier this year, and especially my ride on the vlak, I’m thinking about getting an InterRail ticket and riding around on some European trains for a week. But where to go? When I first thought of this I decided on a route which seemed good in theory. However, the discovery that physical distances don’t correspond well to train travel times (especially in Poland for some reason); and the discovery that the cost of two single plane tickets isn’t much different to a return ticket caused me to reconsider my plans.

So I’m now thinking of visiting: Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest in that order. Have any of you readers been to central Europe? Where is good to visit? Where should be avoided?

Went on an exploratory bike ride to the hitherto uncharted area south east of York. Discovered a village called Elvington. The route I went on had about a mile over a bumpy gravel/mud track which was not fun: my poor bum! Anyway, these are the things a real adventurer must go through when travelling out into the wilderness. Onwards!

Here are some things I saw:

Bridge over the river Derwent at Elvington

The curch at Newton-upon-Derwent Sutton-upon-Derwent (thanks to Ade for pointing that out)