Christmas 2 for 1

Two pictures this time of nothing particularly special taken from my "December misc" folder. The thing I love about autumn, as illustrated in these shots, is the skies you can get. When it isn't cloudy they are often crystal clear - at sunset giving a perfect transition from midnight blue in the East to orange in the West, or with a low sun illuminating things in a beautiful golden glow.

Top was from a Newcastle ramble over the central motorway A167(M) and town moor, long exposure with no tripod. Below shows on of my favorite things, a country eatery back home in Lancashire, with horses thrown in for good measure. I had fish and chips for my lunch there today :)

Homeward bound

Not taken any pictures recently and prob wont for a while, so i dug up this from my archives. Taken back in October on a very windy day, the RNLI lifeboat Spirit of Northumberland powers its way back to home to Tynemouth station, rounding South Shields pier. The wind was deceptively strong (id estimate force 8*), but being westerly it was coming off the land hence the low wave heights near shore. A look at the spray coming off the bow wave shows just how strong it was, whipping the water back, and out to sea plenty of white froth. When you consider the "7" class lifeboat is only 17m long (tiny when anything under 100m is classed as 'small craft' at uni) , its sea-keeping abilities are most impressive and design for the harshest weather possible are an amazing feat of naval architecture. One of my lecturers told us recently about how lifeboats were, at certain conditions, designed to be inherently unstable, which is what allows them to self right if they capsize - some seriously clever maths (who says it has no use) was scribbled on the board!

* Force 8, according to my lecture notes is

"moderately high waves of greater length, edge of crests begin to break into the spindrift. The foam is blown in well marked streaks along the direction of the wind - mean wind speed of 37 knots" (around 40mph)