Portland Bill (Monday 22nd May 2023)

It has been a very busy few days and I have fallen behind with a number of ongoing daily pursuits, but some of the reasons have been positive, including this trip to Portland Bill off the Dorset coast, connected to the mainland by a bridge.

I had driven to Dorchester for a pre-birthday evening meal with Mr & Mrs Spotlight Kid but before that I had been driven to Portland Bill from Dorchester by my brother in their hybrid Mini Countryman, partly so he could demonstrate some of the features of driving in an EV, using the car battery rather than petrol where possible.

The curse of rain that has accompanied our recent meet-ups was happily absent and he saw more birds than he expected - kittiwakes, guillemots, a gannet (in the far distance), a large but probably juvenile skua of some sort, chiff chaffs, wood and willow warblers, a cormorant, pigeons, and any number of gulls. There was a grey seal sunbathing on a boulder near to Pulpit Rock, which was formed by quarrymen in the 19th century when a natural arch was cut away and the leaning slab was added to look as if an open bible was leaning on the pulpit. We walked up to all the lighthouses and the observatory and back past the coastguard cottages and huts. As well as acres of thrift there were a lot of gladioli, some wild and some in gardens.

We didn't quite make it back purely on the car's battery which has a range of about twenty miles before the combustion engine kicks in.

Unbeknownst to me, the dial on my yellow Pentax K-50 had become shifted from AV to M, which meant I had far fewer viable pictures to process, but some survived, although this was one of a handful that I took with my lovely Lumix LX100.

L.
Thursday 25.5.2023 (1851 hr)

Blip #3885 (#3635 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #007
Blips/Extras In 2023 #093/265 + #056/100 Extras
Day #4804 (1108 gaps from 26.3.2010)
Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day #3025 (#2865 + 160 in archived blips)

Taken with Panasonic/Leica DMC-LX100 M4/3 compact

Dorset series
Landscape series
Flora series

A Visit To Portland Bill, 22 May 2023 (Flickr album of 39 photos)

Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day:
The Move - Blackberry Way (recorded 1968)
This was an earworm I had all the way to Dorchester. Why it came into my head I have no idea. It was a controversial Roy Wood song within the group. It led to Trevor Burton quitting the band and Carl Wayne refused to sing the lead vocal. Richard Tandy, who later joined ELO, guests on harpsichord.

One year ago:
Marlborough (Ducklings)