Grayson Perry Art Exhbition

Properly titled Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! and taking place in the Arnolfini, this free exhibition showcased a huge amount of Grayson’s vases, sculptures, tapestries, and other art across three floors. It was wonderful to see so many objects in the flesh that we’d previously admired in some of his TV shows, knowing the meaning behind a lot of them. I was so engrossed I only took a few photos on my phone. If you get a chance to go then you definitely should.

Bristol

Outside the art gallery we were in time for the end of a protest taking place which was a shame as I like to photograph protests, especially for causes I believe in. We crossed over the pedestrian bridge and took a look at the nearby Millenium Square with it’s interesting sculptures and huge, open space.

Bristol Aquarium

From the square we then headed into the Bristol Aquarium past a sculpture with a sign requesting that people not climb on it. Why on earth would I be mentioning a sculpture with a sign requesting people not climb on it? Could it be because of the kids climbing on it while their parents sat facing them and the plainly visible sign from a few metres away smoking cigarettes? Possibly. In the aquarium my camera was spotted and I was told that photographs were permitted but no flash photography was allowed; fortunately, I’m well aware of this restriction and I rarely carry a flash on my camera body anyway. Why am I mentioning this? Could it be because there was an announcement while we were looking around reminding people not to use flash because someone clearly was? Possibly.

Anyway, a very large, well laid-out aquarium with a couple of star exhibits, those being the multitude of pregnant seahorses we saw in a number of tanks and the very active, surprisingly fast-moving (and difficult to photograph in low light) octopus. I took some video on my phone too with limited success but it does get across just how the tentacles move and roll over one another as the creature moves.

Tickets for the castle can be bought in the town at the top of the hill leading down to the shore where the castle is located, or down at the shore itself, or just before you cross a bridge onto the island rock where the majority of the castle ruins are located. The steps leading up to the castle ruins are steep but not dramatically so; the only issue with them is the unevenness of the risers which caused some strain on our calves and knees when stretching unexpectedly or facing a slightly further drop than expected on occasion.

One obviously new feature at Tintagel Castle was a stylish sculpture of King Arthur. Unsurprisingly, it was quite a photographic draw for people clambering around the historic site. Also unsurprisingly, you could buy miniature sculptures in the gift shop.

It was incredibly mild when we visited, right at the end of October; so much so, in fact, that we were both in short sleeves while exploring. I imagine that a sharp sea breeze coming from the north would change things very noticeably. Regardless, it’s a lovely area of the world with a lot of interesting history, great opportunities for taking photos, and well worth a visit.

The Weston-super-Mare SeaQuarium does manage to pack in quite a bit more than you expect from its apparent size from outside. One area where it is superior to a lot of other sealife exhibits we’ve seen is that it’s considerably brighter in a lot of places which aids in photography, always a tricky area when visiting these places as you have to ramp the ISO up massively high, often have to fight with the camera to hit the focus correctly, and have to accept lots of noise in the resulting pictures.

There had been nobody else in the SeaQuarium when we first arrived which wasn’t that surprising with it being a Tuesday at the end of October but we were pleased to see close to a dozen were present by the time we left. As expected, it wasn’t the most amazing aquarium we’ve visited but there was more than enough to see for anyone who likes these sorts of places.

As Halloween was upon us there was a section of the building given over to scary exhibits. My wife, suspecting (correctly) that such a place would contain a spider stayed away but I ventured inside the dark area. Some leaf insects were surprising additions as I don’t really consider them terrifying to anybody. A coiled, giant millipede was motionless, as was the anticipated tarantula at the back of its home. The clever area was a glass room next to which was a section you could enter and stick your head up into a perspex bowl to get up close with whatever was inside. I’ll admit that my heart was racing as my suspicion was that there would be more spiders and while I’m nowhere near as bad as my wife this wouldn’t be something I’d like to experience. The darkness in the room made it difficult to see anything which obviously sent the imagination into overdrive but once I’d actually spotted the terror I called my wife in for a look. Rats. We love rats. Adrenalin flowed away nicely. A nice little exhibit by Weston-super-Mare’s SeaQuarium.

Whereas we’d been in short sleeves for our trip down to Cornwall this was a day where we needed to wrap up warm as the wind coming in off the shore was bitterly cold. At one point we’d stopped for lunch in a pub and been seated by the door as it had been the only place available at the time; an icy blast every time someone came in or out ensured we wolfed everything down and were back out and walking in short order.

At one point on our walk we became aware of some shouting behind us. A woman with a dog had spotted my camera and wanted to know what lens I had on. I told her and she pointed out to the water which was approaching high tide at that point. In the distance there was something small and red floating and being carried out. “Can you take a look and see what it is?” she asked, explaining that she wanted to make sure it wasn’t a child. I explained I wouldn’t be able to tell with the camera lens I had as it was a wide angle with zoom to only 105mm.

“I’m a professional photographer!” she said. “Let me have a go!”

“I assure you that you won’t see anything. The water is grey. The sky is grey. The thing in the water is miles away and small and clearly inanimate. The sunlight is coming from behind the object so it will desaturate everything further. The zoom will not help. The screen will not magnify to a 1:1 ratio. It won’t show anything. I might get something from taking the photo off onto a computer and magnifying properly but that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

“If you give me the camera I can do it. I’m a professional photographer.”

“I’ll take the photo and zoom in… Look. You can’t tell.”

“Give me the camera. I’m a professional photographer.”

She reached for the camera and I slowly and very obviously grudgingly let her have it. She zoomed, took the photo, looked at the screen. “Oh,” she said, handing it back. “I usually have a telephoto lens when I’m out but I don’t today,” she added and I smiled and said I tend to only take whatever lens I think I’ll use for the day and this felt like a wide landscape day to me. My wife returned to my side from the position she’d taken up behind the woman in order to prevent her running off with the kit (we’re both usually very aware of our surroundings and people and always move and organise our things to reduce the risk of thefts, etc., although it probably wasn’t quite warranted on this occasion). The woman decided that the thing at sea probably wasn’t a person and walked along with us for a while telling us some of the history of the seaside resort before finally heading off with her dog.

“I’m very proud of you,” my wife told me, regarding how I’d handed my camera over to the woman and not told her to fuck off like my face apparently seemed to convey. I then ranted for several minutes about how a “professional photographer” should have more damn respect for other people and their equipment and how it was blindingly obvious to anyone from one look at the equipment I was carrying and my explanation about why the photo wouldn’t work that I was far from a rank amateur, not that that should matter one iota when it comes to demanding someone else’s possessions. “Just drop it!” I was then told so I shut up until now when I could rant some more. Oh, it feels good to vent.

And now for some more photos from along Weston-super-Mare’s seafront.

We’d checked the time for high tide to make sure we’d be on the Grand Pier when the water was actually in as the previous time we’d visited Weston-super-Mare back in 2013 it had resulted in us not seeing the water once and only arguing whether the bright flashes on the horizon were reflections on the distant sea or simply mirages. We can at least confirm now that it is possible on occasion to swim when visiting Weston-super-Mare’s seafront.

One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world, and is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans. Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony.

The car park is located to the south of the stone circles and is free to National Trust members which was nice as we are some. Following the path towards the main village takes you close to the very nice visitors’ centre and while we did spend a few minutes and a few quid there the main purpose of our visit was to wander around the site of historic interest.

This wasn’t our first visit to Avebury’s stone circle – we used to come fairly regularly to pick sloes for gin – and as such we suspected from experience that we might run into certain people who are drawn to the stones and their alleged mystical properties. One of our encounters was with a man with an obvious mental illness who couldn’t look at us directly and instead held a mirror up to his face to stare at us and others in order to shout incomprehensible gibberish. A sad affair but he seemed in otherwise reasonable health. Our second encounter was with a young woman in her twenties who moved from stone to stone, standing with her back to each one and stretching out her hands to touch the surface with her eyes closed. Well, each to their own.

If metres-high standing stones erected around four and half thousand years ago isn’t your thing but sheep are then you’ll be pleased to know that Avebury has you covered there as the land is used extensively by the creatures. This does mean that you need to be a little careful where you walk as you make a circuit of the neolithic monument if you’re worried about getting ovine excrement in your car.

We had to smile as we bought our tickets. Firstly, the woman at the booth stopped me and told me that she loved my t-shirt; then, as we took the tickets and stepped away from the line, another English Heritage employee did a double take and told me loudly that he loved my t-shirt too. For the record, the t-shirt I was wearing was this one: Cthulhu’s Church.

The ticket allows entrance to the visitor’s centre which contains several large displays and accounts of the history of the area and digs as well as a wraparound screen simulating the rise and fall of the sun around the stone circle during the year. We were quite pleased that there was hardly anyone around while we were there as it felt quite peaceful standing and watching the stars and shadows move around us. Beside the centre is a recreation of a settlement of the time.

It’s possible to walk to Stonehenge’s stone circle from the centre but a bus that leaves every few minutes is also available and was ready to go while we were there so we took advantage of it. A short walk from where the bus stops then leads to a path that encircles the neolithic monument allowing you to get fairly close to the stones at points. A fairly low sun because of the time of year and a lot of hazy cloud acting as a great soft box in the background produced some challenging light conditions for photographs but as you can see I took a few regardless.

Wildlife, in the form of birds, played some part in the enjoyment of the visit to Stonehenge. Some of the staff were hand feeding crows and at one point we spotted a kestrel amongst the stones. While it sat it was left alone but as it flew across the circle it was challenged by the resident crows who clearly see the area as theirs.