Cantabria, Costa Quebrada

Los Urros de Liencres panorama

While Kirill had already lived and worked in Santander a couple of years ago, it was only this summer that me and Timur visited it for the first time. Santander itself, at least in summer, looks like a good place to be, but I was more interested in seeing the surroundings of it, the coast of Cantabria. It didn't disappoint.

Approaching Playa de Covachos

yesterday's sunset

in Norway. Not sure what the name of this beach is, but, as so many other things in Norway, the place is connected to vikings. There are big piles of (big) boulders, and they are remains of burial mounds, unless I don't get the explanation right.

And you not only are not supposed to remove "beach material" (which could be tricky, considering the size of some of those boulders) but not even allowed to build cairns. Probably the idea is that somebody might confuse your creation with a real thing and rush their finding to a nearest archeological society. Or something

Light evening on Lanzarote

I just love the way wet sand reflects, especially when the tide is out and there is a large expanse of the beach covered in just a small film of water.

I did some balancing betwen the top of the pic (tends to go light) and the bottom, but not too much

Lanzarote sunset again

we are back from Lanzarote, arrived today in small hours.

looks like we got off really easy with airspace closure, although not inexpensive - extra holiday week did cost something, of course. but we didn't stand in long airport queues (apart from one instance), and didn't spend any time sleeping on the floor anywhere, and didn't have to cross half Europe on coach, train or foot.

our short and not very interesting story was that on the day the airspace closed - 15 April - we were supposed to fly back to the uk. I switched on the tv to check if my watch was correctly set and saw the news. Only Kirill went to the airport then, and, luckily, by the time he got to the desk, all the weird flying options ("you fly to Madrid, then take a donkey to Barcelona and fly from there...") for the nearest days were exhausted, so he had to take tickets for exactly week later - a bunch of them just became available, as people who were due to fly to Lanzarote on that day for a week cancelled the whole thing.

So we stayed for another week and flew back on the second day it became possible - which may well be the best scenario

Unexpected bonus was that when I was taking car out of Luton airport,I was fully prepared to pay a fortune for an extra week. Incredibly, they apparently waived the charges - when ticket was inserted, the barrier was raised and off I went. But maybe there was some glitch and they'll be in touch with coupla thousand bill, who knows.

blue and yellow

outrageously oversaturated in yellow band, I know. but it got a certain something in exchange, hard to define, but it sort of speaks to me.

yes, it's smoke on the water

while collecting our stuff for Lanzarote, I forgot to take the tripod (I also forgot to take my driving licence, and a few other bits and bobs) So to make long-exposure shots, almost an essential seaside activity (well, yes, I might be a bit obsessive about it), I had to make do with some friendly stones, my backpack and my jumper for support

While waiting for one of the fames to expose, I heard a small noise behind me. I don't know whether it was a general feeling of being safe there, or my overall mindset, but I didn't think "mugger", I thought "another photographer". I was right, of course.

Lanzarote sunset

I don't expect that any of the stocks will take this type of sunset image, reason for rejection being "over-filtered". It's true that it didn't come like that out of the camera. However, I strongly suspect that the almost untouched version, if accepted and sold, will eventually appear in about this state, i.e. overprocessing will be done by the designers. Well, never mind

sunset dip

the sunset on our very last day on Lanzarote was not as spectacular as the others - there were practically no clouds. but we happened to be in the right place to catch the palm trees against the glow. the bathing couple was a definite bonus. It looked very romantic, although I must say, it probably wasn't all the warm at this time of the evening. on the other hand, maybe those guys were scandinavians, used to jumping into ice-cold lakes.

Lanzarote seemed to be quite popular with northern eauropeans. and I can't blame them, when we came back to just-above-freezing-point UK, I couldn't help thinking "we should have stayed there". It must feel a lot worse coming to below-freezing temperatures.