North-West of Gran Canaria: Sardina del Norte, Faro Punta de Sardina and rock pools

Small development next to the lighthouse looks Santorini-esque under the hot Canarian sun

By now I walked most of Gran Canaria and liked most of it, too. However, there are still parts of the island of which I am aware mostly because of the photos seen in various social networks. Sometimes I have a feeling people want to keep the most beautiful places to themselves and that is why they don’t explain where they take their photos. If that is the case, they shouldn’t publish the pics in the first place. For me, it works as a challenge, and I imagine I am not the only one.

Beautiful water, isn’t it?

hoar frost

It was frosty today in the morning, second time in a row. I had to spend some happy time with ice scraper before we could start for school.

While checking for the correct name of this type frost (yes, I am a checking person), I found the name for another type of frosty formations that I saw only ones before. I didn't see any today, but basically it looks like thin flat same-width rims of ice. Pics that I took on one occasion I saw it - here and here

According to wikipedia it's called advection frost or wind frost and it forms _against_ the wind direction. A puzzler that.



winter images on shutterstock

rays

when you go along A66 to the west, not long before you come to Keswick, the road goes up and then along one side of a pretty valley for a while. I don't know the name, although I am sure it's perfectly findable. Most of my photos from this visit were taken from a lay-by somewhere, because it seems the the best light of each day was gone by the moment we came wherever our destination was. This photo is no exception - roadside one, from that section of A66

btw, in our family those slanted visible rays of sun are called, strangely, "death rays". The origins lay in a comic seen somewhere decades ago. Drawing was showing a little boy pointing some sort of toy at his dad's back, saying "Daddy, do you feel anything?". Open box with inscription "Death Rays" was beside him on the floor

PS: Apparently what we see here is a view of glacial valley "St. John's-in-the-Vale"

Cumbria pics on shutterstock

no such thing as bad weather

about Edinburgh again - it was cold there over the new year, but no that cold (granted, it got colder later, but we were already gone by then). There is a saying which goes something like "there is such thing as bad weather, but there are badly chosen clothes". (I was going to write "russian saying", but I am not sure that it is russian). So, the weather was *good*, but -

we found ourselves somewhat unprepared for cold, especially, unexplicably, Timur. I even had to pull off my over-the-knee socks from under my jeans (it's not easy, I tell you, balancing on one foot on ice) and put them on his legs a few minutes before midnight.

Next day he bought himself a pair of gloves with union jack knitted on them from this stand. He haven't lost them yet, which probably means that he likes them. The stand is a part of little winter fair just under the Scott's monument - check it out if you have a chance, they have some amazingly cheap hand-felted hats too (Kirill got himself one).