< May 2011 >

All content copyright © David Richerby, 2011–12

Contents

Sunday, 1st May

Ferries and a tanker leaving Tranmere. I've no idea why there's an enormous orange-tip butterfly on the tanker, either.

Monday, 2nd May

Ship...

Some river and canal traffic and more of the festival.

... and shore

Buildings and memorials on the pierhead.

Tuesday, 3rd May

The cable-layer C.S. Sovereign arriving at Cammell Laird.

Wednesday, 4th May

Thursday, 5th May

More river traffic and more of the Spring on the Waterfront festival. The Chinook helicopter flew along the river and obligingly turned across the front of my building.

Friday, 6th May

Travelling down to Devon. The rooks are at Taunton Deane services in Somerset and the sparrow is one of many nesting in the roof of the cottage we rented for the week.

Saturday, 7th May

My counsin Andrew's wedding to Emma in Plymstock, Devon; the reception was at St Mellion, over the Tamar in Cornwall. You might also be interested in the official photos, which should be online by May 28th. In the mean time, there are some shots on the photographer's blog.

Wedding

Reception

Sunday, 8th May

We collected Cynthia from her hotel and took her to lunch at the Eddystone Inn in Heybrook Bay and had a walk around the bay.

Monday, 9th May

The beach at Wembury.

Tuesday, 10th May

The, er, wildlife around our cottage in Wembury.

Wednesday, 11th May

Wembury

Bovisand Bay

The Royal Navy

Plymouth

Around sunset

Thursday, 12th May

The fields around our cottage

Saltram House, Plympton

Heybrook Bay

Friday, 13th May

Morewellham Quay

Driving home

Monday, 16th May

Mersey Mammoth, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company's floating crane.

Tuesday, 17th May

Wednesday, 18th May

Ships

For the first time, I managed to get shots of a tanker being turned at Tranmere.

Miscellaneous

Sunset

Thursday, 19th May

Shoalway has been quite busy around the various docks for the last few days but this is the first time she's ventured far enough upstream for me to see her.

Sunday, 22nd May

In the evening, I saw online that the Royal Navy minesweeper HMS Hurworth is in Huskisson Dock so I took a walk up the docks road to see if I could get any photos. That was something of a wasted effort as she's docked out of sight of the road. But I did get some shots of the Stanley Dock warehouses in better light than last time.

Monday, 23rd May

Very windy tonight so the tug was giving this ferry a good shove against the quayside to keep her in place.

Wednesday, 25th May

Still windy so tugs still assisting the ferries.

Thursday, 26th May

Crown Princess

Up at 5am because the cruise liner Crown Princess was visiting, the first since I got here. (Except for the one over the Easter weekend, when I was out of town.)

labelled

Other shipping

It was a busy day on the river generally and I took over 500 photos, in all. Eek.

Friday, 27th May

Saturday, 28th May

Rotterdam

Another cruise liner. Rotterdam's rather smaller, at only 65,000 tons compared to Crown Princess's 115,000 — you can see that she's not nearly as long. I'd intended to get up around 6am to photograph her arrival but slept through my alarm and only caught a little of her being moored. 65,000 tons of ship arrives almost silently.

Other ships

It was another generally busy day on the river. Various comings and goings at Cammell Laird, including the dry dock being opened by the gate being floated away! And a new ferry parked at Birkenhead — Hibernia Seaways normally works the Heysham–Belfast route.

Rotterdam at Night

Monday, 30th May

Ships

Buildings

Weather

Tuesday, 31st May