Jolly Old England

February 18, 2008 | Filed Under Travel 

On Friday Debs and I jumped on a flight over to London to visit British David for the weekend. Lovely! David and I met at the DWF convention in Tampa last last month and had a lot of fun. David lives south of London in the Kent countryside, so the plan was to tour around Kent on Saturday, and then to venture into London on Sunday.

David is also a photographer, so I had the luxury of using his Canon 5D to shoot my tourist photos on Saturday. I made sure to bring my fisheye lens, oh yes! Here are a couple sample photos, click the MORE tab at the bottom to see the full post . . .

There are LOTS MORE PICS and the full story; click the “Read More” . . .

We arrived into London’s Stamsted airport pretty late friday night. All the local pubs close around midnight, so we just headed back to David’s house where he had a sample of some of the local brews on hand. I particularly liked the label on this one.

We woke up pretty early Saturday morning, ready for a full day of touring around the British countryside. We made good time ripping down country roads in David’s Porsche Carrera! Yeah, you know what I like. David said I had to crop out the spedometer on this photo or the police would track him down and take away his license.

First up was the historic remains of Thurnham Castle, an 11th Century wreck of a structure located at the top of a ridge.

David, Debs, and some really old rocks.

Next up we went to the little town of Lenham, home to the oldest continuously played cricket field in England, the world, or something like that. We checked out the Garden of Remembrance, which is certainly the oldest cemetery that I’ve ever seen.

The large tombstones were so worn that you couldn’t read the words on them any more.

All of this remembrancing can build up a powerful hunger, and all we had for breakfast was a bit of porridge. Lucky for us the church had coffee and cake inside for a pound.

I was thinking alot about how different my wedding photography would be if I shot in an area that had historic churches like this one.

I was mostly being well behaved. I had a piece of raisin cake. It looked kindof like this.

Like I said, mostly well behaved. Luckily I wasn’t thrown out or harassed. The locals even seemed to find me amusing, which was a bonus. We were the only people there who were under the age of 100, but were not discriminated against in the slightest.

Next up was the small town of Chilham. It reminded me of Scott and his chillem.

There was another old church here. The entire church was set with these cool local stones. I don’t know what they were. I’m sure my dad does.

David Pearce, International Man of Mystery.

We then headed on down to Canterbury on our way to the beach in Whitstable. This is why I like visiting Europe in the winter. The crowds must be crazy in the summer.

Debs and I got into a big fight. I wanted to go to the bar. She wanted to go to the chocolate shop. Real Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus stuff. It was intense.

But in the end, I was able to get my message across with subtile body language.

The three of us finished up the day with a photo shoot down at the beach. Debs and I posed like an engagement couple for David to get some portfolio shots. The light was really nice, with blue skies and lots of humid atmosphere to diffuse the light. That shoot was an entire set of pictures in themselves, so I’ll leave that to another post! In the meantime, I’m back in Berlin for the next couple days where I have internet. So more posts will be coming soon!

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