CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

The Royal Yacht Britannia was home to Her Majesty The Queen and the Royal Family for over 40 years, sailing over 1,000,000 miles around the world.  Now berthed in Leith at Ocean Terminal, members of the public can discover the heart and soul of this most special of Royal residences. We have been meaning to visit Britannia ever since we moved north of the border last year and on a beautiful sunny day last Sunday we final got around to booking some tickets to have a look around. Launched in 1953 it is like stepping back in time as most of the fixtures are still very much of that time.  The steam turbine engines completed 1,000,000 miles during the 44 years Britannia was in service and the telephones and other electrical fittings look very dated. However Britannia was perhaps the most famous ship in the world, crossing the globe as a floating home for HM The Queen and the Royal Family as they acted as ambassadors for the United Kingdom.   Tickets prices are a pre...

I have thousands upon thousands of digital images stored on hard drives (and thousands more on slide and negative film) and I do like to go back through the archives every so often to see what I can turn up. Take this shot taken in September 2006 on a Nikon D50 and 18-55mm lens of Plymouth Hoe from the top of a Ferris Wheel.  The view from the top was pretty spectacular but this shot was never used for some reason. Plymouth Hoe is perhaps best known for the story that Sir Francis Drake played his famous game of bowls here in 1588 while waiting for the tide to change before sailing out with the English fleet to engage with the Spanish Armada.  A prominent landmark on the Hoe is Smeaton's Tower. This is the upper portion of John Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse, which was originally built on the Eddystone Rocks (22.5 km south) in 1759. It was dismantled in 1877 and moved, stone by stone, to the Hoe where it was re-erected. A statue of Sir Francis Drake by Jo...