Summer Scavenger Hunting - Isle of Man

Have you been playing along with Rinda's Summertime Scavenger Hunt?  I've participated for a couple of years now but this time I was only able to concentrate on it during my holidays ... two long weekend trips to the Isle of Man.  Hubby and I were invited to my friend's wedding to be held in July, but had yet to meet her husband to be, so we decided to have a "catch-up-with-her-and-get-to-know-him" trip in June, followed by a return visit for the actual wedding.  They joined in enthusiastically with pointing out photo opportunities as well as posing for them!

#1 Bouquet (for the bride-to-be)   #2 Ornate Door Knocker (in Ramsey)   #3 Dog Walkers (by Ramsey pier)
#4 Board Gamers (in Ramsey)   #5 Architectural Colums (at Peel Castle)

One of the highlights of our trip was seeing the special facilities of the Isle of Man TT, a super-fast motorbike road race circling the island, including crash mats strapped to walls and lamp-posts (to protect them from damage rather than the riders), porta-loos in the middle of nowhere for the use of race marshals and pedestrian bridges to allow people to cross from inside the circuit to the rest of the island while the race is in progress!

#6 Metal Bridge (in Ramsey)   #7 Turtle (or possibly a tortoise, in the garden)
#8 Someone plugged into social media (what else is there to do while waiting for the ferry in Douglas?)
#9 Cellular Tower (on Snaefell mountain)   #11 Tent (ready for the wedding reception in the garden)

There are no universities or colleges in the Isle of Man so there's no #10 :-(

#12 Public Toilet (at Peel Castle)
#13 Merry-Go-Round (a spinning {water-}wheel at Groudle Glen was the closest I could manage!)
#14 Traffic Signal (the electric railway crosses several roads)    #15 Multi-flagged pole (Peel Harbour)
#16 High-up Panoramic View (of Ramsey bay)

#17 Matching uniforms (runners training along Douglas promenade)   #18 Overloaded Vehicle (time for a new bike?)
#19 Ticket Booth (for Groudle Glen Railway)
#20 Natural Body of Water (another stretch ... the base of the waterfall at Dhoon Glen)
Plus Substitute A (for #10) Hubby & I eating al fresco (outside the museum in Peel)

Finally there's that pesky, un-substitutable self portrait with a scavenger hunt sign ... which I somehow forgot to take ON the Isle of Man, so instead, here's me with a double page spread commemorating the holiday hunt and more, made this weekend at a fun scrapbooking retreat.

Lots of fun ... thank you Rinda for organising it all - the final link-up is here for anyone that's curious.  Here's hoping that 2016 will produce more fun scavenging.

Final Scavenger Shots

I was a bit disappointed with myself as Rinda's Scavenger Hunt drew to a close ... too many last-minute photos and too little time :-(

Here are the final two shots that I managed; neither are particularly remarkable; both were taken in my local town: the pedestrian precinct in the town centre:

#6 An Urban Street Scene

and the landscaped gardens around the war memorial on my way to work:

#19 A Public Garden

Despite a large Polish population in the town and several shops catering for them, I somehow didn't manage to get a photo of a sign in a foreign language (#16) and there were certainly no jugglers (#15) spotted.  A mascot (#12) seemed impossible and I never had a camera in my hand near a horn (#11). I didn't even manage to snap the substitute bird house (in my Mum's garden) all summer!

Still that's not a bad haul out of 21 objects, and I have had immense fun interpreting the prompts on my trips to Scotland and Derbyshire - plus I loved seeing all the fellow scavengers photos around the world.

If I include this attempt at a sort of sunrise one sleepless July night ...

#13 Sunrise

... and combine my holiday hunt with my everyday hunt, I did, in fact, manage the lot which isn't so disappointing after all! :-)

Welcome to ZIZO #37

As Rinda's Scavenger Hunt nears its close I thought I'd better get moving on the final few.  I have driven past a sign like this at least half a dozen times a week all summer, but it's never quite been convenient to stop safely and walk back to take a photo.  However on Friday, I was driving out the other side of the town on my way to a scrappy retreat with my blogging friends when I spotted the sign in my rear-view mirror.  There were no cars behind me and parking on the roadside was allowed so I guessed it was now or never for:

#1 A Sign Welcoming People To A Town Near Me

As I got closer for the photo I was intrigued to realise that the coat of arms thingy, wasn't!  My Zoom In reveals that it is a representation of the town hall!  The town council used to be for Crewe AND its neighbouring town Nantwich which explains the recent date of establishment when they became separate entities!  I'm linking up with Helena's 37th week and am off to look for the final few Scavenger Hunt items before Tuesday 23rd!

Zooming Towards The End Of Scavenging

Rinda is linking up the Scavengers again as the deadline draws ever closer.  I thought I'd better see how many I have left.

I nabbed this lovely lamppost fairly a while ago in my local town:

#17 A Lamppost

And as I'm still not brave or sneaky enough to get a stranger's tattoo shot, I asked my colleague to share with me:

#8 A Tattoo

I cannot imagine how painful that must have been to do on her side - well done to the tattoo artist for keeping the lines straight!

I already have a rural landscape, so this shot isn't for #7:

#3 Birds On A Wire

Zooming in a little you'll see that it's for those (elusive for many) birds on a wire!  Which allows me to join in with Helena's 35th week of ZIZO too :-D

However I still have SEVEN to go ... #1 A Welcome Sign, #6 An Urban Scene, #11 A Horn, #12 A Mascot, #15 A Juggler, #16 A Foreign Language Sign, #19 A Public Garden ...

How Did We Find Derby?

"Would you like me to bring my satnav?" I asked my good friend, and fellow scrappy blogger, Lesley when she arrived to collect me for our jaunt to Derby, via Castleton and Eyam.
"No thanks, I've got one" she replied, "and anyway I've printed out the directions!"

Unfortunately a list of Google maps directions from A to B only work if you actually start at A ... and if the list includes place names on the way as well as road numbers ... and if you have a compass ... and perhaps a map ...

"Erm, do you have a map? I'm struggling to work out where we are on this list!"
"No.  There are bound to be signs"

Only the signs seemed few and far between, almost as if the locals didn't want any tourists!

"I'm sure we've been past those cows before"
"Perhaps we should have turned left back there after all ..."
"Do you want to turn around or shall we just see what happens?"
"Let's just see ..."

We did see Castleton (along with a lot more Derbyshire countryside than we'd anticipated) and what's more, we were still smiling when we got there:

On the hunt for lunch we snapped a few fellow tourists ...

#4 A Group Of Tourists

#9 A Bakery

... and I zoomed in (for the 30th time) to add a bakery to my scavenger hunt finds.  The tourist information centre had postcards too:

#5 A Rack Of Postcards

It might have been prudent to pick up a map while we were there, because travelling from B to C didn't get any easier with the next list of directions!  So we stopped off to check the satnav in Lesley's smartphone and admire Ashford-in-the-Water  ...

#9 A Rural Landscape

... before finally finding Eyam, still smiling:

After that, we knew what to expect on the final leg of the journey from C to D ... but by now I'd almost got the hang of Lesley's smartphone and we only got lost twice or three times!  Our hotel happened to tick off another Scavenger Hunt item by being close to:

#9 A Parade

The next day we explored the centre of Derby and found something quite unexpected:

#18 A Waterfall

After lunch, we managed to locate Kedleston Hall reasonably well, but only the grounds were open on Fridays (beginning to see a jaunty lack of coherent planning from either of us?) so we took photos of the sheep ...

...one of whom was very interested in Lesley's camera:

#10 A Bride & Groom Bombing My Curious Sheep Photo

We topped off our Derby diversions by needing THREE attempts to find the ruins of Duffield Castle which was barely signposted (I'm sure the locals didn't want it found) ...

.. before ending our jaunt by meeting up for a meal with our scrappy friend Nat:

P.S. I found a handy place to store those Google maps directions before heading home and we didn't get lost once!!

Holiday Scavenging - Last Thing In Scotland

Where did we get to with my first installment with Scottish scavenging ... oh yes, the lack of garden gnomes!  There were quite a few items I struggled with, but more because I was in "holiday" mode rather than "spotting-obscure-items-along-the-way" mode - I kept forgetting to look for birds on a wire (#3) and there was NO way I was getting up early enough to photograph a sunrise (#13)!

Another item I was struggling to find was a mascot ... I did wonder if

a Scots Piper was emblematic of Scotland and would count ... or perhaps a cute Scottish bear, cuddly Nessie or furry long-horned sheep might fit the bill?  Perhaps this photo including someone else's hand could tick off Mascot, Horn *and* Photo-Bomber?

#10 Handy Photo Bomber

OK maybe not - but there were real horn handled knives in the next window along!

#11 Horn

One sunny evening we climbed the steep stepped hillside to enjoy the view on Calton Hill, including a sunset over the city sights.

As the lights went on we descended again and passed several stunning lampposts:

#17 Lamppost(s)

We enjoyed a great trip out to Leith Docks to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia (no garden gnomes there either funnily enough ... not much garden either!)

#12 A Mascot

But there was a Rolls Royce on board ... with the Rolls Royce mascot "Spirit Of Ecstasy" :-D
The lift doors in the adjacent shopping mall also gave me a chance to capture a juggler (sorely lacking amongst the street entertainers we'd seen)!

#15 A Juggler

On our final day in Edinburgh we ascended the tower containing the Camera Obscura, getting some fun photos along the way:

As well as a bird's eye view of a painted bus ...

#20 A Painted Bus

#21 A Photo Of Me With Something Representing The Season

... and Mum took a photo of me (with Hubby & Child No.3) wearing seasonal sunglasses!

After lunch we popped around the corner from our rented town-house to take a look at the gloriously weird new Scottish Parliament building ...

#16 (again) Signs in a language other than English

... where I spotted (lots) more Gaelic and was able to Zoom In (for the 29th time with Helena) on some very fancy letters for the blind!

#16 (again) English, Gaelic, Braille & Moon

Well how did my holiday scavenging do?

Part 1 scored: 8/21 (1,4,5,6,8,9,16,19) and one substitution (B for 2)
Part 2 scored: 7/21 (10,11,12,15,17,20,21)
Plus our journey home (ZIZO #26) added two more (7,18)

Total score: 17/21 + B (Missing #2 Gnome, #3 Birds On A Wire, #13 Sunrise, #14 Parade)

Not toooo shabby for such a short trip; now it's back to normal hunting for the rest of the summer - are you scavenging with Rinda too?

Holiday Scavenging - First Trip To Scotland

Last year I did succeed in completing Rinda's 2013 Scavenger Hunt entirely during on our Scandinavian road trip.  Which was just as well, because my scavenging outside the holiday didn't manage to tick all the boxes.
This year, I thought it would be a taller order to complete the 2014 Summertime Scavenger Hunt in a week's break in Durham and Edinburgh ... and so it has proved :-(
Let's see what I managed:

First there was another visit to No.1 Son and his lovely girlfriend in their new house ...

and I knew where to Zoom In (for the 28th time) ... to find a tattoo on a person:

#8 A tattoo on a person

Please don't ask me what the chemical symbols are ... trust me, you don't want to know!!
After a couple of days visiting with them, we drove on to Scotland where we were thrice welcomed:

#1 Welcome to Scotland (in Gaelic too)

#1 Welcome to Edinburgh

#16 A multi-lingual sign outside a pub

We stayed four nights in a lovely 3 bedroom town-house near the Royal Mile and our walk to the city's attractions would either take us past a bakery ...

#9 A bakery

#6 An urban street scene

... or some amazing graffitti.  Our first stop was the Tourist Information Centre, where we spotted (you guessed it!) tourists ...

#4 A group of tourists

#5 A rack of postcards

... and postcards!  Having picked up a map or two we made our way past the Princes Street Gardens and spotted Edinburgh Castle in the distance:

#19 Public Gardens

Substitute B A birdhouse

What an amazing ornamental clock ... plus a bird house instead of a garden gnome!  I could not spot a gnome anywhere ... the Scots must have too much taste!

Score so far: 8/21 (1,4,5,6,8,9,16,19) and one substitution (B for 2) plus ZIZO #28
Part 2 of my Holiday Scavenging coming soon!