The end of the adventure

A few more pictures from the end of my trip. I’m now back home with laundry and leaflets all over the floor, and it’s already feeling like a bit of a dream… Back to work on Monday, and I’ve got a bag of strangely flavoured Kit Kat’s for the office!

Yakushima waterfall

Yakushima

Yakushima is a small island to the South of Kyushu. It’s mainly National Park and UNESCO world heritage site, ancient forests with thousand year old trees, and views of smoking offshore volcanoes! It’s a beautiful and wild place.

Great Buddha, Nara

Messenger of the Gods, chaser of tourists

Kofuku-ji pagoda, Nara

Nara is an ancient capital of Japan and full of temples, shrines and deer. The big attraction (literally and figuratively) is the 16m tall Great Buddha, the largest in Japan. While I was there the monks were circling and chanting, it felt like a very special place.

The deer are the messengers of the gods that carry people’s prayers, they’ll also eat anything and chase tourists for food! There’s numerous sellers of deer biscuits in the park with deer gathered around and tourists trying to bribe deer for good photos 🙂 The deer are so calm, I saw people stroking them and posing next to them, but there are warning signs around because they are still wild animals.

View of Kyoto from the Kyoto tower, including Higashi Honganji

View of Kyoto from the Kyoto tower

Late afternoon views of Kyoto with temples. So many temples!

View of Tokyo including the Tokyo tower, from the Shinagawa Prince Hotel

I booked my last hotel in Tokyo on one of the upper floors of a fancy hotel. I then spent the entire evening admiring the view! The orange spike centre back of the picture is the Tokyo tower, and to the right are the train tracks.

Now to adjust to the right time zone…

Ongoing adventures

Nagasaki harbour

Nagasaki Peace Park

Nagasaki atomic bomb hypocentre

I have a lot of complicated feelings about Nagasaki, but the main feeling is how could anyone allow that to happen? The visit has definitely solidified some views I didn’t even know I had.

Unzen 'hell's'

I’m always overly excited for anything volcanic, smoking vents and sulphuric smells included 🙂

Nice view from a hill I forgot the name of...

A lot of Kyushu island looks like this, wild green mountains.

Sakurajima volcano, Kagoshima

Kagoshima is 4km from Sakurajima, that’s a little too close to a smoking volcano to be entirely comfortable!

Tomorrow I continue southwards…

Beautiful places so far…

Ookunitama-jinga shrine, Tokyo

Harajuku

The Shinkansen!

Rice paddies near Nagoya

Fushimi Inari shrine, Kyoto

Heian-jingu shrine gardens, Kyoto

This week is going so fast, I’m moving on to Nagasaki tomorrow! It’s all go for adventures now 🙂

Weather incoming!

In traditional bank holiday style, Friday night might be the last sunshine of the weekend…

Just passed The Wrekin on the train – almost home 🙂

Cromford Canal – scrapbook page

As you can probably tell from the September date, my scrapbooking for last year is very behind! Since I started working in an office on a computer all day I’ve not wanted to be on the computer as much in the evenings…

I like Cromford – the mill, the canal, the history, the nice little shops… I’d like to go back soon, it’s a very relaxing place. These pictures are from a walk I did along the disused canal from Whatstandwell to Cromford full of peace, sunshine and ducks 🙂

• Papers and some elements from ‘100 days of summer’ by Harper Finch
• Other elements from ‘A lovely day’ mini-kit but I’m not sure where it came from, and a few other kits

Wollaton Hall by night

Last night I went to see Wayne Manor Wollaton Hall by night. There was a special Christmas event to see the hall by lantern light. There weren’t as many lanterns as I expected (although there’s probably not much they could do with the Natural History galleries), but I saw a few rooms I hadn’t been to before all decorated for Christmas. And just seeing the hall lit up was worth an evening out, it’s a beautiful place.

We also saw a few deer lurking in the darkness, probably wondering what was going on!

Edge of Autumn weekend walking

   

Woodland paths around Belper, Derbyshire.

25th October

The autumns colours aren’t quite at their most glorious yet but there were still so many beautiful places along the route.

First day of autumn

Elvaston Castle country park

There was thick fog this morning, the cathedral tower disappeared into the clouds, leaves were spiralling down from the trees, and my breath condensed in the air until mid-morning when the sun broke through the mist. Despite today becoming hot, yesterday felt like the last day of summer and today felt like autumn had arrived.

Win Hill, Peak District National Park

Cromford Canal walk

Today I decided to enjoy the sunshine and walked along the canal from Whatstandwell to Cromford. I think it’s about 4 miles and I had a little picnic halfway 🙂 It’s a very peaceful area, I could only hear the traffic and trains occasionally, and it’s very green and shady. The canal is disused so there’s lots of wildlife around, rustling in the reeds. I had a lovely walk along a nice route, there’s even a tunnel that’s just long enough to get fairly dark and sometimes the trees thin out to reveal views across the valley. Maybe next time I’ll get off the train a stop earlier and have a longer walk…