Our New Year adventure :-)
We started our New Year with a family celebration and portrait session at my mother-in-law’s house. It’s too cold to be out and about in town among the crowd- anyway, compared to last year, this year’s fireworks is not that spectacular.
I set up two strobes pointing towards the sofa with the camera on remote trigger (strobes included) in front. It was made fun with my children A & D took turns pressing the remote. Afterwards they had more fun posing and taking their own pictures 
My mother in-law’s neighbours must have thought it odd to hear a lot of noise from her house. Anyway, it’s New Year and after a while, sleep caught on.
What did we do today?
Dave received a book about some nice walks around the England. We thought to try one out and since we woke up around 10AM, we chose one of the nearest destinations , Leigh-on-Sea. It is a small seaside town in the borough of Southend on sea. We did not go to the old town, but I think it is worth a visit sometime in summer.
We followed the footpath indicated in the book toward Hadleigh castle, although it warned us about some mud, we did not expect that much mud. My little girls kept saying ” I don’t like mud, mud is dangerous” or “it’s wobbly!” We walked through the muddy path and after a while we moved in the thicket to save ourselves from more mud. The danger in the thicket is the numerous branches with thorns and are low hanging.So my little girl started saying “I do not like the forest”.
The last leg was muddier than all the muddy path we passed and it was a slope so we decided to go around the field of the neighbouring farm…
Although we have some picturesque views, it also took a bit longer than necessary as we wound around the field. True, less mud this time but it was a long and cold walk.
If you look at the above photo, that house at the end is the house in photo #6.
The last 1/2 mile seemed the longest! We can see the end, the gate, but it took us a while to reach.
So we finally reached the end of the path and our destination, Hadleigh Castle.
If we followed the muddy path, we would’ve ended up walking over these hills (see photo below).
So we walked back to the car via the London Rd after a quick drink at MacDonalds – closest and cheapest stop and no we did not choose it for the quality of the food. A much better and faster pace but we still arrived at the way after the sunset.
And driving back to the entrance of the castle, the distance of how far we walked (from the castle to the car on the roadside) sank in and exhaustion and pride came too.
For a new year adventure, this was a bit fun (mostly tiring). But we did plan to do day trips around the country, to see more of it. If we visited many villages in France while we lived there, why not here? One thing for sure though, we need walking boots and wellies!
Thank you for reading my first blog entry this year. This blog will soon have personal photography projects, family adventures (with photos of course) and photography tricks. I’ve not put many photographs of some of my work as I do respect client’s request for privacy.
Happy New Year!
All rights reserved, Copyright 2010 Ghene Snowdon www.gsnowdon.com
Please do not use the photos without my permission
*Images were taken with an Olympus E-3 + 14-54mm lens and an Olympus E-P1 + 17mm lens
Tags: essex, family walk, hadleigh castle, landscape, Leigh on sea, olympus E-3, Olympus E-P1, walk
