Glad to see you @lovvbar!
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I live near Lewes, which is pronounced lewis, and Offham, which is pronounced oh-fum. Not all that far from Brighton, which is spelt with two silent letters but despite that has well-known pronunciation. This photo is a few weeks old, but shows the nearby bluebells which were pretty fine in early Spring. I’m not a gardener, so wild flowers have to do. Kites are fairly rare here, but there is one every now and then. I always appreciate their contribution to the M40 scenery.
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New England, especially Massachusetts, has many of the same English town names, and they are mostly pronounced in the same manner. The big indicators that one is not from “round heeyah” are Worcester and Gloucester, but also some homegrown ones: Haverhill (HAY-verll), Methuen (meth-OO-wen), Quincy (QUIN-zee), and Billerica (BILL-rik-ah).
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I live near Colorado springs (pronounced Thuh-SPRINGZ), in a little place called Falcon, which didn’t even exist ten years ago (in spite of being “established 1856” or whatever)
Here is the view from my parents house; featuring Pikes peak, and somewhat to the left, Cheyenne Mountain. (Famous for housing the underground NORAD base)
Then there’s the view from my front door:
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Colorado Springs is the one from the Spike Lee KKK movie? I was actually starting to watch it last night on Netflix. Hopefully tonight I will finish it.
I took my dog to the beach this morning. We have winter here now, so the air was only 19 C, and the water barely warmer. Still, I thought it was glorious.
I know that I am afflicted with parochialism, that I love this place because I grew up here. The sky is exactly the right colour, the horizon is the right shape and at the right distance, the trees are exactly the right colour and the air smells just right — only to me and to me only because they are familiar. To the rest of you I suppose these photos seem unremarkable except perhaps for their lack of feature. It matters not. To me Trial Bay this morning was about as beautiful as a place could be.
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I live in a landlocked, flat state; your views are, by comparison, spectacular to those I see.
I used to live in Colorado – I miss the mountains.
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That is some grade A scenery, and grade A pupper!
Like @pillbox, I very much miss living within sight of mountains. Thank you for sharing!
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It is funny how, having lived my first 25 years of life in tiny mountainous islands (the Canaries, off the coast of Morocco) where all the time you can see the mountains and the sea, it does put me on edge the absence of both… I remember a trip through northern France and another one through La Mancha (central Spain) and the endless plains affected me badly very soon.
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Since we’re on vacation… we took our first trip to what is considered “downtown” since late February. We went to visit our botanical garden which was more beautiful than I remembered it, seems the closure in Spring may have been good for the place?
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Middle of summer here and we’re looking at a peak of 17oC today. Think I’d melt down there 
Looks lovely though
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Panorama of Trial Bay from Briner’s Point
When I was a kid around here the tourist industry subsisted chiefly on summer vacationers in the school holidays from late December until about the beginning of February, with another couple of weeks not quite so busy at Easter. As recently as fifteen years ago I would often have a beach to myself except perhaps for a few surfers at any time from May to November. Which was odd, because I think that it’s rather too hot here from Christmas to the beginning of March, but absolutely glorious from April to at least the beginning of July. Why didn’t people from Sydney go to the South Coast or the mountains in summer and come north to the sub-tropics in the autumn and winter?
Anyway, they have caught on now. There are people on the beaches on week-days all the year round.
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Undoubtably the highlight of the Alicante social calendar is the Hogueras de Sant Juan which takes place this week - well, except this year, obviously! The city as good as closes down for the week, with parades, street parties, beach bonfires, fireworks (lunchtime and evening) and enormous monuments (also called bonfires, or Fogueras) which are commissioned by local businesses and communities and erected in various street corners, public squares and parks. Some of these are enormous and have very stylised art and design, part comic book, part caricature, which sit in public for the fesitval until the final few nights, when in turn they are set ablaze after midnight. Here’s an example of some I saw in 2013, my first time living in the middle of the festivities.
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As any local will obviously know, it was a motion passed in the St. John’s College Council in 1837 and thus ratified and passed as a bye-law in 1839 that a quota of at least 75% of the facts given out by punt chauffeurs had to be utter gibberish with at least 3 references per half-hour to unsubstantiated rumours involving Britney Spears.
Ah… Cambridge. And the views of the colleges along the backs. Glorious. I took it for granted when I grew up there and now I miss it terribly.
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I grew up near Cambridge and went to sixth form there. It’s beautiful and I appreciate it more now I don’t live there. My parents are still that way and we did Cambridge as tourists with the kids a year ago.
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