http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/our-woods/Pages/wood-details.aspx?wood=4935&site=Brachers-Wood

Just as a taster, here are a couple of photos that I took:

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Well, they’re a conservation charity that plan over 500,000 trees each year!  They are currently restoring over 100 ancient woodland sites in the UK and all of their 1000+ woods are free to visit!

For more information check their website:  www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

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The idea is that you split the photograph you’re about to take in to thirds, both horizontally and vertically (some digital cameras have these lines as a setting) and it should look something like this:

The dots indicate the best place to put the subject of your photo, so if you’re taking a photo of a person, instead of putting them in the centre of a photo you should put them where one of the fours dots is.

Give it a go and you’ll soon see that you’ll get some better more interesting photos.

One thing to remember is that rules are meant to be broken!  If you want to put the subject of your photograph in the centre then do so!   The human eye also likes things that are symmetrical so there’s nothing wrong with putting the subject in centre and completely ignoring the rule of thirds!

The whole idea of this rule is to simply give you another option of taking a great photo, but at the end of the day you should take photos how you like.

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I had an iTunes voucher that needed spending (it was burning a hole in my pocket) so I brought an R&B album that I wanted and then I spotted a couple of Audio Books being advertised which inspired me to search that section and take a look to see if anything took my fancy.

After a lot of searching I found 2, the first was ‘Look Back In Hunger’ by Jo Brand and ‘Norman Wisdom’ by, well Norman Wisdom!

Although I’m not exactly a fan of Jo Brands standup (I certainly wouldn’t see her live) I have seen a documentary she did a while back about the time she worked in Psychiatric Hospitals and I wasn’t disappointed by her book which gave a great insight of the life she has had so far.

And with regards to Sir Normans audio book, I’m still in the middle of that and I can’t believe how many jobs he had as a young lad and how tough he had it compared to my childhood.

I’ve never managed to finish (or really start) a proper book before as I seem to have a short-term attention span so soon get distracted and never finish reading them so the Audio Books are a god send!

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I tried clearing all my Mac’s cache using Onyx but that didn’t solve the problem.

A quick Google later and I found a solution that I thought I’d share with you here:

1. Open up a Terminal session
2. Disable Spotlight by typing in: sudo mdutil -a -i off
3. I then entered my password
4. After a few moments I enabled it by typing the following: sudo mdutil -a -i on

I clicked on Spotlight and it said ‘Estimating Index Time’ and then after a few moments it said 31 minutes and it’s been going down ever since so it’s working!

Turning something off and then back on again has worked again!

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Lots of work is going on in the background to make sure that lots of content is put on a new website from people (like myself) who have actually visited some of the 24,000 (yes really that many) woods that are all around the UK.

There will also be the opportunity for anyone to have their say on any woods they have been to along with the facility to upload and share your own photos.

Watch this space!

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Well I have done, I ordered some from the Ideal World shopping channel that (other than their website) is the only place to buy it from (certainly the cheapest place to buy it from).  The problem is I ordered it over a month ago and they still haven’t delivered it.

As I ordered it via their website I have reference number so I have emailed them quoting the reference number telling them how unhappy I am and that I have run out of the product and I haven’t heard a thing.

I sent the email to them nearly a week ago now and to just ignore me is an absolute disgrace and extremely poor customer service.

My first order can within 2 weeks (still not that fast – but at least it arrived).

With regards to the shopping channels name, it is most definately not an Ideal World as if it was I would of had the items I ordered by now, or at least an appology as they’re late – but so far nothing!  Not impressed, not impressed at all.

Greased Lightning Showroom Shine is such a great product but it’s being let down by the disastrous people at Ideal World.

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They’ve addded something called ‘Safari Reader’ which basically strips out all the adverts on a website so you can just read the article – that’s bound to have an effect on websites who can only exist due to advertising revenue, no adverts shown then there’s nothing to click on so websites go under also they seem to have done a deal with Microsoft as Bing search is now integrated in to it.

Is it any faster than before?  I’ll find out once I’ve rebooted my laptop!

More details from Apple directly here:  http://www.apple.com/uk/safari/

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Finally dragged myself out of the tent and got ready for a fun-filled day in the rain

I was unable to cook some breakfast outside as the rain didnt look like it was going to stop so I got in my car and headed off up the road on the lookout for a cafe, I finally found one and had a nice breakfast where I sifted through a few leaflets I had picked up trying to find something to do in the rain.

At Cheddar Gorge there are a few caves that you can go round so that’s what I decided to do!

You get given a ‘wand’ that you type a number in and it tells you about the part of the cave you are standing in.  There are 3 basic options, there is one number for Adults, another for Children and a final one for some more in-depth information so there’s a virtual tour for everyone!

As you can see from the photo above, they actually mature some of the Cheddar cheese that is made in the village in the caves themselves.

As I was taking a photo graph of this ‘person’ here…

I turned around and took a random photograph of whatever was behind me and bearing in mind it was pitch-black, when I glimsed at what was on the camera screen I to look twice as there were some skeletons staring back at me!

In the second set of caves I stopped at the top of some stairs and took a quick photo, I looked at what was on my camera screen and it looked like their was someone at the bottom of the stairs so I turned on the flash and took another photo and got this:

I compared the 2 photos and what was either a person or dummy hadn’t moved so I finally decided it was a dummy so didnt need to prepare myself to be growled at or something…  Needless to say I was wrong and just as I approached the doorway he suddenly moved, opened the curtain and welcomed me in!  Nearly jumped out of my skin!

Cheddar Gorge is an absolute must if you’re visiting Somerset and as I found out, it’s basically an all-weather day out as it doesn’t matter what the weathers like when you’re underground in a cave!

For the full photo gallery please click here:

Cheddar Gorge Photo Gallery

http://www.ketrin.co.uk/2010/06/01/cheddar-gorge/

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The first place I went to was Alfreds Tower which is actually a National Trust property, as it was only a couple of quid to look around I thought I’d take a look.

As you can see the views from the top of this folly are amazing!

I then headed off towards Muchelney Abbey, but before I could get anywhere close I spotted some signs for the Haynes International Motor Museum so I popped in their for a quick look around:

After enjoying a spot of lunch at the Museum I then headed off towards my original location of Muchelney Abbey:

It wasn’t the best remains of an Abbey I have ever been to but as I was in the area it was worth popping in to.

I then decided to head off to Glastonbury and had a quick look at the Meare Fish House that was en-route:

Finally I arrived in Glastonbury, which wasn’t as big as I was expecting.  I came across this cross on Market Street:

At first I thought it was an Eleanor Cross but after a few seconds I realised it wasn’t on the route that all the ther Eleanor Crosses are on so it couldn’t be one.

It was getting late in the day so I decided to round it off by going to Nunney Castle and possibly have a quick look at a Long Barrow before heading back to the campsite in Wookey Hole.

Nunney Castle was well worth a visit!

After doing a large amount of walking today my legs were telling me to get in the car and go back to the campsite and get some food, my my brain said go and walk up a large hill – so off to Stoney Littleton Long Barrow it was then!!!

Stoney Little Long Barrow was the best example of a Long Barrow I have ever been to!  You have to crouch down on your hands and knees to go in and ideally need a torch (which I didn’t have as all the other Long Barrows I have been to you’ve not been able to go in too far so wasn’t expecting this one to be anything special).

To give you an idea of how important/incredible this Long Barrow is, if StoneHenge wasn’t our oldest National Monument then this would be it instead.  StoneHenge is around 6,000 years old and this Long Barrow (along with most of the others in the country) are around 5,000 years old, some say possibly even 5,500 years old so you can see how close to being the oldest National Monument they are.

All-in-all today was absolutely brilliant and going to Stoney Littleton was a fantastic end to my days exploring!

If you want to see more photos of the places I have been today then please look at my full photo galleries here:

Alfreds Tower Photo Gallery
Haynes International Motor Museum Photo Gallery
Muchelney Abbey Photo Gallery
Meare Fish House Photo Gallery
Glastonbury Market Cross Photo Gallery
Nunney Castle Photo Gallery
Stoney Littleton Long Barrow Photo Gallery

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