Visiting Wales

One of the benefits of my job is that sometimes I get the chance to travel abroad. I’m not a frequent traveler, the last trip was in 2019 and before that, 2016, especially not compared to some of my colleagues who seem to be on the road more often than being at home. Anyway, this year I was lucky enough to be able to go to Aberystwyth in Wales to do some work. I think I’ve been to Wales once before … but I’m not certain, it was many years ago … but I’ve always wanted to visit. My plan was to take the train to Arlanda, fly to Schiphol, fly to Birmingham, and then take the train to Aberystwyth. Everything started well, I walked from my office down to the train station and waited for the train.

Waiting for the train

The train was on time and everything seemed to go well. Notice the word “seemed”, first there was a minor incident with a water bottle.

Don’t shake the bottle !!

Then, when we were halfway to Arlanda, 3-4h into the train ride, I got a message that read “your flight has been cancelled” … gahhhh. Fortunately, I got some help to make a new reservation, but since the new flight was leaving for Bromma, I had to find somewhere to stay the night in Stockholm.

Waiting for the next train in Sundsvall, trying to book a new flight.

Anyway, the day after, I walked around a little in Stockholm while waiting for the flight.

Stockholm Central

Up in the air

Instead of going to Schiphol, I was now going to Brussels, where I had to wait for a couple of hours before my next flight to Birmingham.

Brussels

Ohhh, Tintin

Nope, not going there

I arrived in Birmingham and had to run around a bit to figure out where my train was but managed to catch the train to Aberystwyth with 8 minutes to spare — plenty of time. Then a 3h train ride (why do the trains have open windows? The noice is far too loud for my taste) to Aberystwyth, where I was met by my friends, and taken to the place where I was going to stay (a very nice house from the 1600s).

Look !! Mickey Mouse ears

Aberystwyth

I didn’t have that much time for photography (remember: work trip, not vacation) so I mostly took various snapshots while walking around in the city … but I like snapshots! Anyway, Aberystwyth is a fairly small city, where everything in the city centre is within easy walking distance … OK, the hills can make it a bit more taxing than a map might suggest. It’s a very pleasant town and very different from Aberdeen, the last town I visited in the UK. While Aberdeen is mostly gray granite, Aberystwyth is full of colors.

Aberystwyth

I enjoyed walking around the city and looking at the buildings. To me, they looked exactly how I imagine a small city in the UK looks like. However, there is more to Aberystwyth than buildings. Since people in the UK seem to have a special connection to the sea, there is of course a promenade along the beach.

Aberystwyth from Constitution Hill

The southern part of the promenade

The northern part of the promenade

Life on the promenade

And it should be no surprise that the sea seems to play a huge role in what people do in their spare time. There were people taking a bath (or trying to take a bath 😋), having a picnic, just sitting watching the sea, surfing, competing, etc.

Swimming

Enjoying the view

Picnic, etc

Taking a bath (not in this case though)

The harbor

Rowing competition

Changing weather

Away from the beach

There is, of course, more to Aberystwyth than the city centre. Standing on a hill, you can see how Aberystwyth stretches out in the valleys and hill sides around the city centre.

A wider view from Constitution Hill

There are of course sheep in Aberystwyth

Something almost every university I’ve seen has in common is the “architecture” and Aberystwyth University is no exception. I will show one photo without any further comments.

The university

We were also a bit mystified by “The Hat” statue close to the National Library of Wales, why on earth would anyone make a statue of a hat? I thought it was a fun statue, but I couldn’t really figure out why, but then I was shown two YouTube videos, Michael Sheen and Yma o hyd, after which everything made sense.

The Hat The Hat

The National Library of Wales

Hay-on-Wye

I’ve never heard about Hay-on-Wye before this trip. The main reason why people go here are the bookshops, there are numerous bookshops here. Surprisingly many for a place of this size. In fact, there are more bookshops here than in many much larger cities. It was fun to walk around and browse the bookshops, but since I had to carry everything back home, I just bought a few books that would be difficult to find at home.

Hay-on-Wye

When we were done with the bookshops, we took a typical english road (for me that is, having watched too many Midsomer Murders episodes 😜) up in the hills before dinner. Then back to Aberystwyth.

Traditional UK road???

Up in the hills

Dinner Dinner

Birds

The day after, we visited the Dyfi Osprey Project to … ehh, look at the Ospreys. It’s a wonderful place, I highly recommend a visit. First, they have set up 4K video cameras around one of the nests, and then had a large screen in the visitor centre which made it possible to see what was happening in great detail. You can view the stream on YouTube. Secondly, it’s so very peaceful there! I could sit there for hours just looking at the surroundings and listening to what was happening around me. And perhaps most importantly: there were no mosquitos around 👍🏻.

Dyfi Osprey Project

After the Ospreys, we went up in the mountain. The roads are … interesting, you would rather not have a huge vehicle when driving on these roads. Anyway, it’s beautiful up in the hills and I could spend quite some time exploring this area. What looked a bit worrying to me was the Nant-y-Moch Reservoir, to me, the water level seemed very low, worrying low. But I’m no expert, so I could be utterly wrong.

Up in the hills

The dam The dam

After the reservoir, we went to Bwlch Nant yr Arian to look at the feeding of the Red Kites. Another nice place to visit, and the feeding is definitely worth a visit.

Kites Kites

Bwlch Nant yr Arian

Going home

After 7–8 days in Aberystwyth, it was time to go home. This time everything, almost, went according to plan. I also discovered that my changed flight going to the UK was actually a blessing in disguise. The passport control in Schiphol is very slow … in fact, I would say extremely slow, especially compared to the time it took when going to the UK (about 20-25 seconds). I will avoid traveling via Schiphol in the future. The only problem I had going home was that the train was about 1h late from Arlanda … but we were a few minutes early to Umeå, so I’m not complaining.

The last few minutes in Aberystwyth

Waiting for the train

Other stuff

Other miscellaneous from the trip. Most importantly, avoid Marmite!!! There are other, much better. ways to get your B vitamins.

Nope, avoid !!!

One really good idea I saw was these “railings” (?) that made it really simple to push a bike up the stairs

A really good idea

Knitting can be done everywhere

You can knit everywhere

Stones have faces

Happy days

Never give up, even if you’re in a non-ideal environment

Don’t give up

Some random flowers

Flowers Flowers

The End

I really liked my trip to Aberystwyth, and would love to come back. I would also like to see more of Wales, perhaps travel north up to Snowdonia and do some hiking. It would probably be best to rent a small camper van to make it possible to travel around to all the places I want to see.

2023-07-24 travel aberystwyth wales Reply by email

Back and forth

This Thursday-Sunday I spent a large number of hours on different trains, making a quick visit in southern Sweden.

I was bored before even getting on the first train, so I decided to take a number of photos of my trip using the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone and one single filter. I didn’t bother in trying to make pretty photos, instead I just took photos out of the window. I tried to cover every train station we passed … when I was awake, so I failed pretty badly going south. Here goes:

Thursday 8/6

Umeå - 04:01

On the train, very bored - 05:11

Somewhere between Övik and Kramfors- 05:38

Väja - 05:41

Ramvik - 05:59

Säbrå - 06:16

Sundsvall - 07:00

Sundsvall Central - 07:01

Stockholm Central - 10:46

Stockholm Central - 11:08

Sergels Torg - 11:16

Helgeandholmen - 11:24

The royal castle - 11:28

Stockholm Central - 11:48

Stockholm - 12:21

Stockholm - 12:23

North of Norrköping - 13:17

Norrköping Central - 13:31

Norrköping Central - 13:32

Linköping Central - 13:57

Linköping Central - 13:58

Linköping Central - 13:59

Mjölby - 14:19

Mjölby - 14:20

Nässjö - 14:54

Nässjö Central- 14:55

Alvesta - 15:26

Alvesta - 15:27

Hässleholm - 16:05

Hässleholm - 16:08

Kristianstad - 16:59

Sölvesborg - 17:24

Sölvesborg - 20:50

Friday 9/6

Sölvesborg - 09:42

Sölvesborg - 14:26

Sölvesborg - 14:27

Sölvesborg - 14:48

Lund Central - 16:22

Lund - 19:28

Saturday 10/6

Lund - 09:39

Lund - 13:25

Lund - 16:08

Lund - 20:26

Sunday 11/6

Lund - 05:55

Lund - 06:21

Lund - 07:07

Lund - 10:10

Alvesta - 11:27

Nässjö - 11:59

Linköping Central - 12:55

Norrköping Central - 13:21

Norrköping Central - 13:22

Södertälje Syd - 14:15

Stockholm Central - 15:20

Uppsala - 16:08

Uppsala - 16:10

Gävle - 16:53

Gävle - 16:57

Söderhamn - 17:38

Enånger - 17:52

Hudiksvall - 18:04

Hudiksvall - 18:08

Hudiksvall - 18:10

Sundsvall - 19:08

Sundsvall - 19:09

Timrå - 19:24

Härnösand - 20:06

Kramfors - 20:33

Övik - 21:06

Umeå - 21:50

Back home again !!!

2023-06-12 travel photography hipstamatic Reply by email

Considering moving away from Smugmug

A few months ago I discovered that Smugmug have increased the subscription price significantly

Year	Subscription
2016	$75
2017-2024	$89.95 (I payed for three years in 2021)

I remember thinking that $90/year was a lot of money, but since I liked SmugMug I decided to renew. However, the current price for my plan is $138 … a 53% increase compared to the last time I renewed. I also noted that they had removed the cheapest plan, and I’m now on the cheapest plan.

I’m starting to think that $138 is a bit too much money to spend each year for a gallery site. I’m not selling any photos so I don’t make any money that could help offset the cost. These $138 are coming from my “have fun” account … an additional 10 years means $1380 assuming no further price increases, and I can have a lot of fun that amount of money.

My main use for my SmugMug site have been to show off photos from various events, and to let people download photos. I’m very satisfied with how Lightroom and SmugMug integrates with each other, and the site looks good. So I have no complaints regarding the functionality of SmugMug. In other words, my only hesitation is about the price, can I really justify spending $138/year to have somewhere to upload my photos. I really don’t know, right now I’m leaning towards switching to something else.

The good thing is that I’ve payed for another year so I have time to investigate what my alternatives are before making a decision. I’m currently looking at Piwigo and jAlbum which are very different types of software. Piwigo is similar to SmugMug (although not as nice) in that it’s a dynamic web site where you upload you photos and manage them using the site. jAlbum is desktop application where you generate a static web site and then upload it to your server. Piwigo is free, while jAlbum will cost you some money (but you don’t need to upgrade each year). Piwigo and jAlbum assumes that you have a web site where you can upload your site (both have alternatives where they host your site, but I’m looking for the possibility to self-host), I already have this web site space so this is no extra cost for me.

I really don’t know what to do … but I have about 9 months to decide (need a couple of months to actually move my photos if I decide to move).

There is of course an additional alternative, sell enough photos so I could pay for SmugMug with that money … which is a very unlikely alternative 😁.

2023-05-27 photography gallery photos web site Reply by email

Hemmagym

Gymmet utan avgift

Jag tycker nog att det här gymmet är roligare än de som man hittar inne på stan. Och det är ju gratis också !!

2023-05-06 träning hemmagym Reply by email

Jag är fruktansvärt less på att vara sjuk nu. Ny förkylning, hostar, nyser och fryser.

2023-05-05 hälsa Reply by email

Sista april

Bra att vara säker

Sista april igår och naturligtvis en massa brasor som skulle brännas. Det känns bra att en del tar detta med gräsbränder etc på allvar, nu är det ju inte så stor risk ännu då det är ganska mycket snö kvar på marken. Men det är ju bra att vara på den säkra sidan.

Vi var ganska slöa och stannade hemma för första gången på en massa år, så vi slapp frysa i alla fall.

2023-05-01 valborg väder vår Reply by email