AKA: Our engagement weekend.

As Danni was still in China for Valentines, I’d arranged for a weekend away for us as a belated Valentines day present.  This year it was two nights in Thornbury Castle’s Plantagenet room.

It was a stunning room filled with old wood, castle brick walls and large, warm tapestries that covered entire walls.  There was champagne on ice waiting for our arrival as well as some cozy sherry just waiting for a couple to relax by the fire with.

We had an amazing time in the hotel and the food was stunning, but the main reason I’d dragged Danni out to the Cotswolds was to pop the question.  I’d been wracking my brain for several weeks to determine the ‘how’ of it all, and the only thing I could decide with any certainty was that I wanted a photo of the moment.  Running with that idea, I took Danni out into the courtyard of the castle at dusk under the guise of wanting to do a few couples shots in the fading light with the castle walls in the background.

After a few shaky setup shots and a couple of just a few more adjustments, I set the timer, sprinted back into place and said ‘for this shot, we’ll need this’.  With a subtle flourish I was down on one knee, the ring held aloft for her to see through shocked and watery eyes while I asked her to marry me just as the camera triggered, capturing the moment forever.

At least, in my head this was how it worked.  The reality of it all was that I was so nervous and the box was large enough to get stuck in my coat pocket that I was a few seconds off beat and this was as close as it came.

If you look closely, there surprise is there on Danni’s face and I’m obviously about to get on one knee (that or I’m doing the worlds first run-by proposal).  It’s not what I had in mind, but photography is a game of chance at the best of times and we’re both pretty happy with the way this shot turned out.

Also, she said yes!

There are a few more photos from our weekend away in the gallery.

Long have I wanted to go to the city of Harbin and witness the Ice festival for myself.  As we were going to be in China at the same time as the festival, I couldn’t think of a better time to make the trek.  Danni’s parents were more than generous to cover the costs of my trip as a way of welcoming me into their family.  I was a bit uncomfortable about accepting, but was told that it’s simply the tradition so I tried to be as gracious and grateful as possible.

Arriving alone in a country where very few people speak your language is daunting, but I’ve done it before and managed so I didn’t think I’d have any issues doing it again.  Which likely would have been true had the airline not lost my luggage on a direct flight from Guangzhou to Harbin.  Fortunately I had the dynamic team of Danni and her mom to harass the complaints department until my lost suitcase turned up.  4 days later when I was due to leave, but I was happy to have it back regardless.

I don’t normally mind when the airline loses my bag as it (so far) always turns up in the end.  This time however, it was more inconvenient than usual as the suitcase contained all of my warm clothes an my trusty tripod.  Had I known that my bag was going to be MIA for the duration of my trip I would have simply picked up some more warm clothes, but instead I took an optimistic ‘It’ll be here on the next flight’ approach and dealt with the -25ºC weather as best I could.

The ice buildings were by far the highlight of my trip.  Massive, multi-story buildings constructed of ice and lit from within by every changing lights, it was everything I’d hoped it would be.  I had a grin frozen to my face (quite literally after a few hours in that cold) the entire time I was there.  I managed to push a few kids of out the way and ride most of the ice slides like every good 6 year old should and spent as much time as humanly possible taking photos.

Here are a few more from the trip, some of which are up there with my all time favourite images I’ve ever taken.  Such an amazing place and fortunately it changes every year so I have an excuse to go back!  Not that I would have needed one.

There are quite a few more images of this incredible place in the gallery.  I wish I could say I did it justice, but it’s one of those places you really have to visit to fully appreciate.  Let me know if you’re going, I’ll likely tag along!

After dating for over a year now, it was time to make the trip to China to meet Danni’s parents.  It’s always a fairly daunting thing to meet your girlfriends immediate family, and even more so when that family speaks very little English.

I believe we managed quite well with the little Mandarin I do speak and Danni translating the rest (which to be honest was about 95% of our conversations).  I will say that I’ve never eaten so well, or so much as I did under the care of Danni’s family, and they were more than welcoming to me and my odd western habits.

Guangzhou is a little bit like Hong Kong in that you can’t build a proper sky scraper without covering it in millions of colour changing lights in an ever increasing effort to outshine the previously completed building.  It makes for a great evening skyline, but the light pollution (not to mention the normal pollution) is something else.

It’s also a bit of an odd city in that I didn’t notice a single old car and conversely, I didn’t see one new bicycle.  There’s probably something poignant to be said about how this reflects the disparity of the wealthy and the poor, but I’m just not that deep.  Sorry if you were expecting something more!

Danni was an excellent tour guide and we even managed to visit a few spots she hadn’t been to while living there.  Lots of parks and a few ‘Old Guangzhou’ museums balanced nicely with busy shops and crowded high streets.  As it was approaching Chinese New Year the public transport system was heavily burdened and the crush of people in the metro was almost unbearable.  Fortunately taxi’s were incredibly cheap (if not a little bit difficult to acquire) so we mostly stayed above ground away from the shoving millions.

After two weeks I made my teary goodbyes and flew back to London with a suitcase pregnant with even more food; presumably with the assumption that I hadn’t eaten nearly enough.  2kg’s over the baggage limit, but the check-in girl took pity on me…

Lots of additional photos in the gallery here.

Our third and final day in Kiev was taken at a much more leisurely pace.  There was time to sleep in a little bit and have some breakfast to stave off the effects of the previous evenings vodka consumption.

The plan was to wander down to the House with Chimaeras to get a few shots of the unusual building and then hike down to the war memorial park for some photos of the statues and arsenal they had just lying around.

The park was full of behemoth bronze statues depicting scenes of Soviet soldiers charging to battle and were largely inspiring assuming this was the side you wanted to win.  In the center of the park was the Mother Motherland statue, an impressive military take on the Statue of Liberty.

Beyond the statues and military machines, there were also the standard “eternal flame” monument and several obelisks devoted to specific wars the Ukraine has been involved in.

The rest of the photos from the day here here.  I was feeling much less creative and disinclined to take many photos, and the gallery reflects that I’m afraid.  Still, it was a great trip and one that will be hard to top for a while.

It was going to be hard to top our day trip to Chernobyl and Pripyat, so our second day in the Ukraine would have to be something special.  Fortunately, we had just the thing in store: a day in Pervomaysk at the Museum of Strategic Missile Troops.  The last remaining (though obviously non-working) ICBM launch site in the Ukraine.

Arriving after a 3 hour journey from Kiev, the museum is a fairly non-descript building in the middle of some farm land.  Surrounded by corn a wheat fields, it’s hard to imagine that 25 years ago this exact site was what kept me up at night worrying about the nuclear end of the world (I spent a surprising amount of time concerned with my own mortality as a 9 year old).

We sat down briefly to watch a video about the site and various other CCCP methods of nuclear missile deployment, but as everything was being translated from Russian to English for us by our Ukrainian guide it was painfully slow.  Fortunately, it was interrupted 10 minutes in (which took 25 minutes) as our tour was about to start.

We were given a short tour of the museum and told about the various missiles that were stored at this location as well as the 5 other neighbouring sites.  The volume of potential destruction out here in the middle of nowhere was staggering and it’s easy to see why nobody wanted to “shoot first”.

The tour was interesting enough but as everything was in Russian it was difficult to glean much beyond what was being translated for us.  Photos, diagrams and mock ups of nuclear missiles are fascinating when the real thing isn’t right outside so we were eager to get through and on with it.

Outside there were bits and pieces of old missiles including the shot above of the SATAN missile.  This was their largest missile available at the height of the cold war, each one capable of rendering 300 square kilometers uninhabitable.  Our guide told us that at peak, there were over 2000 of these in the Russian stockpile.

From there, we made our way through the core of the complex to the silos themselves.  Protected by rows of electrified wire, several anti-personal vehicles and a turret mounted (50cal?) machine gun, the silo has been all but filled in with concrete in accordance with whatever treaties were signed to decommission them.

Our guide then took us through a series of long, underground tunnels to the entrance of the command module.  Passing beyond a pair of one tonne steel doors, five of us crammed into an elevator built for two and made the slow journey 12 stories down to the base of the command module.  It was here that, should the orders be received, a pair of officers would simultaneously turn their keys and press their buttons.

Definitely a worthy day trip, though our guide wasn’t the most jovial of sorts.  In my mind I pictured him as someone who longed for the glory days of mother Russia and was sick to death of showing foreign tourists the might that was, taking pictures and making jokes about his precious military heritage.  It could just be that he missed out on his morning coffee however.

A couple more shots are in the gallery here.