I could (not) have been a Boat Race blue…

The Churchill College ladies’ eight in winter 1973 – that’s me in the front row on the right, during my first term at Cambridge University…

Today is the traditional Varsity Boat Race on the Thames in London, between Oxford University and Cambridge University, about which I am always nostalgic, although I have never been there to see it. There is a preview, from the point of view of Cambridge, here…

The first men’s race was in 1829 but nowadays there are four races – men’s and women’s plus the reserve crew races between Isis (Oxford) and Goldie (Cambridge) for the men and Osiris and Blondie for the women.

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From the non-digital archive: Lyon in 1993

A place to cool off – this fountain in Lyon bears a line of poetry – ‘Permets m’Amour penser quelque folie’, which I have seen translated as ‘Do not chide me for this play on words’, from the 18th sonnet of Louise Labé, who lived in Lyon in the 16th century

We are having a mini heatwave in the UK at the moment and I am struggling to cope. It’s strange how there would be no problem with these temperatures if I were on holiday abroad. I have been going through my old 35mm negatives again and decided to share these images of one of my favourite French cities – Lyon, which sits on the rivers Rhône and Saône not too far from the border with Switzerland.

Once again I realise what better pictures I could take today with a digital camera. But for now I at least have my memories of this sunny city with its wonderful fountains, statues and old buildings.

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From the non-digital archive: Connemara in the 1990s

The landscape of Connemara in Ireland in the summer of 1996

Summer’s coming and its that time of year for thinking about faraway places. I have been going through my old 35mm negatives and decided to sort out some shots from Ireland in the 1990s. They aren’t too bad, but it’s sad to think what better pictures I could take now with a digital camera!

We went to Ireland for several years in a row, ranging farther and farther to the west, and for me the most wonderful landscape of all was in Connemara, an area of lakes and mountains to the north and west of Galway city.

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From the non-digital archive: Garden Festival 1992

The red dragon of Wales at the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival in 1992

I can’t believe that 2017 sees the 25th anniversary of the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival that brought two million visitors to Blaenau Gwent in South East Wales.

The festival lasted six months, from May until October and transformed a derelict industrial wasteland into a blossoming landscape nearly two miles long.

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From the non-digital archive: Irish dancing 1995

Celtic designs on an Irish dancing dress

That great show Riverdance is in Cardiff this week, at St David’s Hall for a couple of days as part of a tour to celebrate 21 years since the first performance. By chance it is now 21 years since I took these pictures of young people dancing in the Irish style in Kinsale, County Cork, in the summer of 1995, before the Riverdance phenomenon began in earnest.

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From the non-digital archive: Yabusame 1991

A Japanese horseback archery contest took place in Cardiff in 1991

Occasionally I look back at the pictures I took in the days before digital cameras. This time the subject was a Japanese Yabusame (horseback archery) event in Cardiff’s Cooper’s Field, part of Bute Park, on Sunday, September 15, 1991. That was a particular boom time for industry links between Wales and Japan and we all loved anything Japanese.

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From the non-digital archive: Breton megaliths 1975

One of the alignments of standing stones at Carnac in Brittany, France, in 1975…

This self-indulgent trip down memory lane has been prompted by two things. It was the midsummer solstice on Friday and the Le Mans 24-hour car race took place at the weekend. Bringing these together, here are my very faded images from an archaeology field trip to see the megaliths (“huge stones”) of Brittany (including Le Mans) in 1975.

It was my first

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From the non-digital archive: Chevaline

Horsemeat butcher, Aix-en-Provence, 1990…

It’s only a picture. In this blog I usually aim to be non-controversial and I am very rarely topical. However, this old photograph has been sitting in my “miscellaneous” pile for decades and at last I see an opportunity to share it.

I took the photograph while on holiday in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France in the summer of 1990, using my old Ricoh SLR camera. Horsemeat is something we know it’s acceptable to eat in France, so I considered this image to be a snapshot of a different culture.

To those of you NOT in the UK, you may wonder

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From the non-digital archive: The painted streets of County Cork…

Skibbereen, west Cork, Ireland, in 1995…

A couple of posts ago I shared my pictures of the colourful streets of Aberaeron in West Wales. At the time I mentioned that brightly-painted buildings are also a feature of coastal towns in the west of Ireland.

I haven’t been there for a while, but

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From the non-digital archive: Stonehenge in 1974

Stonehenge in Spring 1974...

As we draw near to the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice, I thought I would post some old black and white pictures I took of Stonehenge and other West Country prehistoric monuments during an archaeological field class in Spring 1974.

Those were the days! Such monuments were not the tourist attractions they are today and they were often in isolated spots with no visitor centres nearby.

This weekend the

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