Category: bristol

B341 – NOTHING LIKE A ENGLISH SEA SIDE TOWN

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Saturday in norfolk are mostly about chilling out and just sleeping whenever possible and thats kind of what I’ve done. Yesterday we did the usual dog walk in the morning and then sat around watching films / rugby before heading out with Amy’s friend’s for a meal and stuff. its been the first time in like 6 months since amy has seen some of her friends so its was kind of like a mini reunion.

What I love about coming to norfolk is the kind of sea side town vibes you get, when we took amys dog dexter on the walk we took this path that takes you through a proper english caravan site, with all those static caravans, which this time of year look completely abandoned expect for those few dedicated caravan people, you then head into the sea side town of Sheringham which has some how survived this fate of so many other sea side towns around the country and is still booming, with local butchers and of course the arcade’s with those amazing basketball games and 2p machines but most of all you have to love the local pubs which feel like they have been there since the beginning of time. my favourite is the Welly and now they even have WIFI. who would have thought it.

Its kind of amazing what when you think about what has happened to sea side towns around the country in the past 15 years, a lot of them I feel like are making a come back and a pretty fast one at that, when you look at places like cromer, it must have lived on a knifes edge for a few years while its locals made the decision to move on or stay put and fight it out and try to keep cromer alive and to say that while walking round Cromer briefly yesterday new cafes are opening and smart restaurants are starting to appear. If I had some cash I would quickly buy some old flats overlooking the sea and in a few years I guarantee that those places will be worth a small fortune, especially in the holiday season. So everyone come to Norfolk and have a mini break, you wont regret it and probably wont break the bank doing it either.

Anyway heres some photos from yesterday.

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– dexter on a dog walk, I think someone needs a drink of water? –
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walking through a caravan site –
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– at one of my favourite places in the world, The Welly pub / Cromer –

 

 

B324 – I WILL BE BACK BUT THIS TIME WITH MY CAMERA – **NEW FORMAT**

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Right now is a pretty busy time for me, yesterday ended up being about a 14 hour working day, with a fair few other things that made it a bit more of a tough day. but that is all in the past now, its now Thursday and Ive woken up a bit earlier to get this post done. The only issue with that is, I dont think Ive woken up early enough, I think maybe I got my timings for this morning a little bit wrong. So the plan is now to type as quick as I can and make some time back up.

Yesterday started off a really cool location, we were over in Essex on a shoot in a Dock yard, obviously doing something that I can really talk about, the whole day has given me so many ideas for future shoots that I would love todo. I feel like places in the UK like Dock Yards are held in a really cool ere in the UK, they all have that cool working mans vibe, where sons follow dads and dad follow Grandads down to the docks and to keep the UK stocked up with supplies. I would love to come back to this place and just take portraits of the people working here, I bet all of them have a story from the docks.

If your looks at my photos my photos today and thinking that Ive filmed in the a weird frame, then thats because I have. from now on I think my plan on really busy days is going to post photos that I put on my instagram story. for two reasons really, firstly on those busy days if you can be bothered to read through my paragraphs of grammar mistakes then just head over to @joshfspear and look at those photos stress free and also I think that its easy to take good portrait mode photos on the insta story and they are really easily transferable to WordPress and sometimes with this blog taking the easy root is the difference between an extra 45 minutes in bed.

Here are my photos from yesterday, much love! and please let me know what you think of these photos, its a new idea for me to use not everyday but maybe every now and again.

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– I wish I could of gone on a ship, they are pretty impressive  –
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– even the stair cases have the work mens vibe. I will be back to the docks with my camera in hand to photograph it more –
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– dont those tall machines look like something out of starwars –
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– this is me, looking all professional –

B293 – I NEED TODO BETTER

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Having a bit of a lazy Monday morning today, its like 12 O’ clock and I’m still in bed. I am doing work but I’m still holed up refusing to get up. I think this kind of behaviour is fine as long as I’m still getting stuff done, you don’t need to be out of bed at 7am and cracking on right? some days you can do what needs to be done laying flat in a warm bed, I put it down to the perks of Freelance life.

Today I’m going back to some thing I haven’t done for like 100 days, that is the Iphone challenge, what i do it look through my Iphone to see what photos I might have on there that I can use for todays post, I also try to see a good photo and then just take it on my Iphone quickly to store it up for when I have days like these. As Im still at my parents house I want to try and get out later and give mooney (my dog) a good old walk, go out into the country side and see whats going on. maybe try and get some cool landscape photos, I know that its better to get up really early for that kind of thing, but I’ve missed the boat on that one now, so I suppose Ill just have to go this afternoon before it gets dark.

I think how I have to move forward with this blog is the day before I need to give my self a goal for the next day, like right tomorrow I’m going to photograph people or tomorrow is all about Landscape. that is probably the best way to move forward, so each day Ive got the goals and I know what i need todo, because right now Im not thinking about the next day till it gets here and I realise Ive missed an opportunity or something. Maybe Im getting to complacent, time I stepped my game up a bit more.

Thats my conclusion from today, here are my photos, enjoy!

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– this is a photo of the long walk ways at Bank station, its like human rabbit holes down there –
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– bristol train station at the beginning of the year –
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– that time I was at the British Library –

 

B274 – BACK IN LONDON AND COOKING UP A TREAT!

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Before I get back into the main part of this post I’m going to give a bit of an overview on how today has gone. At 10am this morning Amy and myself woke up in our Amazing hotel room and instantly realised that we were both destroyed, I was ill and for some reason Amy’s legs wouldn’t work. Turns are both sick, me a bit more ill than her, but ill non the less. I think its just a case of us crashing, Christmas is normally a time of resting up but if anything its been the complete opposite, im not moaning about it, I’ve had the best two weeks.

The plan was originally to checkout of our hotel and going and have a look around Bristol and take in all the signs, well our plan quickly became to get on the first train we could and get back to the flat.  Once we made it onto the train the next mission was to start editing the Go Pro video I made the other day, there’s no better way to make a train ride go quicker than to start editing a video, but well rendering took a bit longer than expect. The whole train ride really so I did manage to get a little sleep.

That leads me to the next part of my blog, what we did for dinner. We needed spice and a lot of it, when you’re ill nothing is better than spice, it cleans your nose and almost gives your body a kick start which is just what we need. Amy came up with the good idea of having a curry, making it from scratch and also learning a new recipe. If any of you are in need of a new dish and what to add a bit of spice in your life, then please feel free to give this recipe a go.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons oil

4 cloves garlic (crushed)

1 onion (Large, chopped)

3 red chili peppers (‘s, chopped)

4 teaspoons Madras Spice paste

1 tablespoon turmeric

2 tablespoons mango chutney

1 can coconut cream

1 tablespoon sweet chili sauce

1 tomato passata (large carton around 600ml)

1 bunch coriander (chopped)

4 tablespoons greek yogurt

2 chicken breasts (chopped)

 

Instructions

Step 1: In a large pan, heat the oil then fry the garlic, onions and chilli for about 5 minutes stirring regularly.

Step 2: Add the curry paste and turmeric and stir in.

Step 3: Add the mango chutney, coconut cream, sweet chilli sauce, passata, coriander, fenugreek and Greek yogurt and leave in a low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Step 4: While your curry simmers on a low heat, cook the chicken and once its white the whole way through dump it all into the pan with the rest of the curry

Step 5: let that all simmer till your 30-minute timer goes off, I decided to add an extra chill 10 minutes before the end of the timer just to add a little extra spice.

I managed to get two good sized meals out of it and some left overs. Thank you too the App Yummly and also http://www.jamandclottedcream.co.uk/ for the recipe, I’ve tweaked it a bit but I cant take full responsibly for this dish.

One last thing, my goal for this blog is to reach 500 subscribers, so if you are reading this and haven’t yet subscribed. Please can you subscribe and ill be sure to follow your post.

Heres my photos from today, I hope you like them! and im sorry if I keep moaning about being ill!

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– trying to get the timeline rendered by the time the train pulled into paddington didnt happen, I literally had my laptop open on the tube –
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– arriving back in Bethnal Green –
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– the Curry apperently smelt amazing ( my nose is blocked so I didnt know)

B273 – ONE OF THE COOLEST HOTEL ROOMS – THE BERKELEY SUITES. BRISTOL

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After the craziness of New Years eve, it was only right that instead of driving straight home and back to reality and Amy and me booked ourselves into a good hotel room and just mong out on the sofa. the perfect place is a hotel called the Berkeley Suites, located next to Bristol British Museum and Art Gallery  and in the area of Brandon, the suites are like three rooms, including a living room (projector screen), A bedroom and then the obvious bathroom. it just seems like this place has thought of everything you might need without over doing it with those chairs that no one ever sits on and what has also set this place as one of my favourite is the face that it has a light in the ceiling!

No joke but most of those posh hotels or places like the radisson Blu, don’t have a light in the ceiling, I love a Radisson Blu if I’m working and end up in one of those ill be over the moon, its perfect for working but when you want to have a proper break you want more of an apartment rather than just your normal hotel room with a coffee machine and a kettle. I want what the Berkeley Suites have done, they have given us a little kitchen thing, with a proper coffee machine and even some small hobbs, so if we want to cook then we could.

Ive also have to talk about my favourite part of the suite, the projector Screen. its perfect, its like having an invisible TV that when you want it to be part of the room its there and I would day is about 80 inches wide, and comes with two DLS Sweden speakers on each side, that really ramp up the home cinema feel. my new goal for 2018 is to finish the year with a mini home cinema of my own. It’s not all perfect though, we did have a small issue of you HDMI cable they supply to plug my laptop in to the projector not working, so we couldn’t watch the one film we wanted to watch, Gladiator. After a quick phone call to reception someone was on their way round, but as it was 8pm on New Years Day there wasn’t much any of us could do. Luckily there was Christmas films on TV so we just watched those instead.

if I wasn’t also doing dry January they have these small bottle of Complementary Sherry for everyone to dig in and enjoy and if you book through them they even offer you a free hamper. but if that kind of thing is going to fill you up then you have a bunch of good restaurants right next door including Byron Burger, Wagamamma’s, Wahacca, Choa and Thai Tapas. theres also a Waitrose and Sainsbury’s if you would rather cook in the kitchen thing.

Heres a link to their website, check them out.

https://berkeleysuites.co.uk/

Its fair to say that both of us really don’t want to leave this room, and have already talked about coming back for another stay, the plan for today was to explore Bristol a bit more but we both feel really ill so I think were just going to jump on the train and get back to London.

Thank you Berkley Suites and I’ll see you soon!

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– the home cinema made took this place from a solid 7/10 to a straight 9/10
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– you have to love a good front door –
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– Ive never had a kitchen area like this in a hotel room before, I have to say it is working for me –
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– sitting down this morning to write my blog post with a proper coffee has made starting 2018 pretty easy –

 

B272 – WHAT A WAY TO FINISH THE YEAR

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Im not really sure where to start with this one, new years eve was probably one of the best nights in a long long time. these last three days have been pretty incredible and spent with some pretty incredible friends. this blog post wont have anything from the actual party as all of that stuff is on a Go Pro, we put a Go pro up in the corner of the room and filmed the whole party so expect a highlights reel soon.

before the antics of last night some of us decided that we needed to get up and go for a country walk even though it was completely tipping it down but that wasn’t going to stop us, fresh country air was worth it. after walking through a few fields, making friends with some horses and eventually finding a road which lead us straight to two of proper country pubs, the type of places where you have that one local who doesn’t speak words but more bumbles and mumbles his way through sentences. nothing is better than coming across and local pub which looks like its been there for the past 100 years and every item of photo on the wall feels like it could tell a story, thats the type of pubs we were in. but after a short live disaster of not being able to get a roast dinner, the kitchen had stopped serving, we sat down and just kind of forgot to get up and order food, but we did managed to get some left over roast potatoes which only showed us what we could of had. About 100 meters down the road was a different pub call the Fox, it was half pub half Italian restaurant so that was our back up choice and to be honest pizza is always a good option in my eyes, so that put us back on track.

I also just want to say sorry this post is late today but to be honest when I woke up this morning I wasn’t sure if I would be able to move of the day, but now Amy and me have just checked into an amazing Hotel in Bristol of the night and currently just trying to decided what move to watch on the projector screen that we literally have in our room! that was my number one reason of booking this place.

Heres some photos from the walk yesterday!

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– two boys one pint –
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– Rob trying to convince the sheep he’s their leader –
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– this is Ellis trying to find the pub –
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– making freinds with horses –
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– pub found –

 

 

 

 

B271 – AT THE QUEENS YACHT!

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New Years eve eve and the plan for yesterday was to travel to Bristol City Centre and see what was going on, we did try and do some of the sightseeing like going to a Cathedral and walking along the river. I never realised that the queens old yacht the Balmoral was moored down here, I didn’t even realise it was called the Balmoral till I saw it and recognised it from photos and stuff.

With everyone running around like crazy yesterday I didn’t want to have a big camera out it pretty big to just be carrying around all the time so my plan was just to have a Gopro in my pocket and see how it turned out, and to be honest it was probably the best idea, I literally just put the gopro on wide and snapped away. I was determined not to just use my iphone as much as I like it.

After we made the trip to the catherderal we all needed to hydryrate our selfs and the only close place to grab some liquid was to head into a local establishment called A Hole In The Wall which just to happens to be a pub. From there it pretty much set the tone for the evening and we ended up going to a few more pubs and actually ended up in a Jazz pub called the Old Juke which is a famous Bristol Jazz club and last night had 1930’s jazz bands playing, which was actually really cool we all got our swing dancing on and jived to the music. At that point I really wish I had my 5d with me so I could take some great photos of the band and the people in the bar, everyone was dressed really cool. it was like stepping back into the 1930’s.  By this time we were all full hydrated and didn’t need to be drinking big drinks anymore but knew that it was still important to stay hydrated so the only option available to us was to move onto small drinks like tequilas. Past that point its all a bit of a mystery, but from what I’ve heard this morning we all had a great night.

Its now New years eve and im looking forward to seeing what the days got in store for us. I’ve decided to post 4 photos today, I hope you like them.

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– this is by far the coolest photo from the day –
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– the only photo i got from the 1920s bar, i have got some gopro footage that im going to try and turn into a short film later on –
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– dave and me kissing by the queens old yacht –
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– a group photo from one of the bars, not everyones here –

 

B270 – IITS FINALLY THAT TIME.

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So I’m going to have to do this whole post a bit different I think, Neither Amy or me brought the correct charger so I cant have a look at the photos I want to post till my phone turns out and then I cant upload this blog till I find out what we do about wifi? We are in the middle of no where with our mates for New Years eve so there’s no chance of me getting time to do this post till later on. That’s the situation right about now, because Ive woken at like 7:50 and it doesn’t sound like anyone else is up now is a good time to crack on and get this done so when I do eventually find some decent wifi I can go ahead and post this.

Yesterday we arrived at our house of the next 3 days in Bristol, well more like the Cotswolds, im not too good with location but I know there is a sign at the end of the road that says Dunkirk. So if you look on google maps you’ll probably know more than me. The next three days are going to be tough to put together a decent sentence let a lone a blog post but ill do my best to make sure that these are informative and interesting to read, I suppose ill use this blog to just giving you guys the heads up and prepare you for what might come.

Today is our first full day at this place and im looking forward to see my friends and having a proper catch up with the ones I haven’t seen in ages, these kind of trips are always the best for that reason. Oh and we have a swimming pool in our house, literally a full on swimming pool so maybe get prepared for one of the photos tomorrow to be underwater?

Theres my photos from today, Bon appetite.

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– Something keeping me occupied while everyone plays a game in the car. I obviously lost the game and was the first one out –
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– this isnt my bottle of Jack Daniels but it looks good in a picture –
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– these two were looking after “Baby Jesus”  before I left yesterday. Flo the younger one has just learnt about Jesus so now everything is Baby Jesus including the dumbell that phoebe is holding like a baby –