Beautiful weather in Cornwall, Stunning sunsets and amazing waves.

We have all been really blessed with the weather lately in Cornwall and i think throughout the UK everyone feels so much happier with the sun shining. Here's just a few photos taken on my iphone over the past 10 days of Summer weather.

 Picture taken from my front door, in St Columb Major and noticing not a cloud in the sky

Another Beautiful day, Here is Porthtowan beach and actually lucky enough to celebrate my birthday with some sunshine and a pint at the Blue Bar.

Again back to Porthtowan this week to soak up some sunshine and a cooling dip in the sea before returning back to the office to do some work.

 Leaving the office on Friday 25th May the temperature in my car was reading the dizzying heights of 32'C which was apparently warmer then Greece. If only the weather would last, i could get very used to lunch time walks on the beach and not having to carry a thick warm jumper and umbrella everywhere i go "just in case" And typically in Cornwall you can never really tell what the weather will do. One town can be basking in glorious sunshine while a mile closer to the coast can be chilly and grey and under a thick blanket of fog. (Newquay on Thursday Night.

Friday night saw me venture straight to Watergate Bay for a surf and with perfect clean learner waves i was in the water for a good couple of hours. With the sun setting as i got out the water it really was a beautiful evening. There were crowds still in the water catching the last few waves of the day, and plenty of people enjoying the balmy summers evening at The Phoenix, Jamie Olivers Fifteen and The Beach Hut. BBQ's on the beach were filling the air with summery scents of smoked food. A beautiful evening and a beautiful place to spend it.

Saturday and the summery weather continues, the day has been another scorcher and popping into Newquay to get some take away after a hard days work i was lucky enough to capture the sun setting beautifully over the harbor. A slight glitch last night with some heavy rain through the night, but as the plants need it and it had all dried up by the mourning i'm really not complaining, Another great day today to be lucky enough to spend it in Cornwall.

I really hope this weather lasts, and we get to enjoy Cornwall in it's most beautiful form and the less Cornish Mizzle the better.

Olympic torch travels through Cornwall. Lands End pictures of the start of the olympic torch relay.

Today is the day that the Olympic Torch Relay starts and marks 70 days until the start of the Olympics. Starting at 7am at Lands end in Cornwall and spending the first day winding through Cornwall the procession will eventually leave Cornwall tonight and finish it's first day in Plymouth Devon and then continue around the UK covering 8000 miles and involving 8000 lucky torch bearers.

Unfortunately i was not up early enough to make it to Lands end for the start of the relay however a good friend from Property Turkey was there to capture the atmosphere and has allowed me to share her photos on here for you to see. Currently the torch is in Truro city center and will be winding it's way over to the North coast and Newquay in time for lunch. To watch the Olympic torch relay live and track it's current location you can keep up to date via the BBC website.

Olympic Torch Relay Cornwall

Driving home from work today on the A30 i passed 5 coaches traveling down to west Cornwall for the Olympic torch relay. Now I'm not some sort of coach/bus spotter like an Eddie Stobart spotter, where you get excited by ticking another named lorry off the list, but in Cornwall on the daily commute you do start to pass the same cars trundling in the opposite direction each day. So when you see 5 bright yellow coaches (not your average Cornish western greyhound bus) you notice. I saw two together go past and i didn't think much of it, then when the next one went past i noticed the name on the front saying "Olympic Torch Relay" the next one past and i noticed the map on the back of the bus of the relay route. Now I'm a bit cynical and all i can think of is how much petrol it is costing to send all these coaches all around the country for the relay. But i guess it is the Olympics and it doesn't happen very often. I'm sure the Olympic torch relay goes somewhere near to my house so I'm hoping to see the procession and get some photo's as it is a once in a lifetime event.

The Fourth Bridge

After our visit to Edinburgh Zoo we drove out of Edinburgh to Queensferry to see the spectacular Fourth Bridge that passes over the river Firth of Forth. The bridge was built in the 1800's and is well know as one of Scotland's landmarks. Until 2002 it was well know that the bridge was constantly employing maintenance staff that continually painted the bridge. They would spend all year starting at one end of the bridge and by the time they had got to the other side and finished painting it was time to return to the beginning and start painting it all over again. However this has now changed and a new paint that was applied in 2002 is expected to last at least 25 years and therefore saving the bridge owners a lot of time and money.

Here you can see both Fourth bridges, the road bridge to the left and the iconic rail bridge to the right.

Edinburgh Zoo cute animal pictures

Here's the rest of my pictures from the other lovely animals at Edinburgh Zoo. I haven't included any Edinburgh Zoo Pandas pictures as they have there own blog post all to themselves as there so lovely. The penguins have been temporarily moved into a smaller enclosure whilst there main enclosure is refurbished, however they looked more than happy swimming about and basking in the sun whilst we were there.

 I loved the meerkat inclosure and a few people were leaning over and the meerkats were not at all shy to come up and sniff at people peering in at them. As one of the animals not behind glass they were a joy to photograph and actually very photogenic.

Pandas in the UK Photographs.

Tuesday the 1st of May was finally the day where i got to meet the amazing Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo. The are more amazing up close that you could ever imagine. So beautiful so graceful and so lazy!

This is Tian Tian the female panda who had actually been sleeping all day, also known as Sweetie.

And this is Yang Guang the male bear also know as Sunshine, also being a bit lazy and sleepy. Although he soon got up and started feasting on his bamboo, panda cake and carrots and looked very content.

 Yang Guang in his outside enclosure whilst the Zoo keepers were preparing his food in his indoor enclosure.

 A very happy Yang Guang with his Panda cake.

 Eating every last crumb of Panda cake off the floor.

And onto his carrots, we were actually told that pandas can eat up to 14 hours a day and sleep for the rest of the day. I like this lifestyle i could quite happily exist to just eat and sleep.

 After so much eating it's quite tiring so a lazy rest for Yang Guang.

 A more traditional sight was to see the pandas eating their massive amount of Bamboo, and incredibly the pandas will eat up to £70,000 worth of bamboo a year. Lets just hope lots and lots of people keep visiting these beautiful bears so that they can stay. I really do hope in the future they will be able to mate and have a cub, then i would most definitely take another trip up to scotland and see them again. Pandas have a very short fertility window and they were recently put together in the hope that they would mate, the keepers said there were very positive signs with Tian Tian certainly making all the correct noises however it just didn't happen at this time. But they also explained they they have only been in their new home a few months and it can take up to 12 months for them to settle in properly and are hoping that this time next year they will have more luck. Here's some videos from when the pair were put together courtesy of Edinburgh Zoo