Tag Archives: torquay

Rough Seas In Torquay – Photos From April 2012

Inspiration, , , , ,

Earlier this year, back in April (before I had a break from blogging) I took a bunch of photographs of the sea on a really stormy day (by our standards – not that impressive if you experienced hurricane Sandy!) which I made into a couple of galleries, but never got around to posting.

They’re kind of annoying me, sitting in WordPress doing nothing so I’m going to put them here.

no images were found

I’ve lived close to the sea for six years now and I find it absolutely fascinating. I moved here on my own and I still live on my own most of the time, which I think contributes to why I consider the sea as one of my friends. It’s like a huge, heaving, ever changing mass of pure nature.

When I walk alongside it, it is on the one hand threatening yet at the same time inviting. There’s something about this huge mass that cries out that it is a living entity – it seems to communicate with me yet I have no idea what it is saying. The only thing I can decipher is that it is reminding me just how insignificant I really am, which, viewed positively means that my problems and challenges are actually insignificant and not worth worrying about in the big scheme of things. Thanks for the reminder, mate.

no images were found

The relentless pounding of the waves on the one hand is enough to wash away huge rocks over time, yet on the other hand it seems to be making that noise to get noticed, saying, “Hey come and jump into me and have some fun and a free wash.”

If you view this water as one single entity, then it touches every continent. You could use it as a transport system and get to almost any country that isn’t landlocked. While it pounds the rocks in Torquay, the same body of water is pounding the rocks and beaches in hundreds of other places simultaneously.

no images were found

Perhaps it is having a mood on a certain day on one side of the world and pounding rock into sand, while gently lapping the shore somewhere else on the other side of the world and dragging pebbles backwards and forwards to the delight of anyone stopping to listen.

As you can probably tell, I’m still in awe of my new neighbour and I don’t plan on changing that too soon. It’s worth remembering as often as possible that many of the very best things in life really are free. Why not join them in their freedom?

Early Start Boot Camp Update

Motivation, , , , ,

It’s over a month since I first started my early start boot camp experiment. In that time I have tried all sorts of variations of it ranging from regimental fixed start time to downright random and spontaneous.

I’m not much wiser really, although I’ve done a lot more walking, taking photos and seabird-worrying. One of the complications is that we have just finished the annual ‘summer arrives in March’ thing (which was nice, especially on the tennis courts) but we have now moved into the predictable ‘April showers’ season.

With this, we often get very nice periods in the mornings where the weather can fool Easter tourists into getting ready, packing all of their beach gear up and making sandwiches only to find that once they hit the beach at ten-thirty it turns into a hailstorm or a sideways rain ‘blow your brolly inside-out’ type of affair.

So the problem for me is that even though early start boot camp is great, it’s a bit dark and cold but as soon as I get back, it turns into summertime for about an hour or so before the inevitable grey clouds and hailstorms arrive and as a sun-lover, I like to feel the sun on my skin and to make some vitamin D, so I don’t like missing that sunny spell.

I’m still having early starts, but the boot camp (walk) is either delayed or sometimes cancelled. Although there’s not as much blogging going on here as I would like, I’m pretty busy with work and when I get into productive mode, I don’t like to snap myself out of it for a walk.

So as I said above, overall it’s a bit unorganised and difficult to draw too many conclusions about the long term plan at this stage but one thing is for sure – it’s been a fun and beneficial experiment.

After the initial boot camps, I had taken a short break from it to see how I felt in comparison to just previously when I was getting up early and going straight out (well after a cup of tea of course, that goes without saying around here) every morning.

No surprises, I felt tired, demotivated and unproductive without the boot camp and by contrasting the two experiences directly, it provided a very clear lesson – early starts and brisk walks as the sun rises are excellent for providing the right mindset for working from home and getting things done.

I’ve built up a couple of galleries that I’d like to post here, so here’s the first one which is from the sixth of April when it was high tide and therefore I couldn’t actually walk along the seafront walkway without getting soaked, but it provided some different photo opportunities.

It’s really awe-inspiring experiencing the power of the sea as it continually splashes, slurps and explodes onto the walkway, then drains off again down the steps with a rushing/sucking sound. There’s quite a loud booming sound as the waves break onto the steps all of the way along and you can’t help but imagine how mangled you’d be if you fell in and got smashed onto the steps over and over – it’s a bit like a washing machine, but you’d probably end up dirtier rather than cleaner, I guess.

You get to see some funny things down there, especially at the moment (winter season) when dogs are still allowed on the beach. The other day there was a small, yappy dog who obviously had a problem with the waves breaking on the walkway steps and as well as barking at the sea (surprisingly, this didn’t scare the sea away), each time the sea receded in between waves the dog would run down a few steps and try to bite the incoming wave and then run back up the steps, just about managing not to get soaked and dragged into the swell.

Then it would do the same all over again with the next wave. Silly dog, but funny and cute. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera handy that time for a ‘dog bites wave’ and ‘wave tries to soak dog in revenge’ gallery.

no images were found

Back to the boot camp – I need to find some kind of routine with the boot camp which is kind of half and half in terms of being regimented but flexible and variable. Doing it at the same time every day just gets boring and tedious.

I’m not sure yet, but I suppose the ideal solution is to have a set amount of boot camps per week. For example, three or four days of early start boot camp (up at 6 AM, leave at 6.15AM) and two or three days of variable times (but must be sometime in the morning) and one day off.

I’ll let you know when I have come up with something concrete along with any lessons learnt. Here’s the next gallery from the twelfth of April –

no images were found

Finally, a big shout out to the best son in the world, (my one and only son, well as far as I am aware) Jamie, who becomes a man today on his sixteenth birthday. Unfortunately, I can’t be with him today but I had a chat with him earlier and he was chuffed to bits that one of his mates got the people on Kerrang Radio to give him a birthday shout over the airwaves. Happy birthday son!

The last gallery is a handful of photographs I took showing the view from here in ExRat Towers.  They are mainly the sea-view as I see it from over my computer monitor except for the fourth one which is the side-view looking towards the main town in Torquay. The first three are at night, with the moonlight lighting up the sea and the last two are in the morning. On photograph number two, you can see the lights of Torquay harbour area on the far left plus the lights of Brixham on the far right, in the distance.

no images were found

 

I’ll be back soon with some proper work related posts, I’m just in ‘the lab’ making some business plans at the moment and planning to get out of there soon and to start making some posts which are more in line with what this blog is really meant to be about – helping others to escape the rat race.

Early Start Boot Camp

Motivation, , , , , ,

no images were found

 

As you can see from the archives, I’ve had a two month or so break from posting. These have been tough times, with many lessons learnt and lots of challenges faced – some conquered, some failed and some ongoing. Life’s like that – well mine is, anyway!

After hitting the bottom – hard, I decided that I needed to work on my motivation, so I came up with a plan – the early start boot camp. I had been starting my days totally the wrong way and this new plan is much more like the right way.

Five years ago I ‘upped-sticks’ and moved away from my hometown to somewhere a lot nicer, by the sea (Torquay, in Devon – England.) I realised recently that I was still taking too much for granted and was failing to appreciate many of the gifts that the local area has to offer along with the benefits to my mindset from indulging in the best that nature has to offer.

In the past, on random occasions, I would get up early and walk down to the seafront when most of the town was still asleep and take photographs of the sunrise, the sea and anything else that caught my attention – for example, the abundance of wildlife that is highly active at that time in the morning, seeking out their breakfast, or trying to avoid becoming someone elses breakfast!

So I decided that I would make a plan that involved doing this on a daily basis as a way to start my day off on the right foot. I’m still adding to and tweaking the plan, for example when I return to my flat I do some exercise with my home gym equipment before starting work (mainly gym ball and simple abdominal exercises using a 10kg weight as if it were a medicine ball.)

The rationale behind this is that if I can’t drag myself out of bed at silly-O’clock and get some exercise while appreciating the stunning wildlife and beauty on my doorstep, then how can I possibly face the challenges that life and business are going to present to me? Answer – I can’t. So there’s no excuse.

Initially, I’m focused on regularly doing the walk down to the seafront, nice and early, in time to see the sunrise. This morning I took my camera along and went crazy, taking 128 photographs. After editing, I got this down to 66 decent ones. I’m probably going to do this every time because I enjoy it, it’s creative and hopefully it will inspire someone who bothers to look through them on this blog. This is why I chose the career I have (to live where I want and do what I want, when I want) and it was clear that I needed to remind myself of this on a daily basis – ideally first thing.

I hope that anyone who has a peek enjoys the photographs. They are a little bit random – I snap anything that appears in my field of vision that’s interesting. By the way, the boot camp is a fantastic idea and I feel totally different to how I usually feel at the start of my day, so the boot camp is a keeper. It will be interesting to see if I can keep it up and if I still enjoy it some time from now, but in all honesty I just have to change boot camp locations regularly because the local area is packed with stunning views and great things to see and experience.

You can click through the different pages of the gallery using the numbers underneath. If you click on a photo it opens in the lightbox view, enabling you to see larger images and click through them one by one. But for the best hands-free experience, just click the ‘click to switch to slideshow’ link and enjoy.