… the Nikon D3000 anyway.

And I bet that I’ll like it even less tomorrow when I have a close look at it.

It was a beautiful night tonight and I could see Jersey and St Malo quite clearly in the distance across the sea with a storm blowing away in the distance. Even the lights of the wind farm 70kms away beyond Barneville-Carteret could be seen in the distance.

I took quite a few photos of Jersey in the storm, none of which worked as well as I would like. Trying to take a photo on a tripod in the pitch black in a gale in the windiest part of France is not easy

The best of a pretty poor bunch was this one taken with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

As you might expect there was far too much vibration with the 70-300mm lens and even with the 18-105mm lens with a long exposure time of 3 seconds.

But the lights of St Helier, 54 kilometres away, and the reflection of the street lights of Jersey off the clouds in the sky have come out really well given the circumstances.

And I reckon that once I get the hang of working the tripod in the dark, I might be able to get the photos to come out even better.

It’s all trial and error at the moment – plenty of trial and even more error.

And then I moved on down the coast to the end of the Pointe du Roc.

And there I was, standing on top of one of the concrete bunkers taking a few photos of everywhere in the clear light of the night, when a sudden strong gust of wind, something like the one that blew down the Tay Bridge in 1879, blew the tripod off the top of the bunker and right down to the ground, with the camera and the new 70-300 mm zoom/telephoto lens attached.

At that moment I was in the process of taking a long exposure of St Malo too. I suppose that that will come out in a very interesting fashion.

With no alarm I did my best to have a nice long sleep but it didn’t quite work out like that. I was awake early enough but despite everything I wouldn’t haul myself out of my stinking pit at that kind of time. 09:00 was much more like it.

While I was asleep though I’d been out on my travels. Driving an artic somewhere which was actually parked up in a lay-by where there was another lorry blocking me off. As I clambered into my lorry the other driver reversed his lorry so that I could leave the lay-by. A short while later I was walking down a footpath towards a lorry park on the motorway and was accompanied by another lorry driver. I told him that I was happy to go on my own but he insisted on accompanying me. Apparently there had been an “incident” and several people had been injured. And there were some of the drivers who thought that I was at fault.

After a rather late breakfast I had a lounge around for a while and then made a start on the photos from Belgium. And there were quite a few too.

For lunch I had my usual butties but I ate them inside. It’s definitely autumn outside and going cold now.

This afternoon I carried on with the photos and had a few other things to do too, including some tidying up. And I managed a day without crashing out too, which is a little bit better.

Two walks too. There was the evening walk around the headland – where I had my camera incident, and also the afternoon walk around the walls.

The lighting conditions were perfect this afternoon and there was a good view of the coast.

Donville-les-Bains has come out really well, including the old hotel where I went to see that ruin of a apartment not long after I first came to Granville.

A bit too windy for the birdmen today though. There weren’t any of them out and about.

I cropped out a couple of sections of the photo of the beach and enlarged them.

As well as the old hotel at Donville-les-Bains and all of the beach cabins out there, you can see the spire of the church in the distance.

That might well be the church of Bréville-sur-Mer.

This section was cropped from the extreme left-hand edge of the photo and enlarged by about 25%.

There’s the camp site that we have seen before, and another church spire away in the distance.

That is very likely the church in Brehal and we’ve seen a much better photo of that in the past when we were experimenting with the older zoom/telephoto lens.

There weren’t any people out and about on the beach either.

You can see the waves crashing down onto the sand and the whitecaps will tell you that there was quite a wind blowing them ashore.

A few people on the promenade though braving the inclement weather.

Tea was a slice of pie that was left over from when Alison was here, with spuds and peas and carrots too.

So tomorrow I’ll check over the camera and see what the damage is. I might even switch the heating on too. I actually had the halogen heater on for an hour or so to warm up the office this afternoon.

It’s that kind of time.