I took the week off to it spend with my friend who lives in Plymouth, and also to celebrate my birthday which happens to coincide with this spectacular event (as well as the annual Perseids meteor shower, which unfortunately we were prevented from enjoying due to cloud cover).

Plymouth is a great location for the fireworks competition because the waterfront of Plymouth is large, meandering and on many levels which means there is no jostling for positions and you don’t have to worry about being stood behind the tallest-person-in-the-world. Having said that, there are definitely some prime spots for watching the fireworks display. The grassy embankment of the Royal Citadel is a prime spot.

In fact on the second day I was walking on the Hoe at about 4pm and I saw people taking up their positions at the top of this embankment already, 5 1/2 hours before the fireworks display begins! Not surprising then, that they were kitted out with deck chairs, tents, tripods and cool boxes.

I’m imagining that the person who made the following video was probably one of those getting into position early. This video is a recording of the winning display which was by a company called Phoenix Fireworks from Sevenoaks. Apparently members of the public could vote online, though we didn’t. If you have the broadband speed, I recommend you watch this full screen and in HD – it’s pretty impressive. Oh and listen to the background commentary too, its quite amusing.

In this photo of one of the lower levels of the Hoe I explored earlier in the day, you can see the jetty from which the fireworks are set off. All the water surrounding the jetty is full of boats during the displays, though overnight mooring isn’t allowed so they all go shooting off to their marinas as soon as the last firework has exploded.

Here you can see the little fishing spot where we sat on the 2nd night, with our feet dangling off the edge as we enjoyed our front row seat of the fireworks displays.

I know I said you don’t have to worry about people getting in the way of your view, but I took this next photo while I was still getting into position. I rather like the way the person’s head has a halo of firework though, don’t you? The big firework above reminds me of photos of jellyfish underwater.

You can see all my photos in this slideshow below. They’re a bit blurry but they do capture the scale and calibre of the displays. Check out the reflection of the light in the water. That was really fab.

The Glamorous Dry Cleaners (above) is a great example. You probably pass shop fronts like this all the time, but have you ever stopped to admire one? I mean really, could you get a less glamourous looking sign than that? What the hell is that font? And rainbow colours? I can’t think of any time when that symbolised glamour!

Then there is this little gem, Little Hut. Again, out of the corner of your eye you immediately recognise the ubiquitous high street newsagents, but have you actually taken in what they have to offer? From the looks of it, there isn’t much the Little Hut can’t do for you, since if it isn’t an international money transfer, bus pass, lottery ticket or bottle of wine you are after, they also can cash your pay cheque, print photos of your birthday party and top up your oyster card while you read one of their Nigerian magazines. If you are worried that you’ll never make it out of there with all those possibilities, you could just hang around outside and browse the small ads.  This is a newsagent not to be ignored!

In case you think you might have overlooked some of your own local curiosities, you can go hunting for them on Emily Webber’s photo blog www.londonshopfronts.com. And if it isn’t there yet, remember the website is updated daily, so your corner shop could still be coming to a small screen near you soon!

*Ok, ok – with perhaps one exception thanks to the success of British film director Mike Leigh

Last week I received an email attachment from a friend in Vancouver of this stunning photo. (Click the image to get the full WOW! effect.) This is a view of downtown Vancouver skyscrapers shrouded in fog at sunrise, taken from Cypress mountain, one of the mountains (with ski slopes) which loom over the city.

There has been much debate about who took this photo because there were many photographers up on the Cypress Bowl road that morning (this one is good because it has labels identifying what can be seen above the fog) but I think people are missing the point of why this particular shot is so striking: seeing a city from above the fog or cloud is pretty cool, but something not completely unattainable in these days of jetting around the globe.

What makes this photo so remarkable is the tree in the bottom right hand corner, which indicates that the photo is taken on solid ground, not from a airplane. Realising this gives me a touch of vertigo, which isn’t so far from the feeling I get being in Vancouver and looking up at those enormous mountains (when they aren’t hidden by cloud, which is often.)

The photo I took (below) when I was visiting in December might help you get an idea of the geography – its taken from Queen Elizabeth Park which is south of downtown, so we are looking back in the towards the mountains on which the fog photographers stood. I think Cypress mountain is on the left of the dip in the mountains, where the two peaks are obscured by cloud.

If you are curious about who took the Vancouver under fog photo you can follow the trail I took starting here. Someone who’d been emailed the photo posted it on their own Flickr stream, which leads you here, where it gets credited to Scott Miller and the Vancouver Sun (a local paper that printed the image). A couple days later the same blogger corrected the credit to Blair Kent after someone recognised the photo and revealed the real author. (The Vancouver Sun have also since corrected their credit).

What really surprised me, is that a keen photographer with a brand new Canon EOS 5D Mark II didn’t already have an online photo-sharing account set up on which to post his photos. Perhaps if he had all this confusion wouldn’t have happened. Well, Blair Kent has finally caught up and has since set up his own Flickr stream. It goes to show you can never be sure when you are emailing a few friends some photos, that they won’t find their way into other people’s plagiarising hands.

The stilts on which the walkway is built are made of rusty-looking iron and blend in nicely with the surrounding tree trunks. The wooden bannisters/handrails are made from oak trees that have been blown down in gails at Kew. The flooring is a wire mesh so if you really want to freak yourself out you just look straight down!

Back on ground level, we were invited to listen to the sound of a Eucalyptus tree trunk. Several headphones hung from the branches of the tree, and listening to them, you could hear a kind of rushing/rumbling sound. It was difficult to fathom that this sound wasn’t just random disturbance on an amplifier, but a good excuse to hang around an utterly stunning tree for while.

See all of my recent photos from Kew Gardens on my Flickr stream.

I was appalled by the ornate appearance of this brand new strip of beach huts waiting to be snapped up. They just look so Disneyesque – all pastel colours and frills – yuck!