Blue City

This is the old part of Chefchaouen, in Northern Morocco, also known as the Blue City. I may have posted a couple of photos of this city before, but these are really stunning!

Nomads of Mongolia: a vanishing lifestyle

We've been watching Marco Polo on Netflix, where the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongol peoples was already an issue, as Kublai Khan had settled in a palace after conquering China. There are some very small communities still surviving the advance of the modern, urban lifestyle now prevalent in the region...

All photographs by Jeroen Toirkens.

All aboard... let's fly!

These satellite photos were collected by Benjamin Grant in a study to illustrate the impact humans have on nature, seen from an unusual viewpoint. We're going to take a breathtaking tour around the world:

1. Valparaiso, Chile

2. Tulip fields, Netherlands

3. Melrose Park, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

 4. Complicated road system, just outside Madrid, Spain

5. Snails Pass, in the Andes, on the Chilean side of the border with Argentina

6. Blue evaporation ponds at a potash mine in Moab, Utah

7. Makati City, one of the 16 cities that constitute Manilla, capital of The Philippines 

8. Bourtange is a star shaped fort in the Netherlands 

9. The Grande Dixence dam in Switzerland is the highest gravity dam in the world, at 935 feet

10. Agricultural development in Austria

11. New data reveals that China burns 17% more coal each year

12. L'Eixample district of Valencia, in Spain

13. Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi river, between Zambia and Zimbabwe

14. The village of Espel in the Netherlands is home to 774 inhabitants

 15. Oil field service ships sit off the coast of Borneo

16. Nishinoshima is a volcanic island 940km south of Tokyo, Japan

17. We finish our tour in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia

Virtual travel - Portmeirion

Portmeirion was created by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis from 1925 to 1976.

He wanted to show how a naturally beautiful site could be developed without spoiling it. He hoped the village would lead people to think about buildings in the landscape.

The village was built as a place people could enjoy for its own sake. It was supposed to be a place where events, concerts and exhibitions could take place.

Clough Williams-Ellis had conceived of a tightly grouped coastal village on some romantic clifftop site, perhaps on an island or a remote estuary. This idea stayed with him for about 20 years until in 1925 he found the Aber Iâ estate on the Dwyryd estuary near his home. It was more or less exactly  what he had been hoping for, and it was for sale - he bought if for what is said to be around £5,000.

The first thing he did was change the name to Portmeirion. He did not feel Aber Iâ was approprite as it could mean 'frozen river mouth' which was not ideal for a holiday resort.

The name Portmeirion comes from 'Port' to put it on the coast and 'Meirion' the correct spelling of Merioneth, the county in which is was located.

Portmeirion was built in two stages, from 1925 to 1939 and then once post war building restrictions had been lifted, from 1954-76. 

Portmeirion Pottery was founded by pottery designer Susan Williams-Ellis, daughter of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, in 1960. The designs are still immensely popular. We used to have the fruit bowl in the third photo, but it was broken, repaired, then broken for good...