This year I was ready, mid autumn with full colours of the forest trees and leaves, because every year I seem to just miss the ideal few days where the colour is at its best. This year (2018) we had a particularly warm autumn, meaning that the trees kept their leaves much longer, so I was especially lucky.

Time to head off to photograph a favourite of mine or the one that is still way on top of the list to photograph. We left early, not that early because we knew, the conditions were not optimal. Saying I wanted a nice thick fog and sun to reveal the Burg, but we got treated to the warmest day in October ever I guess. Well, it didn’t spoil the fun we had.

This trip was the return gift from my father to me, as Ilse of Skye was for him. The cool thing is, Étretat is a very nice environment which you can reach by car in about 6 hours. So it is pretty accessible situated in Normandy France and a great place to do photography. It is also quite close to the D-Day beaches and it’s historical landmarks and the remains of war you will encounter.

So after the new kid in town, see previous blog, time for an early morning in the dunes and some of the meadows leading up to the dunes. I returned to the Amsterdamse waterleidingduinen, but still want to photograph the wisent in the other part of the dunes here in the Netherlands. 

I wanted to share this post as I was just cycling around my home town through the meadows and saw plenty of birds that arrived for the summer here. As wel as many hares and obviously the famous dutch cows and farm land. As you can see nature is everywhere, especially in spring, just go out and explore.

Whenever I visit the Dutch dunes I always end up in the same area. This area lets me photograph nice landscapes, but also a variety of wildlife, ranging from small birds to elk, deer and foxes. However this time around I wanted to go to the more northern part of the Dunes area, which is Nationaal Park Zuid Kennemerland. 

For my birthday my girlfriend told me to get to Schiphol airport and take clothes for the weekend. So logic dictates we would be travelling to a European city for the weekend or she was just pulling my leg and getting me to think we would go somewhere. Once there it became clear that we would go to Stockholm for the weekend.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In this case we lost. The last time when I was at the Zeelandbrug I was treated with a gorgeous sky and sunset, see here. However this time we were out of luck. We got up early and got into the car towards Zeeland.

This new year's holiday we decided to go out Germany, staying in the Moesel area right in the middle between Luxembourg city and Frankfurt, around Trier. A perfect place for going out to Saarland and walk around and next to the Moesel.