Gloriously full of custard - August 2023

Glorious Goodwood

I spent the first week of August down south filming the horse racing at the Qatar Goodwood Festival. It rained a lot, and at times felt far from the Glorious Goodwood I remembered from previous years, but I kept dry in the tracker, had fun in the twitchy driving conditions and got to capture some great horse racing while being provided with plenty of cheesecake. I can’t complain.

Spitfires

I made a trip down to Goodwood Aerodrome with “custard legs” himself to film a Spitfire. The guys at www.spitfires.com let us park the vehicle right up close to their beautiful machine as it started up that awesome engine and moved off for a flight. Brilliant. That’s probably as close as I’ll get to one, as it’s just under £3K per trip, and while I’m sure it’s an incredible once in a lifetime experience, poor old me can’t afford it. You can donate here by PAYPAL…..

Chris Homer standing next to a spitfire that he can't afford to take a trip in

“Welcome to Chichester”

I also spent a lot of time around Chichester. I filmed the Cathedral with a drone (legally, yes, it’s a no-fly zone), made a visit to the new DJI experience centre and did a bit of gimbal filming in the city. It wasn’t great, due to the weather and it being a rather small city, but I got a few nice clips and was told to “F off” by a drunk disabled man and his delinquent mates, so it wasn’t all disappointing. There’s a separate Chichester blog post HERE

Wild Camping on the Shropshire Hills

I got back out wild camping, this time over on the Shropshire Hills, but again, didn’t film it. I’ve lost the love for filming these trips a bit. Instead, I just took the time to enjoy it and came back with just a few pictures. Sometimes it’s better like that isn’t it?

I’ll be back to filming something at some point, maybe one in the Shropshire Hills, but when the time is right, and I think I’ve got something worth sharing. Until then, here’s a pic of my MSR Elixir 3 tent pitched on Callow Hill, with views to Caer Caradoc, The Lawley and the Wrekin.

Wild camping on Callow Hill in the Shropshire Hills

Caernarfon

I spent a good few days up in North Wales, again. This time capturing a load of cool footage of Caernarfon. There will be a separate Caernarfon stock footage blog post at some point (When I’ve finished going through 120GB of footage), but for now, let’s just say it was bloody awesome. Caernarfon Castle is of course incredible, but we were also blessed with some great weather and I captured some absolute magic of the wider Caernarfon area.

Try this LINK to see some of the Caernarfon footage.

Snowdonia Trip

I normally avoid Snowdonia like the plague in the summer, but I made a few trips with the family this year. We stepped into a painting on the side of Pen yr Ole Wen and I made some mental plans to come back for some solo wild camping timelapse action in the winter.

Fynnon Lloer Crash Site

We went looking for the wreckage of the Mk 1 Avro Anson RAF plane which crashed into the side of Pen yr Ole Wen on the 8th of November in 1943. The crash killed all 5 crew, who were out on a night navigation exercise from RAF Halfpenny Green in Wolverhampton. We found the wreckage and paid our respects to the crew who lost their lives there that day.

There are engine parts and bits of the fuselage that are still there amongst the rocks, along with a memorial stone. The location is a little difficult to find, and perhaps it’s a site that is better off not being found. I must admit, the temptation to take home a souvenir was there, with bits of wing, bolts, engine parts, and serial numbers littered around…. but I saw my senses and left it all there. I’ll share the location, as if you’ve gone to the effort of looking it up and found my website, I hope that you’ll do the same as us. Leave it there as a reminder of the sacrifice of the crew, so that they can be talked about and remembered well into the future, by people like us. A physical reminder on the side of a beautiful mountain, not just just words on a webpage. Thanks.

What 3 words location for the Fynnon Lloer Avro Anson wreckage - Dissolves.pupils.ridge

York

I got up to York for a week to film the horse racing at the York Ebor festival. I was caught in action in this absolutely wonderful shot by Steve Challes. Thanks again, Steve.

I can’t tell you how good the shots were up in York. The ITV Racing show was incredible, the horse racing tracking shots, obviously… but it also got me out filming around York Minster Cathedral and other locations throughout the city for a special cycling segment of part of the show. Great fun.

I got the drone out a lot too, and added yet more brilliant footage to my growing York stock footage collections. It really is a beautiful city. You can see the York video footage blog post here.

While in York I also had the pleasure of stumbling across a march by the Ukrainian community of York. I filmed a few clips with a high-speed gimbal, and grabbed some drone shots as they walked past York Minster Cathedral with their Ukrainian flags. They finally stopped outside the cathedral itself and broke into a Ukrainian song. I later met the organiser, Sergiy, and provided him with a few videos and images of the event. It was heartwarming to witness, and nice to talk with a few of the Ukrainians.

You can see more about the Ukrainian march through York and purchase some of the footage HERE

Ukrainian refugee march through York, and aerial drone shot near York Minster Cathedral

Chester

I also got up to Chester for a few days towards the end of the month. Shooting various aerial GVs of the city centre, the cathedral and the racecourse. Here’s the BLOG POST

Coffee in the woods - August

Of course, I made the August edition of “Coffee in the woods”, it’s month 5 of this project and I’m thoroughly enjoying it, but I won’t bang on about that here. There’s a separate blog post, and here’s the video…

Stalin’s War - Book Recommendation

This month I got to the end of a book called “Stalin’s War”, by Sean McMeekin. A mammoth 800-page hardback door-stop of a book that covers World War 2 from the Russian perspective.

It’s one of those books that help you realise just how little you know about something, and then it constantly delivers gripping new information in wonderful detail and clarity. I found myself referring to Google and Wikipedia a lot as I worked through it, thinking “There’s no way that’s true”, but it was.

This book is a refreshing new look on World War 2 that for anyone in my position, you just rarely hear about. We hear from Hollywood, from Western TV documentaries and from Western history books., but MccKeekin allows us to look at it from the East. He has drawn on the recently opened Soviet archives and he fills a massive gap in our understanding, and in all honesty, he invites us to look at the whole thing differently. I finished the book with a whole bunch of notes of things to look up and read about in the future. Remarkable events I had no idea about, from Churchill’s planned attack on the USSR in Baku, to the Joint invasion of Iran by Britain and the USSR, to Operation Unthinkable, Churchill’s plan to attack the USSR post WW2, to the unbelievable amount of support we gave the USSR during the war. I recently saw that we had sent Ukraine 12 of our tanks, and then I read how just 80 years ago, we sent the USSR 500,000 vehicles in the lend-lease scheme. Yes, 500,000!!!!

Above all though, lend-lease aside, it is an important reminder that the USSR's contribution to WW2 was phenomenal, and that they directed events as much as, if not more than, any other country in World War 2, and of course, Stalin was a monster.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in WW2 but who has only been spoon-fed the US and British-centric version, or even just to anyone wanting some context on the current Ukraine conflict.

Next up I wouldn’t mind something similar from the Japanese or Chinese perspective, if such an account exists?

I quit social media

And after a few months of mucking around, I’m now certain. I’m not coming back to social media. It’s only after some time away that you can realise how daft it is.

My accounts are not just deactivated, they’re now gone. No Facebook, no Twitter, no threads, no LinkedIn, no shiny verified Instagram account. I’ve deleted it all. What’s the point in chasing some kind of social media clout anyway, it’s all bollocks. Addictive, time-wasting, narcissistic bollocks.

Strava…. wtf is that? Show everyone how fit you are and exactly workout? Seriously? WTF? It’s ridiculous when you think about it.

It’s funny how hooked we get. Funny how hooked I got.

From now on it’s just my website, and my videos hosted on YouTube. I’ve kept WhatsApp, but no group chats.

Life is simple. I’ve had more time, never been so productive, never made so much money, never had so much free time.

Social media has now firmly been added to the list of things I don’t do. Alcohol, drugs, TV, news, fizzy drinks, news, I could go on, but I won’t.

August. Out.