The run of glorious sunshine we’ve had these past couple of days has come to an abrupt end thanks to the arrival of some very unsettled weather. Today we’ve had blustering clouds that didn’t amount to anything, clear skies and sunshine where the UV was akin to Superman’s X-Ray vision and finally, a thunderstorm that produced lots of noise and torrential rain, but little lightning – which was rather disappointing as I do love a good storm. For most of the day I was trapped inside, slaving away over a hot laptop as I researched some articles and also sorted out a variety of old pictures. As is often the case the day flew by and the Friday night quiz seemed to come around in no time. This week we extended it as Tony Allan had some old copies of the ‘Pub Paper’ so we went back to what was topical in 2015 – which seems like another world now.

This weekend Dawn is on another ‘virtual retreat’, so I’ll be staying in the background and working on various different projects whilst trying not to get in Dee’s way. After all,  it’s not like I’ve nothing to fill my time with.

OK, enough of the present, let’s move on to today’s…

Picture of the day.

This is a very special place and one that I would dearly love to go back to, although it’s harder than it used to be, which is rather odd in this day and age.

This is Lake Maninjau in West Sumatra, Indonesia. I took this in (I think) July 1992. It’s an absolutely stunning place. The lake is actually inside the caldera of an extinct volcano. I stopped here for a few weeks during a trip overland through Sumatra and used it as a base to visit the Mentawai Islands (another long story and pictures) during a year long -solo trip in 1991-92. This was taken from the verandah if the little homestay I’d found a room in. You can see the clouds boil in over the edge of the caldera on the opposite side of the lake approximately 4km away as a storm came in from the West. You could relax as you knew it would be at least another 20-30m before it reached our side of the crater.

When I did this trip I caught a ferry from Georgetown in Malaysia to Medan in North Sumatra, then travelled overland by bus via Lake Toba and across the Equator to Maninjau. Nowadays the ferry’s finished and visa restrictions mean few travellers come here anymore.

I’ll explain more tomorrow when I have time to add to this blog. In the meantime, if you want to see more pictures of Sumatra, follow this link.