Herm Island: Sark Caves and Shooting Stars

Yesterday was a really lovely day off. Firstly I had booked again with Island Rib Voyages because I went with them around Herm and saw seals and puffins but I also heard about their Sark caves trip and I didn't want to leave without doing that!

There are actually quite a few caves and it is really interesting because the main habited areas of Sark are so high up (in contrast to Herm) you have no idea what's going on below without a boat tour like this.

The colours of the rocks inside the cave were really varied from black to copper to green.

This next picture is my favourite because the sunlight hitting the opposite side made it look like there was a magical world we couldn't quite reach!







It was really nice to be right up close to the dramatic edges of Sark.







The last cave was a surprising shape!





The other unique aspect of this tour was getting so close to the private island and castle of Brecqhou owned by the Barclay Brothers (who made their money in newspapers not the bank).



So then last night was the peak night for the Perseids which basically means shooting stars (and we did some space station/satellite) spotting. According to Google the moon was setting at 10.20pm and then it would be perfectly dark, on my little pollution free island of Herm anyway.

I put this first picture up on the Herm Facebook page last night and it's certainly been causing a bit of stir!



Apparently I'm very lucky to clearly catch shooting stars like this AND I was totally under prepared!! Don't take this as a lesson, I was very much doing this the wrong way, but I got my best pictures last night by finding a nice wall or rock (no tripod with me!), setting a 10 second self timer, focusing on Guernsey's lights in the distance then quickly placing the camera on my located wall spot before the shutter when down. I did 30 second exposures at ISO3200 and tidied them in Lightroom.

All my stars pictures can be clicked through to see a larger version in Flickr.

I like this next one because you can see how the 30 second exposure blurs the grass in front.





The light on the right was campers walking by with torches!



Looking over to Guernsey.



Straight up view looking just like the textbooks!! But no luck catching a shooting star this time.







Some beautiful starry views but I stopped being so lucky with the shooting ones so I joined my friends who were lying down and looking up (lighting themselves by a phone in the below image!).



It really was an incredibly beautiful night, who knew Herm wasn't just special in daylight!