Several highways led me to Swindon and from there on I took A roads to see the best of South Wales as a starter. The first destination was Lawrenny Lodge in Barmouth, located at the sea side near Snowdonia National Park, for a 3 day stay. I took my time to visit Snowdonia National Park during these days before driving to my second location, The Royal Oak Inn, Rhandirmwyn, near Llandovery. This is a good location to visit South Wales and Brecon Beacons National Park.

During this trip I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer beauty that Wales has to offer when it comes to landscapes and nature. And as a biker, this region is wonderful to drive around with its hills and everlasting winding roads. Therefore, it was sometimes difficult to choose between driving and stopping to take some pictures. Nevertheless, here are some pictures.

The construction started in 1998 and took 11 years to complete. The station covers 49000 square meters while the length of the station is 488 meters, 410 meters covered by the modern roof construction, has a width of 160 meters and is approx. 40 meters high.

Remise Monceau is one of the places that is kept well preserved without too many vandalism and graffiti. Most of the locomotives are no longer present but a few are still in place.

During the shoot we heard some voices outside the hangar and a few cars passed by from employees. At some point we noticed a person,with a yellow fluorescent vest, outside on the track and he was taking pictures as well with a compact camera. We thought he was one of the employees and we expected to be kicked out. He walked into the hanger and we kept quit while he passed by. We don’t know if he spotted us or not. He walked to the other side of the hanger and took pictures of the other locomotive in the hangar. A few minutes later we were back on our own and continued.

The tunnel has a lenght of 1050 meters, is 8 meters wide, 9 meters high and has an immersion of  2.1 meters deep. 120.000 m3 of sand and 50.000 m3 of stone where removed during the construction.

At this moment, the tunnel is closed with a strong steel fence so the visit to this loaction was rather limited.

Now, about Fort de la Chartreuse itself: it was built in 1817 by the Dutch army and could offer housing for up to 3000 soldiers. When in 1830 Belgium was founded, with the help of a small revolution, the fort was used as barracks.

During WWI and WWII, the fort was used by the Germans as a prison until the liberation by the American army in 1945 who transformed the fort into the 28th General Hospital for the US Army.

Fort de la Chartreuse was afterwards in use by the Belgian army until 1980. The buildings are empty and left over to nature. You can see the decay of the building compared to photographs made in the past.

All the images are shot with the Canon EF 100 f2.8 Macro L IS USM lens with Kenko Extension Tubes. Extra light was added with the Canon Speedlite 580EXII from a certain distance.

You will notice that I also sprayed some water to create water drops on the leafs of the flowers. As an addition, I also made some extra shots of other flowers with water drops.

All the images are shot with the Canon EF 100 f2.8 Macro L IS USM lens, some in combination with Kenko Extension Tubes, except the first one is shot with the Canon EF 24-105 f4 L IS USM lens.