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WELCOME to the Gupole website of David & Gail Clarke.

This site is a mixture of personal stuff about us, our family and our home in Italy that gives the site its name; and more general stuff about our travels over the last few months and years.

We are currently spending about half of each year in Italy and the other half elsewhere in the world. Our impressions and comments about our various destinations are in the Clarke Chronicles , an ongoing travelogue (however, see below) that we hope will be of interest to anyone who might be visiting some or all of the places we've been. It's not meant to be a Lonely Planet alternative, more a personal view with a few tips and a lot of photos. Included in it is a set of comments on some of the hotels/hostels etc that we've stayed in - warts and all! Later we'll be adding comments on various eateries.

The Image Collection catalogues a selection of David's photos taken over the last few years according to place and subject. This is an on-going project since there are always new ones being taken as well as an increasing selection of older ones.

On the personal side, there are images of our home at Le Gupole and images of our family who are scattered around various parts of the world - Kenya (Ben, Karina, Frank & Digby), Hong Kong (Zo, Lily & Phoebe), Dubai (Daniel) and X marks the spot (Lea, Jonathan & ?).

There are also links to a number of websites relating to businesses run by various members of the family and extended family.

In addition to the Image collection and photos in the articles on the various destinations, we have included on this page a number of Featured Images. These recent images shot wherever our present travels are taking us. As the list gets longer, older featured images will be listed on the sidebar.

If you want to contact us, our email addresses are: david at gupole dot com & gail at gupole dot com. It would be great to hear from you.

*** Update, 22 February, 2009 ***

Change of plan! This website was created in Dreamweaver; it was a manual and time-consuming process and updating it required a lot of input, not so much for the text, but for all the menus. Frankly, in Dreamweaver and probably any other web editor they are a pain. However, I've now discovered WordPress which, despite its name, is nothing to do with Microsoft Word or its parent company (being a devoted Mac user, this is important!). Since ascending the learning curve of WP (not at the top yet but at least the peak is not covered in impenetrable cloud), I have realised that it is the way forward if I want to keep this thing going. So there are now two new sites:

www.retiredandroaming.com which covers the travelling side of our lives; and

www.dgcphoto.com which is David's photo site and which includes the exciting opportunity for you of buying some of my photos!

The Gupole site will also be changed to a WP-based site when I get round to it and it will continue as our personal family site. For now it will remain a bit static! If you want to catch up with where we are and what we're doing now, go over to the R&R site. We're also both on Facebook and David is on Twitter (twitter name: gupole).

For now, we'll leave you with a recent photo from Phi Phi Leh, one of the Phi Phi islands southwest of Phuket.

 

 

 

 

Le Gupole?? The word 'gupole' is the local dialect version of 'cupole', the plural of the word 'cupola'. La cupola has the same meaning as cupola in English, i.e. a dome. So 'le gupole' means 'the domes' or 'the cupolas'' and it is the name given to the particular part of the hill where the house is situated. All the different parts of the hill are named on the old maps, the names presumably relating to the shape of the part of the hill. Gupole is pronounced with the emphasis on the 'u', so it is gOO-po-ley

About Us According to four-year old grandson Frank, we are anything ranging from 7-years old, through eleventeen to somewhere in the region of 150. In fact we are a 60-something and an almost 60-something, both of us retired professionals trying to ward off the atrophy of grey cells by exploring as many pastures new as we can.

David spent most of his career as a forensic scientist in Hong Kong, finishing off as Government Chemist, while Gail taught for nearly 28 years in the German-Swiss International School in Hong Kong, many of those years as deputy head of the International Primary Department.

Between us we have four kids, all of whom are pursuing amazing careers in exotic locations (see the links), and an increasing number of grandchildren.

David has been taking photos for as long as he can remember and these days has gone totally digital. Hence the rather large number of images on the site. Gail's artiness extends to illustrations large - murals for children's bedrooms - and small - for greetings cards and for children's stories that she's writing.

Featured Images

February 2009, Phi Phi Leh

Phi Phi Leh

 

December 29, 2008, Kirstenbosch again

lilies

We've been back to Kirstenbosch this week, this time earlier in the day to take advantage of the better light. The down side was that as summer progresses, there are fewer plants in flower. However, the place is still fabulous. There'll soon be a set of images in the Image Collection.

December 14, 2008, Table View

table mountain

This is the classic view of Table Mountain take from the appropriately-named Table View Beach north of Cape Town. Going north from this point are many miles of sandy beaches like this one with the Atlantic rollers crashing in. But this is the magic viewing point.

December 13, 2008, Boulders Beach

penguin sign

Boulders Beach, just south of Simonstown on the Cape Peninsula, is home to a colony of African Penguins. They come here to breed, moult, and generally chill out. It is a protected area where this threatened species has been given a chance to increase its numbers. The penguins are not worried about people who swim and sunbathe on one part of the beach. They sit on the rocks and with rather bemused expressions watch this strange species sharing their space. Elsewhere, access to them is from a boardwalk onto their own beach where they take a dip, smooch, pass the time of day or show off the latest in penguin fashions. As the notice indicates, they sometimes go walkabout, so you have keep your eyes open.

boulders beach 1 penguins4
penguins1 penguins 2
penguin3

 

November 30, 2008, Kalk Bay, Cape Town

seal kalk bay1

Sunday afternoon in Kalk Bay and time for entertainment down the road from our apartment. This is Rosie the seal who is a regular visitor to the harbour especially when there's fish around. I reckon that seals are the cats of the sea: a seagull settled on the water about 20 metres from Rosie, Rosie caught sight of her and shot off towards her leaping out of the water in chase. Like most attempts by cats chasing birds in the garden, this one also ended in failure and Rosie returned to the easier task of catching fish that was thrown to her.

Meanwhile not everyone was on the harbour walls. Some were chilling playing cards in the sun by the railway arches, and some were just chilling.

kalk bay sunday

November 15, 2008; Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town

bird of paradise plant

The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in the foothills of Table Mountain are truly magnificent with over 2500 species of plants. The setting is breathtaking, the variety of colour and form amazing. This shot of the Bird of Paradise plant above, also know as the Crane Flower, is looks like a number of bemused birds poking their heads through the grass to check out the world around them. The yellow protea below is one of a number of types and colours on display. There'll be more to follow once we return with a notebook to record all the names!

leucosperum

 

November 6, 2008: View from the Burj Al Arab, Dubai

burj view

Mmmm, it's been a long time since I updated this. Since we're now on our travels again, there's time, at last! See the Chronicles for more. This image was shot from the restaurant near the top of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, a beautiful building from the outside and a monument to excess on the inside. We're about 200 metres up for this shot. Fortunately we didn't have to blow the life savings to eat or drink there - Daniel sorted out a tour of the place through a friend of his who works in the aquarium. On the horizon just left of centre you can just see the almost-completed Burj Dubai building that dominates downtown Dubai. It's about 162 floors and of course, the tallest in the world. It makes the 50-storey buildings around it seem small!

July 11, 2008: Wasp with attitude

angry wasp

Wow, where does the time go?! - suddenly it's well into July. This photo was actually taken this time last year when there was a wasps nest in one of the brass fish on the terrace. Finding a new nest a couple of days ago in the larger fish reminded me of the session last year when I took loads of wasp portraits. This one was, I think, the best and I used it on a calendar with the line: 'I'm a wasp, is that a problem'.

May 23, 2008: Mombasa baby

mombasa boy

I was wandering around the back streets of the Old Town of Mombasa, escorted by a friendly local, when this little babe popped up. I was holding the camera at knee level so I just roughly pointed it and clicked. A second, more composed shot didn't have the same dramatic feel as this one.

May 4, 2008: Courting Interupted!

froggie a-courting

This little fellow was only about two inches long but could make a noise totally disproportionate to his size when in a mating mood. He - or maybe he's a she - had taken up residence under the winter pool cover and could be heard over the rumble of the tractor engine. Since spring has sprung, we were in the process of pumping the rainwater from the pool cover to a cisterna up the garden and so froggies' home environment was disappearing from around him. From the look on his face he was not impressed. I popped him in a jug and took him down to the spring about 200 metres away. However, within about five minutes, there was a plop in the water and he seemed to have returned. Unless of course it was his/her prospective mate.