Thanks Flossyrockstar. I love your sig and your Monty Python reference in your avatar.
There was too much ground in the first photo so I've cropped it further and reposted it.
I agree about the lens flare. I found a good video about that last night that I've saved for reference. It shows a way to have no lens flare at all.
When I shot my photos, I bracketed all my images, from -2 stops to +2 stops. However, next time, following the video tutorial, I'll bracket 3 shots with a finger in front of the lens blocking the sun, and another 3 bracket shots without the finger. In Lightroom I would then merge each 3 shot bracket separately to create two images. One image with finger and one without. Then I do my processing in the develop tab and then sync the settings to both images and then send it to photoshop to create a mask layer and brush away the finger. Seems fairly straight forward to do and I'm looking forward to trying that out. Just need some more sun again!