Don’t read the time from the light here. Victoria station is much improved from twenty years ago, when I first started using it, but platforms 3-6 are still mere warrens, skulking under the overhead bulk of the Arena. Dark holes in which one can wait a while to find out if they’re running your service today.
I’ve lived on this road for nearly twenty-two years now. Look at its characteristics narrow, steep uphill, winding course, and the residents have nowhere else to park cars other than on the side. It’s manifestly unsuited for huge container lorries — not to mention the fact that on the other side of the hill (namely Oxenhope), all the characteristics are repeated. Yet still they come, waving a sat-nav as evidence of their rights. And then we wonder why it needs repairing every few years.
I’m back in Cambridge, one of Britain’s foremost centres of academic excellence, which, clearly, is why I’m here (yeah yeah). It’s proving difficult to present photos of this place that don’t have punts in them — this is the third (after my visits in January 2016 and November 2016 respectively). But it looks a nice way to travel and certainly pulls in the tourists. The metal bridge is something of a harsh contrast but that’s deliberate.
In terms of its aesthetics I quite like Blackburn station — at least at platform level (the subway below has been choked by excessive and largely non-functional ticket machines, though). The clutter of modern life throws off the symmetry of this shot but I gave it a go.
A trip out to the furthest south-western extremity of the British Isles (assuming we treat Ireland as separate) — namely the Isles of Scilly, a hundred or so lumps of granite stuck thirty miles off Land’s End, of which five are inhabited. The ‘capital’, Hugh Town, is located on St Mary’s island, and built on a narrow isthmus, which is apparent here thanks to the houses having blue sea behind them as well as in front, which is why I chose this picture — that, and the profusion of coloured things (buoys?) in the sea.
That’s one of the harder-to-reach County Tops bagged as well. There were lots of photos from the day I could have chosen to give an impression of this distant part of my country, but see the other blog for more.
And here’s what more-or-less the same part of the world looks like in the morning — pointing the camera in the opposite direction. Seems an OK place, Penzance — attractive, plenty of pubs — but it’s a long way out, and typical incomes in Cornwall are among the lowest in the whole UK. Being peripheral is not an economic asset these days: but the thing is, in some ways this is the centre of things. More on that tomorrow (if I remember).
Documentary. I got on this train at 7.56am at Hebden Bridge. A few minutes later I got off it again, at Todmorden (where this shot is taken), thanks to it being, as you can hopefully tell,. a stupidly overcrowded two-carriage cattle truck, and waited for the next one. On Monday I have to spend about 10.5 hours on a train…. what we do for our kicks, eh?
Clapham Junction station takes everything that Victoria and Waterloo stations have to throw at it, and as a result is apparently the busiest railway station in Europe, judged by number of trains. Except between midnight and 5am there can be up to 200 trains an hour passing through here, which makes it more than one every twenty seconds.
I like this golden spillage of light, and the seemingly random fractions posted on the top. I was here late on: this is the latest shot since 5th October 2020, in fact.
These have to be among the world’s most stoic horses. The poles in this field are one end of the series of guidance beacons for one of the runways at Heathrow. Gigantic flying machines like the one seen here are coming into land every few minutes, and the noise is incredible. But they don’t seem all that bothered.
Spent all day in Jamestown, where it was hot and sunny, certainly the warmest I’ve experienced it here on this trip. Ten years ago today I had just arrived in Brisbane for my four-month-long sojourn in Australia (and other nearby countries), and even if the weather on my arrival there was less-than-optimum for a couple of days, like today, that did remind me how much nicer it is sometimes to not be hanging around in the UK at this time, with all its lack of light and wintry bollocks. Pottering about in the tropical heat of a late January doesn’t have to be done every year but I will certainly take it now and again.
Is the horizon straight on this one? It’ll do.
Being 42 