Saturday 8th August 2015, 12.20pm (day 1,444)
Beautiful, sunny day, spent out with the family at the Keighley & Worth Valley railway. I pick this valve as today’s shot because I think it looks like a space station. Go on, tell me you see it.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Transport
Tay Bridge
Friday 26th June 2015, 2.25pm (day 1,401)
And so home again, a 7-hour train journey from Aberdeen to Hebden Bridge. My second return trip up the east coast of Scotland in the last few weeks, so a chance to revisit a theme hit not so long ago, the crossing of the River Tay. The stumps are those of the first Tay bridge which collapsed (due to crappy construction) in a storm shortly after it was built.
The 8:34 to York departs on time
Friday 5th June 2015, 8.35am (day 1,380)
A day in Manchester, a day too far in the week if you ask me. But it was a glorious morning at Hebden Bridge station today.
Ferry across the Wye
Saturday 16th May 2015, 7.10pm (day 1,360)
The main reason I have headed in this direction this weekend is to attend the preparatory, ‘training’ weekend for my organised trek up Kilimanjaro, which is starting in late July. The weekend was held where England meets Wales at the beauty spot of Symonds Yat, above the Wye valley, another place (like Aberystwyth) that was a) somewhere I’d never been and b) really, rather attractive. This has got to be the most rustic passenger ferry in England. Or, indeed, Wales.
Platform 1, the new Victoria
Friday 17th April 2015, 4.20pm (day 1,331)
I’ve been in Manchester most of the week, although this hasn’t been apparent from the pictures. Victoria station, after years of being a rather dowdy old hag, is starting to recover from her major surgery and looking rather promising with it. Compare this picture to the last shot of platform 1: the light wasn’t as good today, but overall, it’s a big improvement. (Having inserted that link I note that shot was taken exactly 400 days ago, day 931.)
Commuting, California-style
Wednesday 1st April 2015, 9.00am (day 1,315)
Transferred this morning to the second stage of my California journey, the conference I am attending in Palo Alto. Could have picked a photo from there but there will be plenty of opportunities for that in the next two days, so here is a shot that lacks aesthetic qualities but does capture the rather bizarre train I caught this morning. A double-decker arrangement, but with an open trough down the centre of the upper deck, giving the impression of being sat up in a glorified luggage rack for the 45 minutes it took to travel from downtown SF into Silicon Valley.
The Powell-Mason cable car
Monday 30th March 2015, 9.55am (day 1,313)
Definitely don’t think I did San Francisco justice with yesterday’s shot — must have been the jet lag. This is much better. I apologise to the good people of the East Bay — Oakland and Berkeley — where I spent most of the day, but I have to go with this shot today. Could they have posed any better if they’d meant it? And love the cable cars too, one of those beautiful anachronisms that civic activism has preserved, and the world’s a better place for it.
In transit, Munich airport
Saturday 28th March 2015, 2.45pm (day 1,311)
This was just my transit airport, not my final destination. Bearing in mind where I have travelled to, going via Germany seemed rather bizarre, but ask my travel agent. Twenty years ago I once spent one of the worst and longest nights of my life trying to sleep in Munich airport (again, for reasons I can’t remember now), and I don’t like the city’s principal football team either (with apologies to their rivals 1860); so it’s not one of my favourite places. But today’s transfer was problem-free.
Platform 12, Leeds station
Tuesday 24th March 2015, 7.55am (day 1,307)
Another work trip to London, and as on the last occasion I did this (Feb 27th), the changeover at Leeds station proves far more photographically fruitful than the capital itself. I’m very happy with this picture — one of those occasions where not only did the shot turn out pretty much exactly as hoped, but I got it first go, too.
Foggy morning, Manchester airport
Wednesday 18th March 2015, 9.50am (day 1,301)
I don’t feel my photos on here have been that great lately, and one reason has been a decided lack of light. Except for last Tuesday (10th), which wasn’t bad, we pretty much haven’t seen the sun in March. Cold, grey, flat light throughout. This morning was little different. The fog was clearing as I boarded my plane to Bergen, via Copenhagen — the usual Long Commute — earlier flights this morning were disrupted by it but though I had a short delay it wasn’t so bad. I doubt the weather will change much in Bergen however, which is after all The City of Perpetual Rain, so no immediate prospect of a change to sunnier scenes…
Being 42 