Category Archives: Transport

Edgware Road tube

Friday 4th October 2024, 9.05pm (day 4,789)

Edgware Road tube, 4/10/24

A Friday night in London, but not for leisure purposes. Technically, I am working here tomorrow. Arrival at my place of residence tonight (a Travelodge, nothing glamourous or particularly metropolitan) was not until about 15 minutes after this was taken.

Still, there is nothing wrong with being in London — it’s a fine city and that fact certainly explains why this is the fourth-most depicted place on the blog, this is shot number 144 from London, meaning it’s appeared roughly once every 33 days, or only just less than once a month on average.

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The unused bicycle

Tuesday 1st October 2024, 10.45am (day 4,786)

Unused bike, 1/10/24

Our Clare gets herself about the world entirely adequately on foot these days, meaning that I haven’t noticed any used of this bicycle for at least ten years, probably more. It still sits on our front doorstep though, being gradually colonised by grass and whatever strange growth is currently dying off on the other side of the fence. Perhaps, one day, it will move again — but I doubt this will be with anyone sitting on it.

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Friedrichstraße station, Sunday morning

Sunday 22nd September 2024, 7.35am (day 4,777)

Sunday morning, Friedrichstrasse, 22/9/24

This being one of the world’s great party cities, I am sure there were a reasonable number of Berliners who were comfortably still on their Saturday night out at 7.35am: but I will never be a person like that again. Personally, I was on the way to the airport. It’s been a good and potentially transfomative trip.

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The River Spree, at Lübben

Saturday 21st September 2024, 12.20pm (day 4,776)

Spree at Lübben, 21/9/24

Took myself on a day out into the countryside, specifically to the little town of Lübben, which lies about an hour’s train journey south of Berlin, further up the River Spree. Here, the river breaks into a series of creeks and canals, on which, today, a substantial number of tourists were floating around in either a self-propelled manner or on Venice-style gondolas, only piloted by gruff-looking East German types. But let’s go with this person-free shot, instead. One has to be pleased with the colour contrast here.

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The Sunday flotilla

Sunday 18th August 2024, 3.20pm (day 4,742)

This is now a standard sight on a Sunday in HB town centre. But I include it today more because of noticing the participant in the middle — one of those things you don’t see until uploading it to the laptop, later.

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There goes your weekend in London

Saturday 10th August 2024, 9.35am (day 4,734)

No London train, 10/8/24

Like, I am guessing, everyone else in this picture I was waiting for the arrival of a train that was due to comprise the 9.45 service from Leeds to London King’s Cross. But sadly we all drew the card that says “Cancelled!” in the regular UK Public Transport Lottery. Not only was our train never to arrive but this vanishing act just prefigured a state of affairs that lasted all day. All this on the first full day of the football season, too. I gave up and went home.

At least I could rearrange my weekend’s hotel room without penalty — others will not have been so blessed. Hundreds of people, not just here but up and down the eastern half of the country, with plans wrecked, because the Powers That Be can’t be bothered to maintain their infrastructrure or design a system that has just those crucial little extra bits of redundancy and fail-safe. Up yours, peasants! Of course this will all change now we have a new government *cough*.

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Late bus home

Wednesday 7th August 2024, 10.55pm (day 4,731)

Late night bus, 7/8/24

OK, maybe just before 11pm isn’t ‘late’ to some of you but I am not a night owl; this is the latest shot in five and a half years, in fact (allowing for a couple taken past midnight that lose the award on a technicality). It isn’t great quality but it is the only one I captured today that might have artistic pretensions.

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Changing trains

Monday 8th July 2024, 2.30pm (day 4,701)

Leeds station, 8/7/24

And so, the journey back, via Brighton, St Pancras, King’s Cross, Leeds and Hebden Bridge stations. Pictured — the fourth of these. It’s now time to find inspiration at home for a while, in various senses.

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The dodgems await high season

Friday 5th July 2024, 12.55pm (day 4,698)

Dodgem cars, 5/7/24

It’s still not high summer tourist season yet — give it another week or so, until the kids start finishing school. Anyway, today the weather was very poor, so no one felt like going to Brighton Pier to drive around in little electric vehicles and wondering whether they will obey the ‘no bumping’ signs. While I do like this shot (which is why I chose it), it is another example of how true symmetry in life is only occasionally achieved.

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The Mary Rose

Wednesday 3rd July 2024, 11.15am (day 4,696)

Mary Rose, 3/7/24

The Mary Rose went down in the Solent during a battle in 1545 and then sat on the sea floor for 437 years until what remained of it was raised in 1982. I remember watching this event on TV in my teens and then not long after, on my only previous visit to Portsmouth, visiting a mouldering hulk that was hanging in a big shed being sprayed constantly with water to stop it drying out catastrophically. Four decades on and the Mary Rose‘s transition from the mud of the sea floor to hanging off a wall has been completed, and what we’re all rewarded with is one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever visited, for sure. The amount of stuff — not just weapons, but personal effects, foodstuffs, even the skeleton of the ship’s pet ratcatching dog — that came up with the wreck is astonishing. Not an easy thing to photograph with my mediocre equipment, but I gave it a shot.

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