A double-bill to fill out the weekend, because I saw a lot of football, and not much else. This one is taken about half an hour before kick-off at the second match of the weekend, at Rhyl FC, where the Wales Under-19 team were playing Portugal in front of quite a big crowd, at least for the size of the ground. (A seagull crashes the shot for the second day in a row.) They were to see defeat, however: Portugal won 1-0.
“Who you calling a Liver Bird? I ain’t no Liver Bird. Call me that again and I will eat your chips.”
Fellow pack member Trixie gets her close ups done, and as a result becomes the latest animal to make a confirmed second appearance on the blog (her debut was on 3/4/24). I think between us we just about got the focus right.
It’s not easy to categorise a post as both “Interior” and “Landscape” but I’m claiming it for this one. Farewell to Gibraltar, it’s been a decent few days and if things work out I will be returning at some point.
There seem to be a lot of sparrows in Gibraltar, and many of them have acquired the habit of hanging around restaurants and cafés: which seems a reasonable evolutionary adaptation to me. On Sunday I went into one place that had an entire flock of them seemingly living inside the building. Here, we are outside, but nevertheless, this chap looks quite content with his lot. All three of us — me, the bird, and the guy behind — were waiting for our lunch.
The University of Gibraltar is why I am here, indirectly anyway. It is one of Europe’s newest, founded in 2016 and built into a converted old barracks. It’s also one of Europe’s smallest: what you see here is a considerable proportion of the whole. Something about it reminds me of the atrium where Heywood Floyd and the Russian scientists have a conversation in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the red-and-white theme that does it. And no, there didn’t seem to be any students around. They’re all ‘on placement’, apparently.
The Barbary macaques which live in Gibraltar are the only wild primates living in Europe. They’re doing well enough — there are around 300 living on The Rock, a healthy population considering that during World War 2 numbers were down to single figures. I thoroughly enjoyed my encounters with them today, particularly the troop that lived around the mid-height pylon for the cable car, which they treated as just a big metal tree, clambering up it and then sliding back down the struts, seemingly just for the fun of it.
Gibraltar is my home for the next few days. I have been here once before, in 1991 — my “Inter-Rail Summer”, aged 21. Then, one could only enter the territory by walking across the airport runway, and this is still the case, as seen here. Presumably one gets a decent amount of notice before they close it, but let’s hope that one’s electric vehicle doesn’t run out of juice halfway across. The huge lump of limestone that is The Rock has always been a landmark, and a fortress, and the peninsula on which it and the city stands is now one of Britain’s last remaining outposts of Empire: an Overseas Territory that is sort of still part of Europe, only not. A gatepost to the Mediterranean beyond.
Once again, I am off somewhere different, mainly because it sustains my interest in this blog, the world, life, etc. Leg one ended at Leeds railway station, where this is taken. It occurred to me while sitting waiting for my second train to depart that I had the chance to capture this incognito shot of the driver getting ready to leave on platform 9 next door. The ‘pastel’ scribblings to the left are then the latest reflected self-portrait. Possibly, then, this is a terrible photo, but I’ll move on.
This big patch of daffs is coming into flower rather later than many others in the vicinity, but some confident early adopters have made a start on it. Actually I like this picture more for the bark of the tree, which looks very ancient and Ent-like. This is all in the middle of the UoM campus, not a space normally renowned for feeling rural.
Being 42 