I admire this kind of large-scale decrepitude and collapse. It is not that the whole of Kiveton Park Industrial Estate looks like this, but nevertheless, in my opinion this was the best-looking corner of it. Somehow it seems strange that this hangar is eroding from the bottom up rather than the other way around, but see for yourselves. (Pictured on my latest County Top walk — see the other blog.)
This handsome creature trotted over as soon as it saw me and virtually demanded that I do its close ups. Who am I to refuse such an offer?
This bizarre hellscape was captured on a train. I noticed there was a line of pylons stretching away into the distance, we were slowing down and I had a shot at it, and here you are. The farm buildings and paraphernalia didn’t even get noticed until after the shot had been ‘developed’. As far as I can tell it is the farm labelled on the OS map as ‘New Dairy Farm’ at grid reference ST306840, just outside Newport in south Wales.
Actually the pun in the title is inaccurate, as the Fiddlers’ Ferry power station, on the banks of the Mersey between Widnes and Warrington, has been decommissioned; the cooling towers are scheduled for demolition at some point in the future. This view will pass into history at that point. I doubt the horses care, though. Taken on the way to bag my 111th County Top, that of Warrington.
Definitely just a dusting — but, nevertheless, today was easily the coldest day of the winter so far. And I guess we must say winter has now arrived, at least, in West Yorkshire.
Tell me you don’t see it. It even has a tongue.
There are worse places to be stuck, that is true. And I’ve not been turfed out of my accommodation, I’m not running out of money, and so on. But this has now become my life’s longest-ever flight delay, or indeed travel delay of any kind, and I may not even be halfway through it yet. I am trying to develop a stoic outlook on life — as this guy appears to have done.
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.
Curiosity, and the need to stretch my legs during a day sat working on a report, took me down the road to investigate the old flax mill that stands there, a relic of just one of many attempts to institute some kind of working cash crop economy on St Helena — doomed from the point in the 1960s when the Royal Mail decided it no longer wanted to use string to tie up its parcels and would instead rely henceforth on nylon. Now the place seems to be used as a cow byre: but the dairy industry here didn’t survive regulations on hygiene, or was it something else? Laws and practices developed for quite different contexts have never really gone down very well in this remote and distinctive place.
“Please. You’ve gotta get me out of here. I didn’t ask to make my life here, a day’s journey from the nearest grooming salon.”
I might think the same if, like this critter, I was living at Scalderskew in the Lake District — I do not know of a more isolated dwelling in the country. If you’re interested, the most prominent peak in the background is Seatallan.
Being 42 