Tag Archives: road

The Old Military Road

Saturday 14th August 2021, 10.05am (day 3,642)

Old Military Road, 14/8/21

The A93 runs north from the town of Blairgowrie, in Perthshire, to Braemar in Aberdeenshire. Just north of this point — and a couple of hundred feet below the point from where I took this picture, looking back into Glen Shee — the tarmac reaches the Cairnwell Pass, which at 2,199 feet above sea level, makes it the highest public road in the whole of the UK. It’s called the ‘Old Military Road’ as it was originally built as part of the general plan to assert military dominance over the Highlands of Scotland after the last Jacobite rebellion in the 1700s.

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Under the A1

Friday 9th April 2021, 10.15am (day 3,515)

Under the A1, 9/4/21

I went out on a walk today: the last day, officially, of my Easter break. I saw no reason to stay at home. I don’t know quite why I like this picture, except that it was one of those that worked out as anticipated; this is the picture I hoped it would be when I pressed the shutter. The road is the A1, a mile or so east of the town of Chester-le-Street, in County Durham.

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Foulness and crud

Tuesday 16th January 2018, 11.35am (day 2,336)

Weather crud, 16/1/18

Utterly foul, grim day, not even any good honest snow but endless waves of disgusting, sloppy sleet and hail that just kept being driven in on squally winds. After leaving the house briefly on a hunter-gatherer trip this morning I determined I would have nothing more to do with it. Today, the ‘smudges’ are in front of the lens, not on it.

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Sign outside my house

Wednesday 3rd January 2018, 7.25pm (day 2,323)

Road ahead closed, 3/1/18

Why is this sign here? No idea. They never tell us anything. Perhaps it is purely metaphorical….

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Man in hole

Monday 25th September 2017, 2.05pm (day 2,223)

Man in hole, 25/9/17

We’re all working away in a hole one way or another. Question is, I guess, can we make the most of our time in there?

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On the road (I-74)

Sunday 27th August 2017, 11.25am (day 2,194)

I-74, 27/8/17

I am sure that by all possible definitions, this photograph is very boring. But then again, so is being driven on an Interstate (I-74) through the US corn belt. Taken while we were still just about in Illinois — but the last few days of my stay here will be spent in Indiana.

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Man wrestling with traffic lights

Friday 9th December 2016, 2.10pm (day 1,933)

Traffic lights, 9/12/16

Not a very exciting day, nor one that necessarily made me feel good about the wider world, so this being Manchester at the moment, here’s a picture of a bloke in a high-vis vest doing something building- or roadworks-related. There’s a lot of it about. At least it’s now the weekend.

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Crossing Oxford Road

Wednesday 2nd November 2016, 9.25am (day 1,896)

Crossing Oxford Road, 2/11/16

Sometimes things can improve. When I first started work at the University of Manchester in 2005 the campus was split in half by this traffic-choked urban throughway, one of the main A-roads of the whole country. It was really rather dismal. Slowly, by incremental steps, it has markedly improved, with most traffic now directed around the sides of the campus. The latest round of roadworks have now mostly gone and it is so much better than it was 11 years ago.

And another thing — there have been many reasons to be unhappy with 2016 in a global sense — but the UK’s autumn weather has not been one of them. Since mid-August it has mostly been tremendous. Same again today, for sure, a glorious autumn day.

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Turn right

Monday 18th July 2016, 6.00pm (day 1,789)

Turn right, 18/7/16

No political message intended. Anyway it isn’t about ‘left’ versus ‘right’ any more, it’s progress v regress, peace v hate, war and death. Which side are you on, really?

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Edge of campus

Wednesday 27th April 2016, 12.55pm (day 1,707)

Dilworth Street, 27/4/16

Since the teaching term recommenced for me on 13th April I have offered 15 consecutive pictures either at home in Hebden or in Manchester for work. The fence on the left of this shot represents the limit of my present world.

I know this would perhaps be a better photo if the traffic cone in the middle distance weren’t there. But while I could have moved it, I say that on this blog no shot is posed or staged in any way. So let’s see it as just one of those little blemishes that proves the fallibility of all my efforts, or something like that.

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