Life is Usually Really Quite Fascinating

25th painting

2012-01-07T23:21:00.000Z

Well, I'd never done anything much since 'o' level art, I started painting sometime between 3 and 4 years ago I think, the first three or four attempts were quite pleasing, then I seemed to lose all sense of colour vision for about the next five. Painting number 25 is the mountain road from Cugir to Prislop in the Surianu mountains. I'm not sure if it's finished yet, but thought I'd stick it on the web anyway.

Olympic Protection Paranoia for Victorian Pump house off the Greenway

2011-11-27T17:54:00.002Z

A new fence has gone in around the beautiful old sewage pumping station by the Greenway. It's a very , effective looking fence, backed up with video cameras and topped with razor wire. Of course it's not sinister, it's entirely in keeping with the industrial area and will protect the olympics, and by extrapolation civilisation itself from occupy, socialists, radical muslims, ecologists, anarchists, vegetarians, lesbians, the locals, or whoever else you've been told to be frightened of this week. Now you feel safe don't you?

On no account will anyone coming to the olympics be able to blow up, or otherwise interfere with giant tanks and pipelines filled with valuable poo..

"Just don't fucking touch our shite, OK?"

A nice afternoon down a coal mine

2011-11-22T19:38:00.000Z

No pictures from in the mine, coal mine picture fans, it's a proper mine so batteries aren't allowed in case you make a spark and it sets any gas off. Here are some coal hewing machines on the surface, looking like huge mechanical insects in the fog.

Petition to drop the NHS reforms

2011-11-21T13:22:00.001Z

https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670

“Drop the Health Bill”

Responsible department: Department of Health

“Calls on the Government to drop its Health and Social Care Bill.”

How to get back old Google Mail interface

2011-11-18T10:37:00.002Z

Hello everyone, if you don't want various yellow polygons and myriad adverts confusing your email, here is how you get Gmail to start to look like it did before you clicked on 'new look gmail' and wouldn't let you change it back.

1. Go to mail.google.com/mail/#settings

2. Click on 'webclips' and unclick 'show webclips above inbox'

                                                                     % this gets rid of some adverts

3. On the 'Inbox ' tab, also in settings, unclick 'show markers'

                                                                    % removes the yellow objects

4. You might also find your fonts have got a lot smaller for no reason, go to

chrome://settings/fonts

And you can change the 'smallest font size' to something a bit bigger

5. The new colour scheme is a bit harsh, you can change this in 'themes' pale grey seems to be about the best compromise.

Hello, back again

2011-11-13T17:04:00.000Z

Now with a new camera - a Canon G9, it does manual focus etc if you want it to but I'm also very pleased with the pictures it takes on auto. Much nicer than the last Nikon which was worn out, but also wakes up faster. having only seemingly being able to find blurry pictures of home made sushi to an old friend in the pub the other night, decided to make up for lost time and start putting a few more pictures up. These from Wales and London and the Midlands late Summer. First off, Coast to Coast - Cardigan Bay being epic, and then a dead Rock and Chips fish, Chalkwell one day later. I like this view of Chalkwell, it reminds me a bit of a Lowry painting.

Happy birthday to the painter.

2011-11-10T11:57:00.000Z

Happy birthday mate, hope you had a good year.

The law of unintended consequences.

2011-11-10T11:56:00.000Z

Try reading this.

You might have to click on it first to make it large enough.

Then read it again, because you won't believe how bad it is the first time. In one short page the person writing this letter has done a huge amount towards proving why education cuts are a really bad idea.

Most wanted picture?

2011-10-09T11:09:00.003Z

This is an aerial view of the 'occupy wall street' demonstrations which are happening in America right now. Apparently every social networking site this images goes on, tends to find it deleted. So I thought I'd share it here.

The idea of the protests originally was to call for a separation between money and politics, such that agendas were dictated by the need of society rather than big business.

Bucuru - the happy village

2011-08-31T17:18:00.000Z

About 4 miles up the hill from Cugir is Bucuru. Perched on a mountain about the same height as Scafell Pike, it's got plum trees and farms.

Transylvania

2011-08-29T17:41:00.000Z

Hope you all liked Bucuru. More to come when I've sifted through 600 odd pictures taken during my summer in the mountains. Here are a couple more in the meantime.

Adventures in the countryside

2011-07-06T12:30:00.000Z

Blairs Britain ironmongery

2011-06-26T12:32:00.000Z

Spotted outside the Tower of London. These would stop a tank. Got a tank? me neither. But there is something about these chunks of ironmongery, something crass yet sinister at the same time. Something about a childish minds in a state of arrested development all getting together and doing other things apart from regulating the number of ice cream vans that can come in. Things that might be anyones guess. Funny old things aren't they?

Royal Wedding

2011-06-24T15:34:00.000Z

Too many people said they were not interested, this is like a red rag to a bull to me, if enough people come out with something, life is usually more fascinating if you do the opposite, besides, it's not every day you get a bit of history happening on your doorstep.

1. Apart from a small proportion of the crowd, you were allowed to watch it on screens in T-Square or Hyde park. It was like watching it at home only there was a brilliant atmosphere and nowhere to sit down. Just like home in fact. That sofa has to go this year.

2. Or you could attempt to go towards the procession route and look at the Police Festival.

Thousands were thrilled to see three types of mounted police, police inflatable tents, several kinds of police on motorbikes, police vans, and lots of interesting railings and barriers.

Two views of Leicestershire

2011-06-24T15:20:00.000Z

A land of contrasts. The first one is some of the scenic architecture of the suburb of Oadby, the second one is in Charnwood Forest.

Why Hub Brakes are good

2011-05-23T12:34:00.001Z

Taken in the snow of 2010

Giant Shard Thing

2011-05-18T12:34:00.001Z

Poncey shop names roundup from Shenfield

2011-05-14T22:00:00.000Z

Delightfully dodgy shop names spotted on a day out in Essex

Evening stroll around the docks

2011-05-10T12:17:00.000Z

REG Mode

2011-05-03T12:23:00.002Z

Hello Blog it's been a while + Cherry Juice

2011-04-27T11:08:00.001Z

Had all sorts of malarkey with camera batteries, but fear not blog-fans, things will pick up now Spring is here.

Fascinating waterpower and wind power things in Transylvania

2011-01-15T11:27:00.001Z

More from the Astra Folk Museum, Sibiu. You'll probably recognise the first one as a floating water mill, there are load of such wonderful contraptions in this vast outdoor museum. The second is typical of the nice little windmills that you'll see out to the East, near for example the Danube Delta. What's the third one? Can you guess? That's right. Fill it with clothes, a vortex is formed, and the clothes spin round. It's a water powered washing machine. Amazing.

A stroll around the old parts of Alba Iulia

2011-01-08T10:47:00.000Z

Some pictures from our last day in the land of mountains in August, this is Alba Iulia, Alba County, Transylvania.

Some 'Best of' pictures from 2010

2010-12-20T09:59:00.000Z

a nice view of Vienna , Westbahnoff

2010-12-15T18:44:00.000Z

I'm in danger of forgetting how many times I've been to Europe by train this summer, it has been a completely brilliant year so far, and another trip the easternmost side of Germany coming up in late September. It's going to be very tempting indeed to take some time off and go and look at Poland. some handy tips for spending a comfortable night on a sleeper train are as follows:

One. Always make sure you have at least a 2 L bottle of water, even the poshest night trains tend to run out of water by the morning.

Two. Always bring a bottle of wine or spirits, which you can have lots of fun sharing out with the people who share your compartment.

Three. Bring herbal sleeping tablets, and earplugs or at least an MP3 of waves breaking on the seashore or a waterfall or somesuch. even on the noisiest night train, a heavy snorer will keep you awake all night.

four. And this is the most important one, climbing ladders in the dead of night, in order to squeeze yourself into a narrow shelf, where the temperature can be 50° due to stratification, does not always make for a good nights sleep, so try to get on the bottom bunk!

train travel by night, is one of the loveliest ways to travel . The sense of adventure as the sun comes down on the train steams on into the night is truly exciting, you can open the windows and look out. Small towns in the darkness as you pass through them, distant hills and mountains lit by moonlight, and the train gently rocks you to sleep. In the morning you wake up in a completely new city! I think I'm actually starting to prefer night trains to daytime trains.

Underneath a lecture theatre in Frankfurt

2010-12-10T21:42:00.000Z

Not the inside of a spacecraft. Peering into the service areas in a Frankfurt conference centre where someone had left a door open. The machinery enables the floor to change shape above from flat to stepped.

Inside a power station

2010-12-06T11:36:00.001Z

Part of the London Tram System

2010-12-05T21:50:00.004Z

Spotted in Hackney Wick

2010-11-10T16:38:00.004Z

Beautifully done, can be seen on the road that goes North up from Hackney Wick station

Delightful road markings

2010-11-06T16:32:00.001Z

Neat aren't they? Apparently someone wanted to impress with their knowledge of what lies below ground.

random Expressionist landmark, spotted from tram route one in Vienna.

2010-10-30T18:59:00.001Z

we'd caught tram number one, because it's one of the longest-running roots in Vienna, and we badly needed some sleep. There are few better places to sleep than a tram, when you're in a strange city and you need to to sleep in the daytime. the route takes much longer than a tube train from one end to the other, it's much quieter, and during daylight and around other people and feel a lot safer surfacing from a deep wonderful snooze, we looked out of the window and noticed that we were sliding past is completely wonderful building, so of course we had to get off and take a look. according to wiki ". HundertwasserHaus Wien is an apartment house in Vienna, Austria, designed by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Joseph Krawina" it was certainly a lovely place to go and hang out and drink a few cups of coffee, and read a few books and find out a little bit more about the life and times of the architect involved. He was a nutcase, and a brilliant one at that. I think , it would be no bad thing, if almost every architect was influenced at least a little bit by this building.

If you only go out to see one film this year...

2010-10-24T21:44:00.002Z

Made in Dagenham - Best Film Ever http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/film/made_in_dagenham

More from vienna

2010-10-16T11:43:00.002Z

Some interesting graffiti, inside a nice old tram, and some Mozarts. Lots of Mozarts knocking about.

The Transalpina 1

2010-10-10T19:17:00.000Z

One more from August

I had absolutely no idea when I was driving on this internationally famous road, that it was the world famous Transalpina - I had noticed a couple of hydroelectric dams on the map, which I decided to go and have a look at, and was rewarded with a fascinating surprises. Rewarded with beautiful mountain scenery, and a very interesting driving experience indeed .The transalpina runs South from Sebes across the Carpathian Mountains, and for 370 km or so that I drove on it, was mostly tarmaced. plans are in place to surface the whole road, which has been around for over 100 years , roughly in its present form, but to cross the middle of the mountains currently, the road gets pretty rough and you would need to go in a truck. all in all, a great day out.

More pictures from Dresden

2010-10-07T17:51:00.001Z

Rainy? Not half.

Rainy times in Dresden

2010-10-05T18:20:00.001Z

The river Elbe, and some seriously rainy rain, taken from working in Dresden doing Science. The new part of the town at the bottom, used to be communist flats - some have been modernised, some havent. Bottom picture is the view from the hotel window.

Dresden is a nice town - they do a fine goulash soup too.

Something like a church in Dresden

2010-10-04T17:38:00.002Z

Possibly the first Dresden post this month, I can't quite remember.

Saw this while walking to the office, it's a church of some sort, with a roof apparently made from parts of an early 90's National Express Coach Station. What is the story? Noone in Dresden seems to know much about the history of this building. Now heres the twist, it's got bullet holes all over the stonework too. It's at the southern end of Tram route 8, as you walk to Chimnitzer Str, if you want to look it up.

Up the mountain to Prislop

2010-09-20T20:12:00.003Z

You have to wait a while between those journeys of complete tranquility, where every corner you turn has a new view, and all is zen like. We started in the valley to the right, and ascended Prislop. We didn't get as far as the famous mountain cabin, since we wanted to get back before it got dark and the wolves and bears came out. Still, as far as reasons to turn back go, how cool is that? We got to the plateau at the top, somewhere a little short of the 1416 metres summit, so that afternoon, in sandals, according to the contour maps, we got up a little higher than Ben Nevis which tops out at a lowly at 1344. And for Transylvania this is a little mountain. People go up it on mopeds!

Nature taking over again

2010-09-19T01:00:00.000Z

some pictures taken from near the sparrow at cugir. the dam was originally built as a water source for the factories downstream, where the famous AK-47 rifle was once made. What I think is especially beautiful about this place, is the way that nature is coming back through the concrete and steel, as if the massively strong things that people have built over the years ultimately never really mattered.

some nice signs from our travels

2010-09-15T20:53:00.002Z

the coolest bridge Ever

2010-09-01T18:33:00.004Z

this is where the water supply for Alba Iulia crosses the river Mooresh, next to the E81, which is the main road from Bucharest, to the Ukraine. I've passed by this bridge number of times now, and was always itching to get out and take a closer look and take a few pictures.

No comment

2010-09-01T12:24:00.000Z

Some nice random oddments

2010-08-13T12:25:00.001Z

Iraq Supergun at Woolwich (part of), the peanut factory near Stratford, and the slipway where Brunels Great Eastern was built.

Atomium!

2010-08-11T08:29:00.001Z

Some things in real life aren't nearly as impressive as in the photographs. Some things are *much* more impressive than you expected, and this is one of them. The Atomium in Brussels is modelled on an iron atom. The legs holding it up at the sides were not part of the original design, but luckily an engineer calculated that in a strong wind, the structure might fail, so they were added fairly late in the design process. Funny how a natural thing looks so beautiful, strange, and alien when magnified.

Nice they're using linux at least

2010-07-28T12:18:00.001Z

Stratford International still not quite getting off the ground, but hey ho, maybe sometime soon. This spotted on the indicator screen.

I can only take a guess at what this is but I like it

2010-07-25T14:45:00.000Z

A day out in Sheerness

2010-07-20T14:34:00.000Z

This is where a 2 bed house costs 80 000 so we went to have a look via the highspeed from Stratford- it's a pretty deserted kind of place though, a bit overgrown, but nice to visit in Summer. Lots of things to photograph.

Cycle route one on thames path out to Kent

2010-07-15T19:53:00.003Z

Gods own Cycle Route - 20 miles of traffic free, strange marine objects, and a flat road and a following wind. Need to find interesting things beyond Dartford however, although it was pretty easy tootling back by train. Southeastern Trains don't bat an eyelid when you take a bike, much easier than a lot of other networks. All in all a grand day out.

Ferrier Estate 3

2010-07-10T20:22:00.001Z

... But if you look at the ideas the architects had, it might not be such a bad place to live at all. The parks in the squares are such that if your kids are playing, you can keep an eye on them and call them to dinner, there are plenty of trees about and the whole place even when fully occupied, would be pretty much traffic free.

If you explore the bits where some people still live, and you notice a few parked cars, the atmosphere changes and it feels a bit more like a place someone might be happy to call home.

A stones throw from town, on a hill, lots of greenery, and with its own railway station, that's pretty good going.

If the people who are in charge of the area lived in private rented flats, and if the people who dish out council flats (with no regard for whether they are building communities or not, have to live in the sink estates they create), perhaps they would have a different view too.

After a happy day of exploring I decided I liked the Ferrier Estate quite a lot.

Strange restaurant

2010-07-10T19:50:00.000Z

Used to be a Michelin Tyre Depot

Ferrier Estate 2

2010-07-08T20:18:00.000Z

... But on a sunny day, you'll find that the place has a different character. Lots of flats, almost whole blocks are boarded up, this Estate that must have housed about 10000 flats, according to a CPO nailed to a lampost, is down to about 50 owner occupiers, and there must be a similar number of renting tenants, all due to be jettisoned. Already the place is becoming overgrown and nature is coming back. Barely five miles from the middle of London, with its own railway station, and they managed to get the social aspect of the place so wrong, paying far too little attention to building communities, that no-one wanted to live there anymore. Future shock, culture clash, call it what you will, the outcome of throwing too many people together in too short a space of time ultimately meant that the whole massive estate of nine tower blocks and many more low rise, is practically empty. The Estate was 'system built' - a factory was built on-site to make the concrete panels from which the blocks of flats were made, and they all went up looking pretty similar. On this particular day when I took the pictures, I decided against any internal photos, I'll leave those to the Urban Ex people like 28 days later, for two reasons. 1. Its still currently someones home, they might spook me, I might spook them, 2. Proper urban ex people will do a much better job of the insides when demolition kicks in.

There is a sad feel to some of these photos - I'd do anything for a flat in London, and here are 9950 of them all boarded up!

Summertime Thames Trundle

2010-07-03T14:26:00.002Z

From Hyde Park down to Woolwich on the bike, interesting and moving that a lot of the large objects that gave the place its post industrial character are being removed now, notably the sugar silos on the peninsular being taken out by this rather nice giant crane. I shared part of the route (embankment) by a rather more famous cyclist - Boris Johnson no less.

Ferrier Estate 1

2010-07-02T20:13:00.003Z

Travelling down the A2 for Christmas spent on the coast a couple of years ago (2007 I think) I was captivated by am atmospheric looking Estate by the side of the road - it looked Soviet, almost Pripyat like with curtains blowing in empty open windows, clearly large parts of it were abandoned. Atmospheric? I was haunted by it. After a good amount of internet searching it came up as the Ferrier Estate, due to be levelled at some point in the future. When in a job interview I found that the knocking down was iminent, I decided that I needed to get there at some point and have a look. This first series of pictures sums up the view that most people might have of the estate - harsh, inhuman, unyielding. Not the sort of place you'd want to live, might as well knock it down. These are similar to most of the images you'll find on the web about this place, reckoned to be the 2nd worst in the country after the Aylesbury in Southwark, although funnily enough, I didn't spot a drop of graffiti.

Cycle touring in the Midlands

2010-07-02T19:59:00.004Z

Dreadful memorial plaques courtesy of Leicester City Council

2010-07-02T14:23:00.000Z

Seriously, these are *bad* - no doubt to educate schoolchildren about people from the area, but you can't help thinking that as an epitaph, they could be a little bit less crass no?

Nice

2010-07-01T14:31:00.000Z

Not sure how I'll top this one

2010-06-10T18:23:00.001Z

Random things in Germany last month

2010-06-07T20:40:00.000Z

Wind turbines that don't rotate

2010-06-01T15:36:00.000Z

Can you guess why?

A quick trip to Dalston in 2010 on the new line

2010-05-31T18:07:00.002Z

I first went to Dalston in 1989 when I worked tuning church organs. The side streets are leafy and splendid but the middle is atmospherically rough, lends itself to black and white, go when is sunny.

Delicious noodles, cool translations

2010-05-21T17:49:00.000Z

Let's all play Power Grid

2010-05-03T17:55:00.000Z

The all family game from Germany that apparently features phase balancing, power factor, and load levelling.

Olympic Site March 2010

2010-04-06T18:35:00.001Z

Site of the former Crystal palace

2010-04-06T18:22:00.002Z

This place is very atmospheric. Crystal Palace itself has a forgotten seaside town feel. That'll be because of the run down-ness nestling with the up and coming -ness, the architecture, and the wind. The antenna is a vertical panorama. Click on it. Go on.

Foam Inlet

2010-04-03T18:18:00.000Z

Towards the end of a fascinating day out with my Grandad, we explored the tunnels underneath the tracks that run out from Waterloo. Of course when on an elevated track, you look across to Westminster through the gaps as you tootle down towards Clapham. Who wonders what's underneath? The network of tunnels there is really something. But I'm not posting any pictures yet, first, here is the foam inlet.

Canary Wharf 2009

2010-04-03T15:01:00.000Z

Canary Wharf 1952

2010-04-02T18:16:00.000Z

Chatham #1

2010-04-01T18:08:00.000Z

We had a day out via the Stratford high speed line - this zooms into Kent in 25 minutes flat. Chatham was of interest since I've applied for a job there, and the houses are dead cheap. A windy and grey town, but also strangely atmospheric. It's got a knackered sort of charm. It's like an 80's Northern town dropped into 2010 South East.

New camera

2010-03-14T20:46:00.004Z

Shopping for a new camera now - after 7000 pictures the Canon is now on its last legs and has an electronic facsimile of stretched shutter springs and everything is pretty overexposed. Still, well done little camera to get this far and thanks for being so good these last couple of years.

Train set news

2010-02-27T15:38:00.003Z

The DLR layout is coming on nicely - like it? Also am putting together a miniature Sainsburys.

Bread

2010-02-26T13:44:00.003Z

Home made loaf. I put it up since is such a nice picture.

The other Millenium Brodge

2010-02-26T13:28:00.003Z

Near prince Regent DLR, you get this bridge mostly to yourself. It crosses Victoria Dock, and stands on four slender poles. Quite a thing to turn a corner on a deserted street and bump into.

More adventures in South London

2010-02-02T13:18:00.000Z

Some interesting shop names by the way.

Cranes in E16

2010-01-26T13:16:00.001Z

After they did up the docks, a lot of cranes were left behind for decoration. Showing my age now, I remember when these were used. Although the public were not allowed into the docks, I did get to go once or twice as a kid, stowing away in my Grandads truck. It's eerily quiet now. Amazing that a place of such noise, violence even, is now so peaceful.

Online gallery

2010-01-16T22:03:00.003Z

Got a card from an artist I wasn't expecting to hear from. A true individual and very talented. Thanks for that mate. Happy new year. Here's my latest stuff.

Still snowing, still cold.

2010-01-13T21:47:00.001Z

Bit of festival nostalgia perked me up.

Highgate Cemetary #2

2010-01-10T11:12:00.002Z

A bit of photography from a lesser known wonder. Camera stopped working for no reason halfway through the tour then started again a bit later, so a bit limited in pictures. I thoroughly recommend it though.

Circumnavigation #2

2010-01-10T10:45:00.003Z

A couple or three photos from my eccentric urban exploration day earlier this year.

Circumnavigation #1

2010-01-10T10:25:00.004Z

Decided that since South London is now on Oyster as of the start of 2010, to circumnavigate London on the outer Zones. Did this on a snowy Friday which was icy cold, but met lots of interesting people and found plenty of hot soup to keep me going. 15 trains, 3 trams, 3 DLRs and two tubes = an excellent adventure!

On a couple of occasions I got the impression that South London isn't quite ready for Oyster - a few times the ticket barriers wouldn't work, so staff had just left them open open, meaning that if you can't ping your oyster you'll get stung for a fiver at the other end. This happened in lewisham for example.

The ease of navigation that we're used to with TFL isn't quite there - went to Sutton to find that 'first capital connect' trains werent running because of the snow via a bewildering array of fuzzy video screens. Having no idea from any of the maps on the station what one of these is, it took a while to work out this was the company which runs the train I needed, so needed to go back to Croydon. A *lot* of local knowledge is needed to navigate the trains when so many companies are involved. Why should the passenger care which company runs the train you're on, especially when it's an s-bahn? On good old TFL there would just be a list of lines with service updates. A bit chagrinned back at Croydon that my oyster showed 4.80 to go to Surrey and back for no reason.

Something similar happened again at Croydon, all Oyster machines at tram stops were frozen, but the trams were full of ticket inspectors and saw a few police doing cautionings. How to leave legally? Escape from Croydon! Eventually I did. The trams were a real highlight of this strange and wonderful day out - proper civilised travel.

All in all about seven hours of interesting fun.

This'll be a chilly Winter

2009-12-20T11:18:00.000Z

Some chilly photos from the hills and moors around Leicester in early December.

Interim panoramas from Cornwall, London and the Rhine

2009-12-07T11:53:00.000Z

Stratford

2009-12-05T15:19:00.000Z

An afternoon stroll round Stratford. There's still a little bit of industrial dereliction to keep the likes of me happy.

Not quite the Empty Quarter

2009-12-02T15:17:00.000Z

.. But only because it's next door to the Empty Quarter. This is still pretty empty countryside. These taken during a Sunday afternoon walk around South Leicestershire. Looks like 1975 doesn't it? The aqueduct shown in one of the pictures is to keep the Grand Union Canal topped up. It's not every day you walk through fields and stumble on an aqueduct.

City by night

2009-11-16T15:12:00.002Z

Naughty Stockbrokers. Still not turning the lights off eh? My project about that didn't get funding from EPSRC. Thought we were short of electricity so it might make you wonder what does. Still, was a pleasant stroll from E3 into the city and back.

Nice name for a street

2009-10-10T18:30:00.000Z

This is also a reminder to me to start posting up some of the pictures I've been taking in EC1 - slightly North of the City, it's the lost part of London, no-one seems to know what's really in it, and it's full of fascinating buildings, secret tunnels, and secret fascinating buildings, with tunnels.

Dartmoor

2009-09-19T12:50:00.000Z

Dartmoor is completely beautiful. And unlike the nice moors of the Peak District, features wild ponies. Very tranquil, must return one day soon.

Had to be there really

2009-09-18T19:45:00.005Z

Pub, or laundry and music? Maybe one first then the other. Been looking for early Ride - Photograph era, I suppose it's time to dust off the vinyls again.

Torquay #1

2009-09-18T12:54:00.000Z

Some pictures of lovely Torquay - we got here on a summers' evening after a bit of a hot and dusty drive, booked into a delightful B & B, and made our way down to the seafront. What greeted us was completely brilliant. Sandy beach, rocky cliffs, palm trees, and the most garlicky pizza imaginable. Cool white buildings, staircase lanes and trees. Proper sausages in the B & B too.

Lyme Regis

2009-09-15T12:37:00.001Z

Some pictures from a trip to Lyme Regis - a very lovely seaside town - best swimming is to be had when the tide is in, unless you like big rocks, a very charming and enchanting town, and also the place where I had the single nicest pastie of my entire life. And a thatched cottage by the sea. How twee is that? Well worth a visit.

Brixham

2009-09-11T12:35:00.000Z

Brixham is the westernmost town on the English Rivera, a lovely fishing town with a great atmoshphere - one meal of fried whitebait is big enough for two. Also is home to a famous salt water swimming pool. The fishing boats from Brixham wind up as far afield as the Northoug Sea, although they have a nicer place to come home to than Grimsby

More from the Jurassic Coast

2009-09-07T12:32:00.001Z

Fossils! All found on the beach, and some views of the Dorset Coast, all from our August Holiday. The one in two halves I split with a home made stone axe - you can see that the frost has got ina little bit so it wasn't really transportable. The ammomite was a bit of a find - too heavy to cart home being almost a foot across and set into a rock that probably weighed around a ton. Nice coast isn't it?

Norfolk Broads

2009-09-03T12:43:00.000Z

A little bit of a photographic treat from the Broads. We do get around a bit. More on the West Country coming soon.

Interim panoramas from Dorset and Devon

2009-09-02T11:33:00.003Z

Something to enjoy while I upload the rest of the coastal holiday pictures - a nice big lulworth and a nice big Durdle Door, and Brixham Harbour - click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Jurassic Coast

2009-08-30T12:39:00.000Z

These pictures taken around Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove in Dorset which is one part of where we went on our holidays - the second picture is what a continent looks like when squeezed up against another one and the edges change shape - to get an idea of the scale of the place, if you look carefully you can see a person on the rocky beack. Durdle Door of course is the massive arch reaching into the sea. Just thinking about this holiday puts me in a good mood. And it's only about 3 hours from London. Beautiful isn't it?

Bournemouth

2009-08-30T09:00:00.000Z

Bournemouth was the first stop on our giant coastal tour, a great town with seven miles of sandy beaches. Lovely town, all the things Brighton ought to be, including a comparitive total lack of crooks. We were there for a record breaking warm day which apparently was mentioned on the news because of the busy beaches, but at ground level there was still enough room. Normally we had the beach almost to ourselves, expecially on one stormy dat when the waves were as big as tube trains, and a chance to catch up on some surfing.

Saltaire

2009-08-28T12:44:00.001Z

A bit fascinated by a photo of this place from one of my Mums' Architecture books from college that I remember reading when I was a kid. So with a little while left living in the Midlands decided to visit. It's sort of near Bradford. Amazing place, like a model town blown up to full size. Titus Salt was an industrialist and philanthropist, but why he built Saltaire is vague, in his own words "to do good and to give his sons employment". Looking at his other inventions and ideas he comes across (came across) as a bit of a visionary. Somewhere else to add to the list of nine hundred places which are nicer than Peckham. It's posh oop North.

Off travelling again

2009-07-10T21:08:00.005Z

Off travelling again, more nice pictures and interesting things to follow soon. Spot the station. (Matt and Wayne will know this one). Clue: Non-hilly country after Austria, unique language.

Soon

2009-07-05T19:51:00.000Z

Who else remembers the MBV gigs of 1991? My ears rang for a week. Heady. Trippy.

Watford to London on the Towpath

2009-07-01T07:16:00.000Z

Takes about seven hours in the saddle Watford to E3 - took towpath out to Baker Street, look at TFLS 'bikes on the tube' section for where you can take a bike (basically platforms without escalators mostly), tootle to watford, through a huge park which is only populated by 340 women with prams, a bit spooky, then down the towpath. Usual deaf old towpath people - they are moved around the country in a minibus and positioned in my path, obstruction. 'havent you got a bell?' 'well I thought the thing I was ringing for the last 20 minutes was, apparently it is two miniature interconnected woks' then you're in some lovely countryside as the canal winds its way South - then you get to somewhere in Middx and smell the samosas - time to tootle through lovely Southall. It makes for a fascinating day out. No punctures, had a delicious picnic lunch, all in all about 55 miles of cycling. So not a really long distance one, but being offroad and bumpy did take from 8.30 - 5. Arriving in Little Venice was ace. First pic - three of my favorite forms of transport. Last but one - ladbrooke Grove where the Clash come from. Seemed rather nice actually. Still, not a proper punk band like The Council. 4th pic - a miniature canal sysem! last pic - a nice canal bridge over nth circular. If you can ride one and havent got one then you're not properly alive. Bikes are wonderful. Yes!

Lea valley cycling

2009-06-30T07:11:00.001Z

A very nice day off cycling up the Lea Valley, the biggest hedge in the known world, went out almost to Harlow on the Lea valley track, which was ace, involving tootling through a willow forest of all things, in the middle of which sounded as though there was a cuckoo of a size I'd not want to meet on a dark night. Possibly a giant manga cuckoo of gargantuan dimensions. Met some nice interesting people on the way. Reckon Enfield is the new Laurel Canyon. last photo but two - I'm excited by these 'factory roads' where no traffic goes, and weeds start to grow up through the roads, buildings crumble, decay and nature taking over again - it's exilirating. This one also went through the middle of pylons, which has a sort of chartm to it.