Gertsamtkunstwerk

Old photos short stories: Harwich

Many years ago we took a long weekend, over Easter, and stayed at Harwich, specifically at The Pier. I was really impressed all that time ago. Some acquaintances went more recently and were also impressed, and recent Trip Advisor comments shows that the quality remains.

We were less organised in those days, and too easily tempted into daytime pubs. And I was less profligate in my photo taking.

Our hotel room looked out directly over the Pier and we could spend time watching the comings and goings of a fairly busy small harbour. A few years previously I had spent an afternoon working at the passenger ferry terminus, on a trip from Felixstowe. That terminus is a strenuous walk from the town centre.

 

Harwich is in Essex. We caught a small ferry from the Ha'penny Pier across the River Stour to a place called Shotley, which has a marina, and lies across the River Orwell from Felixstowe. The peninsular on which Shotley sits is like a tongue in a mouth, the lips being Felixstowe and Harwich. Felixstowe is Britain's largest container port, and, I believe the second biggest in Europe, after Rotterdam.

We didn't venture far from the Marina.

 

When we crossed back to Harwich, a large container ship passed by and caused our little ferry to rock. 

 

Dulwich Park and Horniman Gardens

Bank Holidays - what to make of them? Sometimes I idly call for their abolition, and usually find someone points out their importance in Labour history. For workers compelled to work long hours in factories six days a week and forced to attend church on Sundays, Bank Holidays were a rare day of rest. Of course, just like Sundays traditionally, there's a downside to  being 'off' when everything is closed.

I don't think that Bank Holidays have any great use in Britain now, other than as opportunities for the marketing of conspicuous consumption. People who are paid strictly on attendance don't get paid; the salaried are obliged to take the day off whether they wish to or not. When I was working part time, my annual leave and public holiday entitlement were aggregated and pro rata'd, so whenever a Bank Holiday fell on a working day I begrudged having to use what I perceived as Annual Leave.

Anyway, many people don't get the day off, just as many people work weekends, evenings and nights. The late May bank holiday falls during the school half term, so makes little difference there. Anybody who appreciates the extra day and wants to go somewhere - the seaside or a visitor attraction - finds that enough of everybody else has had the same idea. My grandfather and step grandmother always used to go out on Bank Holidays, in order to sit in traffic queues, rather than go to the same place on any other day of their well earned retirement. This year, with neither of us working Mondays, the late May Bank Holiday ought to have felt like just another day, to be used or ignored according to the weather.

Ah, the weather. An English bank holiday without 'weather' would be as odd a roast beef without Yorkshire pudding. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't what you would call hot. Or warm. Not raining, but dull. Just miserable. 

Lacking inspiration we went off to Dulwich Park a very nice but unexceptional park not far from home. By this, I mean, it's lovely to visit but probably not worth travelling to visit, especially not from another area of London which probably has its own very nice unexceptional parks.

A surprising and impressive display of rhododendrons, just approaching the end of the line. These are in the so-called American Garden. I have searched the internet to find what is special about an American Garden but to no avail! But the internet does tell me that rhododendrons are not particularly an American plant.

There was a funfair in the park, poorly attended but disproportionately noisy for its relative importance. I understand why councils feel the need to get such events into parks, in order to benefit from the fees, but they probably drive away just as many people as they attract. I would imagine that such travelling fairs are very pricey for people with limited spare funds; the richer Dulwich types, if they were looking for fairground rides, would probably go to one of the well-known amusement parks, which might end up being cheaper. The rides didn't look exciting enough for the average teenager. Jimmy said this lorry was worth photographing.

 

Bored, we travelled on and passed the Horniman Museum. From the back of my mind, I recollected some praise of the attached gardens. We parked behind the Museum and Gardens, on a residential street high above London. In fact, it's worth visiting for the view.

In one direction I spotted this. I have no idea what got into somebody's head that this landscape would somehow be improved by placing a dull block of flats entirely disproportionate to the line.

Stand in the right place, though, and you do get a splendid panorama

It's a strange place. There's a large bandstand terrace, pavilion and Dutch barn, with facilities for serving refreshments, which were closed on the late May Bank Holiday (for many, the unofficial start of 'Summer'). We walked the Sunken Garden and Displays which were duller than you could imagine a garden to be in late May, the time when Spring moves into Summer. People were taking their small children round uncomprehendingly; for once I could hardly blame them for thinking it was yet another area specifically designed solely for running around children. I took not one photo.

We didn't go in the museum, but the conservatory is delightfully ornate.

 

Our final stop was the small animal enclosure. I'm not really sure what to think. I enjoyed seeing the various animals, most of which you have limited opportunity to see in Inner London. But I was left with an uneasy feeling that the space was quite inadequate, especially for the alpacas and the sheep. But I am not only not an expert, I am very ignorant on all matters of animal husbandry and welfare, so I might be entirely wrong. But that was my lasting impression. Along with the pong, especially of the alpacas who both peed several times during our short visit.

 In the end I wasn't sure what to think about Horniman. A lot of thought had gone into making it a place with many different attractions, but it didn't seem to be pulling it off.  Public spaces now show the effects of crippling funding cuts. We should expect more deterioration in the years to come, perhaps to the point of destruction: even if funding is restored to decent levels, the recovery period will be long.

But it wasn't until I Googled this place, back home, that I learnt there is a nature trail that starts there, and uses the old Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway; it claims to be the oldest Nature Trail in London. 

Horniman was one of several places visited this summer that seemed more interested in contriving artificial attractions/events to spoonfeed the passive, rather than celebrating the very real stuff that doesn't have to be shoehorned into a concept. Not the worst, just one of many.

St James's Park and West End Live

After our little visit to Stockwell Bus Garage we headed for Trafalgar Square for the tail end of West End Live. West End Live is where various theatres put on excerpts from their shows for the free entertainment of an audience gathered in Trafalgar Square. 

There was some problem with traffic - a mixture of roadworks and an incident of some sort. Our bus was diverted just by my old workplace and it joined a long queue of stationary gridlocked traffic. We politely asked the driver to let us off, and we went into a pub I knew fairly well. From there we walked to Trafalgar Square via another pub and, most importantly, St James's Park.

It was an almost perfect summer's day, warm but not belting hot, and sunny with a few light fluffy clouds. As we came out of the park we were stopped by a Canadian family asking for directions. They had arrived just that morning and hadn't realised that London was so green and picturesque.

When we arrived in Trafalgar Square, Stomp was just beginning. That was tremendous fun and energetic.

 

Soon after was the Act I was waiting for. Plácido Domingo conducting the chorus of the Royal Opera House. Of course, I am a fan of Plácido for his singing; the conducting is incidental. I'm sure some silly person would sneer at me for travelling into London especially to see him conduct. But Trafalgar Square is a little over 4 miles from home, and my excursion was part of a day that consisted of "Go to Stockwell bus garage and then go into town."

He spoke briefly, commiserating England on being in the same position as Spain - knocked out of the FIFA World Cup. Laughter all round. He also said he would invite people to come to that evening's Tosca, but it was sold out.

And then he conducted the ROH chorus. One of the pieces was Va pensiero, The Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, from Verdi's Nabucco. 

I think West End Live is a splendid idea. Of course it acts as advertising for the various theatres and shows, and for the idea of theatre, especially musical theatre. I think there was a considerable proportion of the crowd who had been there all day, and many more who stopped for a while as they passed by. A good mixture of age ranges and visible cultural differences. And a lovely day for basking in Trafalgar Square (ie, it wasn't raining).

 

 

The sights of Larnaca

We had hired a car because the weather forecast said "Not Beach". So, the challenge was deciding where to go in the hire car. Cyprus does have attractions, especially of classical archaeology, but the best were a long way away, and, to be honest, neither of us is sufficiently interested to make that effort. So, Larnaca seemed an obvious destination, even though I couldn't pin down anything really worth seeing.

The journey was simple enough - main road to Ayia Napa, and motorway to Larnaca. A bit like driving on British Motorways forty or fifty years ago. Our taxi driver (grew up in Streatham of Cypriot parents, ex-British Army, long settled in Cyprus) had warned us of the madness of Cypriot drivers. I didn't find them mad, but some were quite stupid. Showing off, but they wouldn't last long on English motorways. A general lack of awareness of other road users.

We went to find Kamares Aqueduct, which was very nice, dating back to 1747. Its purpose is water supply.

 

Next destination was to find the Salt Lake. Probably Larnaca's outstanding feature, although it dries up in the summer. I got confused reading the very poor map that came with the hire car and tried repeatedly to find a road, which I eventually realised was one of Europe's main footpaths. Giving up, we headed for the coastal road. On the way we found a small off shoot salt lake, which was very nice, not least because it afforded views of the airport and the hills beyond.

    

We found the beach. Miles and miles of golden sands, all but deserted. We parked up.

 

Although the day looks bright it wasn't warm enough to sit on a beach.

We had been there less than ten minutes when we were joined. A Russian couple with two small children, who parked next to us and came down to the beach. they made the sort of noise you would expect from such a group, which would be fine, except that, with all those miles to choose from, they decided to come within feet of us. We had seen them a few minutes earlier, when they had shot out of a side road without noticing us approaching on the main road. Jimmy slammed on the brakes, stopping inches from their protruding car. They drove off.

We moved on and came to a small village which I think was Pervolia.We found a lovely place to stop for a coffee.

 

I worked out how to get to the main Salt Lake, although by this point I was wondering whether it was worth it. It's a major place for migrating birds, the main feature being up to 12,000 flamingoes that spend the winter there. But they have moved on by April, and the Lake as not yet dried up, so at the time we visited, it was just a lake. 

We parked beside the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque and wandered along the shore of the lake. The mosque was noticeably secured with barbed wire, CCTV and so on. We could have gone in. they requested modest clothing, which is absolutely their right. However, I felt I didn't need to see it enough.

          

I decided that, rather than taking the motorway we would take the coastal road, which was fine until we arrived at Dhekalia Sovereign Base Area and we had to turn inland. I don't know what happened but we got completely lost and ended up driving into a military base which had signs for Famagusta.

It wasn't a good idea to drive aimlessly around a military base and also not good to cross an International border (albeit one not recognised by the UN) without a passport, so we popped into the Naval Police station. The policeman was very nice. I asked him to point on my map to where we were. He refused, politely but firmly. He asked me where I wanted to go and gave clear and unambiguous directions to Deryneia, from where we could get back easily to Kapparis.

We were on Ayios Nikolaos Station, which is basically an outpost of GCHQ, and doesn't seem to appear on maps...very mysterious...although it is covered in Wikipedia, and is the recognised route to Northern Cyprus if you don't want to bother with too many border formalities - a passport is required! It seemed quite an adventure at the time, being lost in a secret squirrel military installation in a sort of no man's land between sovereign states. And, yet, technically, being on British sovereign land. Only in Cyprus!

Summer garden

Pictures taken in my garden one summer. I don't know the names of most of the flowers.

 

 

                 

That summer, a beam called Spectra lit up the London sky to mark the centenary of World War I. 

 

 

Wakehurst Place

Wakehurst Place is a visitor attraction just off the M23 in West Sussex. It is owned by the National Trust and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As National Trust members, we had 'free' admission but had to pay for parking. This is resented by locals in prosperous safe Tory voting areas who object to Kew seeking to make up its budget shortfall, oblivious to the real life consequences of Austerity.

While I was there I noticed a local scheduled service bus turn into the car park to pick passengers up, so that might be worth investigating if you're car free. I wouldn't rely on the National Trust to give you any useful information about car free travel.

Coffee shop - definitely one to avoid. They have captive customers with no competition for miles; this seems to be justification for serving crap. I don't mind paying over the odds for a quality product but do resent it when they can't even provide a half-decent tea bag. National Trust, dedicated to serving poor quality beverages to the undiscerning tastebuds of Middle England. 

 

As a positive, the site is dog free (except for guide and assistance dogs). This should be a thing at more of these places. This was one of several similar visitor attractions I have visited in the past few years which are markedly busier in the café/shop area than the central gardens and significantly busier in the central gardens than in the peripheral woodland areas. This is so predictable that I have created a narrative of people who 'prove' their cultured credentials by boasting how often they go to National Trust-style visitor attractions, but only actually go to the café to drink dubious coffee, or spend ten minutes strolling around the gardens engrossed in conversation. Of course, what other people do is none of my business: an individual may have mobility problems; they may be killing time before they have to be somewhere else. But I am increasingly convinced that the vast majority of people, including those who spend a fortune on gym membership or jogging clothes, don't ever actually walk. I have mentioned before another blogger (and semi-retired GP) who has a theory that few people venture more than '100 metres from the car park'.

If you look for a map of Wakehurst on the Kew Gardens site, you won't find it, unless you search under: Explore > Exploring Wakehurst with children > and scroll right to the bottom for a sentence that reads:

Our Adventurous Journeys play spaces are located throughout the gardens. Find their locations on the Wakehurst visitor map.

Slow handclap for accessibility - here's the direct link. 

These places have to market themselves as being child friendly, but I think it's a bit of a con. I don't see this as a place you would want to take kids. If parents want to come and, inevitably, bring their children with them, I think that's great. The children will benefit from looking at the range of gardens and woodland, and simply from being in a different environment, and able literally to expand their horizons. But the marketing seems determinedly child-centric and focused on providing entertainment for children to consume, often quite passively. Fortunately, it being a school day, there was an absence of children.

Whenever I visit gardens such as this I struggle to describe them, and in a sense it would be futile to do so. We started off by looking at the formally planted gardens and the pond close to the mansion and progressed to the Himalayan Glade, but not as far as the lake before walking back through Westwood Valley and the water gardens. After eating our picnic in the car park we finished our day with a walk in the woodlands to the north west of the site. Outside the formal areas we barely saw a soul. I don't have a 'My Tracks' record of the route. Either I forgot to set it or I forgot to turn it off when I got back in the car. But my pedometer suggests I walked about 4.5 miles in total that day. 

The weather forecast had been bright and fairly warm, but it turned out to be mainly overcast with a bit of a chilly edge. It threatened rain more than once. It wasn't until after I loaded my photos onto my PC that I remembered I had meant to clean my camera lens, so some photos have a smudge on them. I have struggled for a long time with 'blown out' skies. Later in the summer I hit on a solution to this (exposure, basically!) but on this visit, despite the overcast skies, the photos were all marginally over-exposed - I partly compensated in editing.

Despite the criticisms above I would strongly recommend a visit to Wakehurst. It differs from Wisley or indeed Kew itself in that it doesn't aim so obviously to be educational- much less labelling of plants, for example. I liked the layout of the grounds. always nice to visit somewhere when the rhododendrons and azaleas are blooming, although I always struggle to get decent photos of them: so much colour distorts the lens!

In the more remote part of the grounds we spotted both grouse and pheasant.

 

Below are some more photos I took, and the rest are in my Sussex photo album.

 

This blogpost was posted the day after I visited - perhaps we were there at the same time kew in the country – wakehurst place, water gardens, wetland, woodland and wildflower meadows…

A couple more worth looking at

Wakehurst Place, West Sussex

Wakehurst - a garden for all seasons

From the Guardian archive: 15 August 1966: A Kew Gardens in the Sussex countryside

Day trip to Lindisfarne

Over a year ago now! 

A holiday in North Northumberland is incomplete without a trip to Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island. But you have to plan your trip. Not only for the weather, which of course, in an English summer is essential, but also for tides. Access is across a causeway. The causeway is about 5 miles long and there are safe and unsafe times posted on the internet and throughout the area. Normal people abide by the times. Arrogant arseholes don't. I did fancy doing a Pilgrims' Crossing, barefoot across the sand. You should only do this with a guide. I checked with Footsteps but because the tide times were not in our favour, needless to say the guided walks weren't!

We parked in a massive car park and strolled into the village. I was immediately struck at how Touristy it seemed compared to everywhere we'd been: local produce being sold from roadside stalls. Shops in the village geared up for mass tourism. Even people looked different: on average, significantly less gormful. 

We walked to the castle. There are two ways to do this. Trudge along a concrete path with everyone else, or, like us and almost ten other people, have a look at the beach. To be honest, I don't think most of the people who started on the path got as far as the castle. Probably too far from the car park. Couldn't bear to be so panic inducingly far from the flock. Imagine parking your car, walking for five or ten minutes, gawping blankly at something you'd heard was a tourist attraction, and then going for an ice cream, and calling it a day out!

We didn't go in the ruined Priory for the pragmatic reason that it is run by English Heritage and an admission is charged, and we had just joined National Trust at enormous expense.

It was quite a climb up to the castle, which was worth it, for the view

The castle dates from the 16th century, and was built for defence purposes. In the early 20th century it was inhabited and much altered by Edwin Lutyens. It wasn't that interesting unless heritage homes make you moist. I'm sure that many of the people who get orgasmic about stately homes won't have heard of Lutyens or have any sense of his significance. But they get to coo and sign over crockery.

Outside yet some distance from the castle is a garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll. Unfortunately just a few days previously I had read a comedy tweet that said "I quite like Gertrude Jekyll's gardens, but I prefer her Mrs Hyde  ones". (It seems that Robert Louis Stevenson was a friend of her brother so not so silly a joke!).

I strolled into the garden and tried to take a few photos. Big mistake! I had stirred the nest of the self-important man with a big lens on his camera. He had been sitting on a bench until he arrived but he was determined to go through an elaborate and pointless charade of mansplaining the taking-of-photos-with-a-phallic-lens. I don't see snapshots as being a competitive sport.

 

We returned to the car park, past the sheep, and were able to access the Causeway long before the end of safe time.

 

We went for  dinner at The Craster Arms in Beadnell. I'm not sure what to say. Sometimes a complacent mediocre place can be almost worse than a bad place.

Food served on cold plates. The same chopped to death salad they'd served the previous week with crab sandwiches. And a fish dish made up of disparate elements. Basically, on the one hand, you have the fish element. On the other hand, the choice of potato, and the steamed vegetables of the day. Not horrendous, but the same vegetable was served for every main. Not with it, but in a separate bowl. Brought to the plate by the customer. But not  brought together. Just there. Like the chippies that serve you a piece of stale processed white bread with your fish and chips, even though it bears no relationship. Bland dried veg sitting alongside a few pieces of fish/sea food. But no sauce to bring them together. As I say, it's not awful, it's just...actually, quite unappetising. I don't know, do they expect people not to eat vegetables? I'm not surprised, if that's the way they think they should be served! There was some bloke in the kitchen who fancied himself as chef. Hmm. Not really. How difficult is to plan a dish where each element complements the other? But, no, just throw together some poorly prepared random ingredients and call it a meal. 

 

Old photos, short stories: Niagara Falls

I have had two three week holidays in the USA. In 1989 I went with my mother and brother, and stayed with my Aunt. In 1999 I went with a friend. On both occasions I went to Niagara Falls. The first time on a coach tour. The second time, we flew to Buffalo-Niagara airport, caught the local bus to Niagara, NY, USA, and walked to Canada. On both occasions, I took more photos than on any other day trip to one attraction in the days of film - I take more on digital now, but there isn't a marginal cost to taking a photo as there was with film!

This is a slightly unusual blogpost in that I haven't bothered renaming most of the photos, so the "Alt" text is just a strange number. And there are so many photos I thought it worth setting up an entire album and posting most there!

But I thought I would post a selection of my most favourite here.

 

More photos in Niagara album