Travel
I'm lucky enough to travel a lot but I also aim to understand a place in some depth. So I like to find out about the local history, sociology, wildlife and local arts. I prepare for a trip by looking up photos of the famous sights, they're usually a good guide both about the local visual interest and also a warning of what has already been done or over-done.
I try to use the tools of modern photojournalism and photography to communicate how I feel about a place. You’ll see that I have used Portrait, Street, Interior, Historical, Abstract, Landscape, Historical, Wildlife, Phone-camera and Selfie genres at different times for specific effects.
Bustling Rotterdam is built around its estuary port. The business district has the usual skyscrapers and the water of the Nieuwe Maas is crossed by a modern asymmetric bridge, nicknamed “The Swan”, though the maps show it as Erasmusbrug (“Erasmus Bridge”).
The tourist boat trip took us near the SS Rotterdam, now permanently docked as a hotel, her hull painted fine white rather than North Atlantic black. We continued to the container docks, the huge ships and cranes dwarfing the handful of workers on board.
Postcard of a day trip to Bristol. Traveling just on a regular diesel HST dating from the 1960s but seeing at Bristol Temple Meads number 44932 LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 steam locomotive hauling a charter up to Waterloo. The steam loco is one of the "Black Five" which survived running in service until the last day of steam on British Railways in 1968. Number 44932 was built in 1945 in Horwich Works near Bolton in Greater Manchester. So the steam loco is only 20 years older than the diesel HSTs still in service...
And a snap from just outside London Paddington showing two of the Crossrail Tunnel Boring Machines. TBM are huge machines, dwarfing the concrete mixer lorry nearby in front; behind the drilling plate there is a production line to remove the spoil and line the tunnel. Crossrail will link Paddington with Canary Wharf via Farringdon and is due to open for service in 2017. Crossrail's 21km of new twin-bore tunnels are first major new railway tunnels under London since the Jubilee Line.
Photos from a working visit to Caversham, the Berkshire “former village” where the Chilterns meet the valley of the River Thames at Reading.
Colourful but chilly near Caversham Bridge over the Thames with swans massing around one of the boathouses. There's been a bridge here since about 1168 AD. Higher up, vestiges of snowmen still on the ground at a part of the Ridgeway where drovers herded sheep above Hem Dean; these days Hemdean is full of red-brick houses and Cavesham is a commuter suburb, no longer a village.
Winter morning sunshine at Evesham, the country town on the banks of the river Avon (the same Avon that runs through Stratford). Evesham Abbey bell tower gleaming in the light, it's still hung with bells: we heard the peals when the campanologists were rehearsing the previous evening. Evesham abbey once housed some of the remains of Simon de Montford. His forces were routed in 1254 A.D. following the Battle of Lewes, both major battles of the Second Barons War.
Evesham abbey was ruined in the dissolution of the monasteries of the 16th century. A similar fate maybe awaits Wood Norton Hall, now vacated by the BBC (the technical faciliies remain on another part of the site).
More treasured is The Walker Hall, a classic timber-framed and jettied medieval building on one side of Evesham Market Square.
Here's my last postcard of photos from 2011: New Year’s Eve in Margate on the North Foreland in Kent. We travelled out from London on the 140mph rail service from London St Pancras.
Margate is home to the “Turner Contemporary - a dynamic visual arts organisation”; this power house of the arts is housed in a new building by David Chipperfield Architects; it is reminiscent of a trio of reactor halls at a nuclear power station.
As well as one of “The Kiss” from Auguste Rodin’s workshop (the sublime moment surrounded by what Kenny Everett might have called the Naffs of 2011), we saw the current exhibition “Nothing in the World But Youth”. Lots of interesting pieces, but the selection seemed more to reflect the life of youths destined for an art college lifestyle rather than youth in general. There were a number of significant gaps: music, mobile phone culture and sport, though stabbing and bullying/hazing were represented as well as teenage angst.
Margate beach faces northwest so the possibilities of dramatic sunsets and evening skyscapes remain much as they were in the days when J.M.W. Turner was in residence in Margate. The cafe in the gallery has a huge picture window which faces the sunsets, the cakes and coffee were fine but New Year's Eve 2011 sunset was not particularly special.
The thought I took away was that the green shoots of regeneration are still fragile: Margate is probably still an excellent place for a skinhead and scootering rally and rave at a seaside “party house”. Margate remains at the end of the line despite the injection of contemporary art, and the high-speed trains are most useful to get back to “The Smoke”, meaning London.
As it happens, we returned to Canterbury for a quiet and enjoyable New Year’s Eve party with friends.
