England – Page 4 – Where is Phil now?

Aldeburgh

Saturday 14 October 2023 – Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

We’d first booked this overnight stay at The Suffolk Hotel in Aldeburgh for July, it was to be one of Eleanor’s ‘significant birthday’ events. Sadly, we were forced to cancel a few days prior to going due to a train strike. I no longer have a car and a last minute rental was ludicrously expensive so a postponement was the right thing to do at the time. Frustrating, but right. The Suffolk describes itself as a restaurant with rooms rather than a hotel with a restaurant and it was established by George Pell a well known Soho restaurateur. Either way, both the room and the restaurant were fabulous. We had been looking forward to going for the extra three months we were forced to wait after reading some rave reviews in the mainstream press.

We were away from home for slightly over 24 hours and over that time we experienced every type of weather you would expect for this time of year. Heavy rain, high wind, sprinkling showers, high cloud and finally the crystal clear empty deep blue we want to see when we’re on holiday.

Luckily, the heaviest rain fell while we travelled north east from Liverpool St Station towards Ipswich, where we changed to a smaller, slower train to the ancient town of Saxmundham. Unlike the trains we’ve recently taken to the north west these were in good condition, and they even had phone charging points, which seems so critical in these always connected times.

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We took a local bus from Saxmundham to Aldeburgh, sadly the windows were so filthy there was only a limited view. It was hard to work out where we were at times.

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Aldeburgh is a lovely, small coastal town that has not fallen on particularly hard times, it’s popular with the ‘Chelsea set’ and this is clear from the condition of the town centre; it’s a lot cleaner and shinier than St Leonards, as were the people. Like St Leonards’ nearest neighbour, Hastings, Aldeburgh is also a beach launched fishing town; though significantly smaller with only a small number of working fishing boats. There are a lot of fish restaurants here.

After we dropped our bags at the hotel we took a short walk south down the coast. One of my favourite desolate places, and England’s only official desert, Orford Ness, is at the end of the long isthmus; though as an ex-weapons testing site access is not allowed from this end due to the potential of unexploded ordnance. I really wanted to go in there though, and there was nothing physically stopping access.

It was very windy, it howled through the masts of the yachts in the yards of the sailing clubs that ran between the gravel road and the River Alde.

The raised road is all the separates the sea from the river and it has been heavily protected against the constant pounding tide. It won’t be like this for ever and I suspect Aldeburgh and Orford Ness, and many similar places on the Suffolk coast will disappear under the waves before the next generation is gone.

Just before the gate to Orford Ness stands a fabulous example of a Martello Tower. This one has been made into a B n B and featured recently on one of the many property renovation TV shows. The exterior looks amazing and it’s a beautiful, rugged defensive building, from what I recall of the TV show it was beautiful inside. It’s the northern most of a series of towers built along the south eastern coast of England as defensive gun batteries protecting against the very real threat posed by Napoleon. The construction of this tower ended in 1812. The unusual concentric circular design was inspired by a tower on Mortella Point in Corsica that withstood a prolonged barrage by two British Warships in 1796.

Back in town we walked up and down the high street and along the waterfront, stopping for a drink in one of the many pubs. I wished, as I always do, that there were fewer cars parked outside some of the lovely, and often colourful, cottages and houses between the high street and the seafront.

Eleanor went back to the room and I took a stroll around the fishing huts and boats. The beach is a lot tidier than where the fishing fleet of Hastings launch.

We had an early sitting in the hotel’s restaurant, ‘Sur-mer’ and everything about the (admittedly expensive) meal was excellent, the food, the wine we drank, the impeccable service, and the old fashioned I started with. There are no better drinks than a well made old fashioned. It was the first time we’ve been in a restaurant where we’ve felt young. Aldeburgh is definitely a town for older folk and much as I liked it, and much as I’m getting older, I’m not quite ready to be counted with the old people yet.

We only had the one night here, so after breakfast I went for a walk with the camera to see if I could find a few buildings without cars in front of them; I was disappointed. I was also interested in trying to capture some of the harsh light on this now cloudless day but didn’t quite have the success I was after.

We picked up a coffee and sat on the seawall and stared at the sea before getting the bus from Aldeburgh high street back to Saxmundham, then the train back to London for mid-afternoon on Saturday.

It was a lovely night away, though on Monday we are off again….

The brutal buildings of Poplar, East London

Saturday 16 September 2023 – Poplar, London.

I enjoyed the third #brutaldayout photo walk today. I’m familiar with the core of the group, though today twelve set out from the coffee shop outside Blackwall Tube station. There were thirteen in the group for a moment and we either lost someone before we set out or this person accidently joined in as we assembled then realised it was the wrong bunch of people. Either way, it was the largest group we’ve had on a walk. Herding photographers is like herding cats, and we managed to lose two people over the five hours. It was a good group though and there was a lot of chat going on.

Boe and Irony mural outside All Saints DLR station.

Poplar is an area of East London that I don’t know well, though it is home to the first king of brutalist housing, the Balfron Tower and there will be more on Balfron in a later post. Poplar is proper London east end, it’s a working class area with a post-war mix low and high rise estates. It’s a multi-racial suburb and has, in parts, been allowed to rot, though I’m not necessarily saying race was a factor in allowing that decay. There are too few loud voices here nor enough of those willing to risk standing up to push the case for the borough. Poplar is part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and let’s just say the council is not unafraid to make decisions very unpopular with its citizens, though seemingly very popular with developers.

Poplar should be fortunate as it rubs up against the global financial centre of Canary Wharf, whose shiny glass towers stand proudly over, but maybe casting disapproving shadows over its rundown neighbour. You would hope the wealth would roll on down to its immediate neighbour, but, as always, that is not the case. Poplar is being gentrified, and not in a ‘nice’ way. Social housing residents are moved out and those who have bought their home in ex-council properties are ‘encouraged’ to sell. The estates are flattened and ugly new shiny things are built in their place; of course there is the promise that tenants can move back in, or new housing will be built for them nearby, but as we all know this rarely happens. ‘Cost over runs’ or other excuses means the developer can never quite meet their social housing commitments. Councils just roll over and let their expanding tummy get stroked and accept the heartfelt apologies from those poor developers. The worst part is a lot of those shiny new flats are left empty, unsold or with absentee owners, almost taunting those who were dispossessed. More on this with my post regarding Balfron Tower.

Our first visit was Robin Hood Gardens Estate, or what is left of it anyway. The estate was completed in 1972 and comprised two low rise blocks, one seven storey and the other ten, with a large green space between them. It was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson and was their only housing estate to be constructed. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets was the landlord. After a battle to get the estate listed failed developers demolished the seven storey West Block in 2017 and new flats are now under construction.

The East Block is now empty and awaiting the same fate as the West. 213 families lived here, now there are none.

After taking a photo of the scaffold surrounded front door I tried the door handle and remarkably the door wasn’t locked…

All the doors to the ground floor flats were covered in steel, so to be able to access the stairwell was a real surprise. A surprise too much to resist for some of us, so we took a quick foray into the building. Ignoring the ‘no trespassing’ sign. Bad I know. We didn’t go far, up a flight of stairs to the first balcony. All the flats are blocked off and we didn’t do anything other than take a few photos and then exit. It was a cheap, no harm, thrill; and no security or police turned up (phew).

There is a short row of terraced houses at the end of the estate and those are all boarded up ready to be knocked down as well. I wonder what monstrosity will be built on this site and when? All these empty properties and we have a major housing crisis in this country. I shake my head sometimes.

From a small, litter strewn and slowly overgrowing hillock in the gardens we could get a glimpse of our next stop; Balfron Tower in the Brownfields Estate; a 10 minute walk away. My first proper view of Balfron was through this filthy graffiti smeared window. I was quite excited; this is a major work of brutalist architecture in the UK, though maybe not from this angle.

Anyway as I said above, Balfron gets its own post later. The Brownfields Estate also has the much shorter Carradale Tower situated at right angles to Balfron. Unlike Balfron, Carradale is still very much lived in. Though here is a sneak preview of why Balfron so cool.

The entire area around Balfron is fenced off, including the, possibly, excellent play area. We could only see if from afar.

The towers were both built to complement each other and to create ‘communities in the sky’, by the Hungarian design genius (and inspiration for the name for the Bond villain) Erno Goldfinger. They were built between 1965 and 1967 and (thankfully) listed in 1996, else I’m sure someone would have tried to knock them down. Goldfinger lived onsite for a few months on completion and spoke to residents about what did and didn’t work and incorporating their ideas in his next project of similar design, the Trellick Tower, which I walked past back in August last year.

As Carradale is a lived-in block there was some space to wander around the perimeter, while I don’t support taking photos of people in or near their homes, I also think it is important to acknowledge that there are certain buildings that are important works of art and need to be preserved for what they are. One way to do that is to take and share photos.

Glenkerry House sits over the road from Carradale and is also part of the Brownfields Estate. It was designed by the Goldfinger practice to mirror its predecessors opposite. Construction was completed in 1977. It’s supposedly the pinnacle of brutalist design and was the final brutalist tower constructed in London. The building is owned and run by those that live there.

We stopped at the pie and mash shop in Chrisp Street Market for lunch and a short rest, Chrisp Street is the oldest purpose built pedestrian shopping area in the UK. It’s the heart of Poplar and thankfully is yet to be ‘regenerated’, though you can see it’s coming. It was busy. A lot of the flats around the market are empty, including a nearby tower block. The market has a marvellous clock tower, designed in 1951 for the Festival of Britain delays meant it wasn’t finished until the following year.

St Marys and St Josephs Catholic Church was our next stop, a magnificent building, completed in 1952 to replace the original church that was heavily damaged during the Second World War. It definitely has a mosque vibe to its construction and wouldn’t be out of place as a Christian church somewhere in Asia.

This was followed by the equally impressive, for its amazing tower, Calvary Charismatic Baptist Church.

We completed the walk at another post-war church, St Pauls at Bow Common. Built in 1960 it has been voted the best post-war church in Britain. It was certainly different with its pulpit in the centre of the building and the parishioners sat around the minister. I quite like it.

Actually we completed the walk at a pub near Mile End station where we stopped to refresh after a hot afternoon of walking, talking and photographing modernist and brutalist architecture. It was another enjoyable outing and if you’re interested in joining the next one then let me know via a comment, we don’t have a date or a location yet; though it will probably be around Kilburn.

In the Pines

Wednesday 23 August 2023 – Somewhere outside York.

This was the final of the four ‘English regions’ journeys that I’ve made in the past month. I’ve visited the South West, the South East, the North West and now I’m in the North East, though I’m not entirely sure where I am.

I’m attending a three day work training course at the Emergency Planning College. All I know is the facility is outside, and I think to the North, of York. I and 15 colleagues were picked up by a mini-bus from York station on Monday morning and driven 30 minutes into the countryside to the college. It’s not a secret location (anymore, it may have been during and immediately after WW2), but as we aren’t leaving the place till we go home so I never bothered to find it on the map. This is unusual admittedly, but I’ve been busy and still have more away days coming. To be quite honest my anticipation for a holiday in Ghent with friends next week is significantly higher than the anticipation I had for this work trip!

I won’t go into the detail on the learning part of the three days, it wasn’t secret government stuff, but it also wasn’t interesting enough to share. It was ‘work’ interesting and I learned a bit and enjoyed myself, especially the meals and the on-site bar. I ate a lot. The college buildings are part of a vast site, seemingly in the middle of nowhere and are comprised of an modern accommodation block and a lovely old manor house where we ate and a large modern school built out of sight on the back of the house.

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The grounds were used during the last war to train fire wardens, supposedly, and there were a few buildings that were knocked down quite years ago that were used for that training. I found two old bunkers on a walk and guess they were used to store flammable or explosive material, the doors were 4 inches thick. They were the only two buildings left standing amongst the trees. I was (and still am) wondering if they led to secret tunnels under the forest to the manor house.

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At the end of the first day I took a walk into the trees, I didn’t consult the loosely drawn map before I left so just stuck to clear paths; there is quite a section of forest to roam in, though I’m sure you could learn it all in a couple of walks, if you paid attention to the detail. The most serious risk for off-piste roaming would be twisting an ankle in an unseen rabbit hole, there are loads of them.

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It was an enjoyable walk, only 30 minutes, but I was on my own with my thoughts and the pine forest which made up most of the environment, was old and twisted and verging on creepy. I wished I had my big camera as there were some good photo opportunities. I’m not sure I could have walked there in dusk, not that I’m superstitious or anything, it felt a touch Grimm. I followed one path that gradually narrowed down to a bracken blocked dead end and I could see how an unpleasant tale could be developed around the head high ferns if the light was appropriate. I’ve never seen confer trees so twisted and bent before, it adds to the eeriness.

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The undergrowth was dense, there was no straying off the trails and into the trees as I usually do in Epping Forest, unlike Epping nothing much roams here, other than hundreds of rabbits and the occasional deer.

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My favourite photo was the walkway to the accommodation block. I loved the simplicity of the lines and the contrasting colours.

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The course finished mid-Wednesday afternoon and we were bussed to York Station for the journey back to London. The three hours to home seemed to take forever and I was very tired by the time I got in, and it was only 7pm.

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I enjoyed the two nights away, the course was interesting, the food tasty and the in-house bar was cheaper than a London pub; the evenings spent chatting with colleagues I never usually speak to was probably the highlight.

Macclesfield

Saturday 12 August 2023 – Macclesfield.

Other than visiting Norwich in June I haven’t been north of London in a very long time, at least since Covid times, and since Covid times more of the ‘north’ has suffered more than more of the south. Economic and societal differences have grown rather than shrunk, even under the current governments so called ‘Levelling Up’ programme. Public transport is one of those areas negatively affected and this became blindingly apparent as we chose to come back to London on Saturday evening rather than the planned Sunday morning. There were so many cancelled trains on Sunday it wasn’t worth the risk; and this is between Manchester and London, England’s second and first cities. I can’t imagine what it’s like moving around locally, we have all read stories of disrupted journeys and systemic failure of the northern rail system.

According to my blog the last time I was in Macclesfield was November 2014; it didn’t seem that long ago, but time seemingly passes with increasing rapidity the older I get. One of Eleanor’s oldest friends’ lives in Macclesfield, though she is pondering a move to St Leonards. Naturally we are trying to convince her that this is the right thing to do.

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It appears that the new normal for me and train travel is no matter what ‘window’ seat I book, I end up next to a pillar and have a limited view. This is the third time in as many train journeys that this has happened. I’m starting to think I’m now cursed.

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The good thing was the journey north from Euston (now London’s worst station) was on time, it was also very busy and I was sat in the most uncomfortable seat I’ve had on a train for years. As well as limited visibility I had zero leg room and was crammed into my seat. I love train travel, but this journey was one of the worst. I was glad when we arrived and I could stretch my leg on the ten minute walk to where we were staying.

Macclesfield is 20 minutes by train south of central Manchester and was a major silk town until the industry crashed in the 19^th century. A lot of the residences, including the one we are staying in would have had silk weaving rooms on the top floor. The town was incredibly wealthy for many years and this can still be seen in the lovely Victorian buildings that surround the centre.

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We went out an early evening meal (a lovely pizza for me) in an old cinema, which after a long period being left to rot, has recently been converted into a food hall. It’s a really nice place, had a great vibe and some fabulous food choices along with a bar specialising in local beer and another one selling wine. The music wasn’t dire either.

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After eating we took a longer walk back, taking in the deserted town centre. It’s clean and tidy and doesn’t look rundown, thankfully, but a lot of the shops are closed down, as were some of the pubs, and it had an almost deserted feel to it. I fear for the place. It’s an attractive town, and one of those places that is gentrifying and possibly for once that might be a good thing, the town needs some money.

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The highlight was the Ian Curtis mural, which I had wanted to see, and the reason we took the longer walk back to where we were staying. If you don’t know (and you should), Ian Curtis was the singer of late 70s post-punk band Joy Division until he tragically took his own life in 1980. Joy Division remain one of music’s most influential bands.

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Saturday morning we walked to a nearby park for coffee and to let the dog of the house an opportunity to stretch his legs and burn off some energy. The coffee was good and the park was really nice, though it rained a bit as we walked back. The rain wasn’t unexpected, though naturally my rain coat was left lying on the bed.

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Today is the first day of the new premier league football season and Arsenal are playing Nottingham Forest at 12:30. I went to a nearby pub to watch the game and allow Eleanor and her friend time together without me. I’d spotted a pub with football signs outside as we walked from the station last night so I headed there. When I walked in the TV wasn’t on and there was one heavily tattooed bloke leaning on the bar chatting to the bar person. I asked if they were showing the football and when I said it was Arsenal/Forest the bloke said ‘Fuck off, this is a United pub, look around’. I had failed to notice walls covered in Manchester United memorabilia. Doh! Fortunately he was ‘joking’ and the TV was put on, though he left soon after kick off. I noticed a bit later that this is the ‘official’ United supporters pub in Macclesfield. I ended up watching the game, which we won, talking to a Manchester City supporter and having quite a good time. The pub filled up soon after kick off for a baby gender reveal party; with a number of the blokes drifting over to where you could more easily see the game.

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I met Eleanor and her friend in another pub where I had something to eat before we went back to where we are staying. Eleanor checked the time of our train tomorrow (we had an open return) and discovered that a large number of trains were cancelled and those that were running were showing as ‘sold out’. With an open return we had no seat booked and the thought of trying to squeeze on a sold out train that may or may not get cancelled and likely being forced to stand for two hours in a rammed carriage didn’t appeal, so we decided to go home on one of the few trains running tonight. It was busy, but at least we had slightly more comfortable seats and we made it home only slightly late.

It was a shame to have ended the visit so suddenly and I would’ve liked to have had more time to explore Macclesfield with my camera a bit further than I did, but at least that’s a driver for me to visit again.

Yay, St Leonards for the day.

Saturday 5 August 2023 – St Leonards-on-Sea.

I approached this day trip to St Leonards with some trepidation, it’s my first visit since Easter when I handed over the keys to my flat to a tenant who could be there six or twelve months and I was unsure how I was going to feel once I got there. I was hoping that I’d just be mildly ambivalent about the whole St Leonards thing. I didn’t want to love it and regret not being able to live there but neither did I want to feel glad I can’t. I’ve invested some emotional energy on St Leonards and I’d hate to feel it wasted. The pouring rain that was being blown all over the place as I waited for the train back to London did enough to bring me back to reality. I enjoyed the half day, and would have stayed a lot longer if the weather hadn’t been so rubbish.

I was harbouring thoughts of moving back if my tenant moved out after six months. Much as I want to have my flat back, I also can’t really afford it at the moment. Having a tenant means I can pay the mortgage and be able to do nice things like the Ghent trip in a few weeks. We also want to go back to New Zealand for a month in early 2025 and that is going to need some serious saving.

This trip was delayed by a couple of weeks due to the train strikes. I was going down to meet some people from my block to discuss the hugely delayed works on the south side of the building. I wanted to get a list of what needed doing and see it for myself. The business part of the visit was really enjoyable and I had a pleasant hour chatting to my favourite neighbours, and I miss them a lot.

I caught the 9:17 train from London Bridge, the train was mostly empty; it’s not a nice day, definitely more autumn than summer. I enjoyed the journey down. Music and a book over coffee and a muffin to sustain the journey’ regular morning train journey fare.

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I left the train at West St Leonards and trudged up the hill under a solid grey, but thankfully dry sky, the wind pushed me along a bit. The empty and derelict Eversfield Hospital was looking even more derelict than last time I walked past. I so badly want to sneak a look inside….

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I love the building my flat is in; it looks amazing and it ‘feels’ good too. What I don’t like is the cost to maintain it, nor how long it’s taking to get the south side work completed. It was supposed to have all been done by Christmas last year; yet here we are 8 months later with no end in sight and we’ve been battling the maintenance company for weeks. It feels like we have a breakthrough and I was there to make sure everything we knew that needed doing was on the needed to be done list. I remain hopeful it will be over soon and the scaffold can finally come down (again).

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After the meeting at the flat I walked back down to West St Leonards to see a small photography exhibition of the works of Mick Williamson, a Folkestone based photographer who’s been taking daily photos on a film camera since the 70s. He’s taken some fantastic images. What I loved about the exhibition was the use of 10 slide projectors on a central pedestal showing images all around the room, none of them in sync. The clinking and clunking as the carousels moved and the slides we loaded was incredible; I could have listened to that for hours.

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I left the gallery in a gap in the rain and walked along the almost deserted seafront to St Leonards. There were some incredible gusts of wind and there was the odd occasion when I felt I could jump and be borne 50 feet forward. The rain held off for most of the walk but the right side of my trousers got soaked by the wind blow spray.

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I was planning on stopping in at Heist for lunch and a glass of wine but it was really crowded, which I’m taking as a good sign for the health of St Leonards. I’m kinda glad it was busy, I like it there so not being able to find a table meant I won’t miss it. I had lunch at the greasy spoon café instead, it’s perfectly good but not as good as the one in Walthamstow. It too was really busy.

I left there then took a slow stroll up to the station and waited 10 minutes for the train back to London. It was blustery and a bit cold considering it’s still summer. As I said up top it was not a bad way to end the day. I miss St Leonards.

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St Michael’s Mount

Wednesday 26 July 2023 – Marazion, Cornwall.

In the next month I will visit four different English regions. Today, we’re in Cornwall in the South West, this will be followed next week by a day in St Leonards in the South East, then Macclesfield in the North West, finishing with a work training session in York in the North East. This wasn’t planned when the first trips were booked but there is a nice symmetry to it all. To mostly wrap things up I will be visiting Birmingham in the midlands in September for a work related trade show.

We had planned this trip to Marazion a few weeks ago, booking this as one of two short breaks to celebrate Eleanor’s birthday. Due to train and tube strikes we cancelled this holiday a couple of weeks back and postponed a overnight visit to Aldeburgh to mid-October. When the strikes were cancelled we managed to rebook the hotel, thankfully, and here we are in Marazion, a small tourist town three miles east of Penzance. There’s not much in Marazion but the hotel has everything we need and it is directly opposite St Michael’s Mount, somewhere I’ve longed to visit and sitting quietly looking at the view is almost as good as pretty damn good too.

We caught the train down on Monday morning and for a five hour journey, it’s quite enjoyable, particularly from hour two and the far side of Exeter. I took a few photos out of the window as we travelled; the weather at times was ominous.

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The hugely important, inventive and clever civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and oversaw the build of a few sections of the railway along the coast including the great Saltash Rail Bridge over the Tamar river and the fabulous coastal section either side of Dawlish.

Unfortunately we were on the rail bridge so I didn’t get a photo of it, though I did get one of the parallel road bridge.

We arrived in Penzance mid-afternoon and took a taxi to the hotel. After checking in we went for a walk through the tiny village of Marazion, with its view dominated by the Mount. I love the Mount and took so many photos from so many different angles; fortunately I’m not sharing all of them. We were slightly bemused by the volume of union flags flying in the village main street, and also the number of cottages that appeared to be short term lets.

We had booked dinner in the hotel, it was a recommended restaurant and the main reason we chose to stay here. We had an early table which turned out to be a good plan as we got shown to a table right by the window and a great view of the Mount. We took a slow meal and spent a lot of time just gazing out the window at the early evening scenery. After eating a very nice meal we had a drink (or two) on the deck until the bar closed. It was a lovely evening admiring the outside, drinking a very nice rose and listening to the classic 70s rock playlist coming from the bar.

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We were either really lucky or had planned brilliantly but Tuesday, our only full day in Cornwall, was sunny and warm and neither the on-off showers of Monday, nor the rain all day of Wednesday had much of an impact on our trip. With the help of the hotel we booked a 10:30 visit to the Mount. Sadly the tide was wrong and we weren’t able to do the hoped-for walk over to the island so had to catch one of the boats that ferry small groups over.

10:30 was the second bookable slot for the day and I’m so glad we went early, the island wasn’t too crowded while we were there and the queue for the boat going over when we arrived back on the mainland was massive. Early seems to be the right time to do things; who knew?

St Michael’s Mount is a tidal island about 100 yards offshore and is fully accessible at low tide. The island was a monastic site, possibly dating back as far as the 9th century. It changed hands numerous times over the next 800 or so years, swapping between different religious orders, royalist and parliamentary leaders over that time. It was sold to the St Aubyn family in 1649 and they’ve owned the island ever since, with family members living in the castle most of that time. Apparently there is a ‘secret’ underground railway from Marazion to the island, and I wish I knew that before we visited as I would have looked for both entrances.

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The way up to the castle is steep and cobbled and not for someone in stilettos; we saw a woman heading that way in them as we walked back to the hotel.

We weren’t overly excited about the castle, it was OK, but as Eleanor said once you’ve seen a few lived in castles you’ve pretty much seen them all, there was nothing special about the castle itself. Great location and it has great views, but it’s a bit so-so inside. I can’t believe I managed to get all those photos with no people in them.

The gardens however…

Wow, I loved them. I’m not a garden person normally but this really was something special. The gardens are terraced up the side of the mount towards the bottom of the castle and the unique micro-climate here they are able to grow a mix of plants we don’t see elsewhere in outdoor English gardens with strong representation with various types of agave and aloes mixed in with more traditional flowering plants. This is not a traditional manor house garden and all the better for it too.

It was hot by the time we left so we stopped for a cold drink and snack in the café on the island before heading back to the mainland on the boat and a brief rest before heading out again for adventure two for the day.

Friends of our who are familiar with the area recommend Treemenheere Sculpture Gardens which were about halfway to Penzance and just inland from the coast. We asked about the gardens in the hotel and they were quite surprised when we said we would walk, and it wasn’t even 40 minutes from the hotel. I guess like most rural communities, this is a car town. I led the way. I won’t say it was disastrous, but Eleanor didn’t enjoy it very much, particularly the dashing across a busy A road motorway. In my favour I was following the fastest suggested walking route on Google Maps and the dash across the A road was at a designated crossing point. I think Eleanor was more annoyed at the overgrown narrow path surrounded by bramble and nettle and then the walk alongside a farmer’s corn field, than the road dash. Either way we walked back a different, albeit slightly longer way that included a road bridge rather than a dash across a busy road.

The gardens were worth it though. We had a very nice lunch and then explored the gardens; there was not a huge amount of sculpture for a sculpture garden.

The gardens themselves were not traditionally pretty, nor fancy and ornamental; there were a lot of shrubs and trees, lots more cacti and the types of thing that grow in the warm, which Cornwall certainly is compared to other parts of the UK. It was very subtropical and I was surprised to see a load of punga trees, a tree fern I’ve not seen in England before, but are everywhere in New Zealand. It almost felt like a walk in Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges. We really enjoyed it and it brought back some happy New Zealand memories.

We spent the evening around the hotel again, sitting outside and hoping for a spectacular sunset which never really came, though there was early promise. It was lovely sitting outside and looking over the Mount. For me, these are the moments that make a holiday. Just sitting quietly, hanging out with Eleanor and enjoying a lovely view.

As predicted, Wednesday arrived under a blanket of low cloud and rain, it was a good day to be heading back to London. I must admit the mount looks great under those low clouds.

We lurked around the hotel after a long breakfast and took a taxi to the station in Penzance at check out time. We were still very early so went for a walk in the rain; lugging our bags with us as there is no left locker storage at the station. Penzance is probably a prettier town if the rain isn’t falling.

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Our journey home was frustrated with signal failure and a very busy train. We were hoping to get a snack and a drink on the five, which turned into a six hour, journey to Paddington, but with only a food cart and a very full train we didn’t get served for four and half hours and there was little left. As well as getting a little hangry we did get a partial refund for the delay which partly made up for it. I managed to snatch a photo of the Brunel’s magnificent Saltash Rail Bridge as we approached which was I guess the one bonus of the slow journey.

Soon enough we were home in London, and as always, Cornwall and the South West were wonderful. Next time we go for longer!

Brutal Day Out–Thamesmead

Saturday 15 July 2023 – Thamesmead, London.

Friday 21/07, home writing.

Eleanor is at book club so I’m sat with my feet up on the coffee table supping gin and tonic, listening to records and catching up on photo editing and blog writing. After hitting publish on the Elan Valley post and typing in the date of this one I took a moment to reflect on how busy I’ve been over the last few months; it felt like there’s barely been a weekend with nothing on. After the long and seemingly quiet period of 2021 and 2022 it now seems like there is almost too much going on; we’ve gone back to the old normal. On Monday we’re off to Cornwall for three days, we have friends round for birthday drinks when we get back, the following Saturday I’m in St Leonards and the weekend after we’re going to see Eleanor’s friend in Macclesfield. There’s no letting up and I’m really happy to be active again; though flipping heck, it’s all gotten really expensive. Anyway, back to Thamesmead…

Thamesmead was (and still is) a housing estate designed and built in the 1960s on marshland on the southern bank of the River Thames. It was a new design and supposedly lessons had been learned from other housing estates built since the end of the war; with an aim to provide homes for local people rather than create an estate and move people into it. It was to be modern estate with a mix of low and high rise. Sitting here in 2023 with a brutalist architecture hat on the design looked amazing; however the promised Jubilee tube line never materialised and with the nearest shops cut off, first by a rail line and then by a busy road, it failed to be the utopia it could have been.

It was very brutalist and future looking with its clean concrete construction and hard angles and was made famous as the location for the equally brutal and dystopian film A Clockwork Orange.

I’ve been wanting to visit Thamesmead for ages, and finally got around to putting a call out for interest on the Whatsapp group that was created for a brutalist photowalk in May last year. Unsurprisingly there were other photographers who wanted to visit so we arranged to meet today. One of the crew who has visited previously agreed to be a loosely defined tour guide which was really helpful as there’s a large area to explore.

We met at Abbey Wood station, on the recently opened Elizabeth line. It was nice to be presented with a good concrete staircase that could be seen from the station platform. A promising start.

I was only expecting a couple of people to come to walk so was pleasantly surprised when 5 others turned up, including one who came all the way from Cardiff for the day, that is dedication to concrete. Our guide, Chris, started the walk by taking us in the opposite direction to Thamesmead, up towards the ruins of the Abbey on the edge of the large wood which between them gave the area its name. We didn’t visit the abbey, but stopped just short and took some photos of the stairway up to a bridge and the start of a walkway through to Thamesmead. I’m a big fan of brutalist stairs so this was a really promising start.

As you could imagine I took quite a few photos as we walked around for round, splitting the massive site into small zones.

Crossing over another lovely concrete road bridge we arrived on the eastern side of South Mere ‘lake’, the western and southern sides being a stage for some of the scenes in Clockwork Orange. Sadly a lot of that section of the estate has been knocked down and new flats and a building site have been left in its place.

We crossed the ‘Eastern Way’ motorway via another great bridge and found a great area of interlinked concrete walkways, bridges, ramps and stairs and my favourite type of place for shooting. There were few people about and I wasn’t pointing my camera at occupied homes; something I’m uncomfortable doing, though some of the group are less shy than me. I took quite few images.

After passing through a low rise estate and taking a couple of images we stopped for lunch outside one of the very few shops we passed; I had a pretty bad sausage roll and a Snickers; there are no fancy sourdough bread cafes round here. We sat on the steps and watched the water rats running in and out of the nearby stream.

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We looped back along the edge of the construction site that is all that remains of the area used in a scene for the famous scene in Clockwork orange where Alex pushes one of his fellow droogs into the lake, all that is left are the steps down to the water. The tower blocks and walkways were knocked down down 10 plus years ago.

Some parts of the high rise estate remain and we walked round those as we headed back to the elevated pathway that got us here in the first place.

The clouds started to hang heavy as we walked and the rain that had been forecast and threatening all day arrived a few minutes before we got to the pub next to Abbey Wood Station; luckily we didn’t get too wet. I stopped for a pint with the crew before jumping on a train back over to the northern side of the Thames and my normal habitat.

It was a cracking day out and a walk in Poplar has already been booked for mid-September. Thanks everyone for a most enjoyable afternoon.

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Urban Drift #1

Saturday 10 June 2023 – North London.

Walking is something I really enjoy and it’s something I’ve done for a long time (I guess it’s been since I first learned to walk), an unfocused walk around the streets of a city or out in the countryside brings me great pleasure; or at the least is act of de-stressing. It’s rare i come back from a walk feeling worse than when I left. I’d always thought that the best walking for me was under trees or near the sea but since Covid and coming back from the seven months we spent in Auckland I’ve realised that I’m the most comfortable walking in the city. This has nothing to do with safety or about getting lost, it’s just I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’m a city boy and I like the grot and grime and variety of the urban environment.

Over the last few years I’ve wandered a reasonable amount of the centre and inner east of London, it’s a vast and incredibly interesting city to walk in and the inner city is a treasure trove of buildings and streets and artefacts from its 2000 year history. Each walk has its ‘wow’ moments and I never fail to find something I’ve not noticed before, rain or shine they can look amazing if you allow it.

Over past few months, and again, probably since we came back from New Zealand I’ve become more and more conscious that I’ve been enjoying just spending time on my own or with Eleanor and I’m starting to worry I’m hermiting a bit. While I/we go out a reasonable amount I’ve not made a huge effort to see other people while we are out, so in an effort to try to change this and to meet new people I signed up for a walking group with a difference, ‘Pedestrianists’. Today was my first walk with them.

We were given notice via email to meet at a coffee shop near Euston Station at 10:00 am and to expect to walk for four hours; that was it, nothing other than a start time and place. There is no plan, there is never a plan. This walk was what they call an urban ‘drift’ and drifting with others was the exact reason I joined up, most of my walking has no plan, it felt good to do it with others for a change. This was drift number 7. There were a dozen or so drifters, a couple of other newbies but most had done these before. They were mostly young. The concept is that a random walker selects a card from a small deck then tosses the card in the air. Each card is marked with a direction on each side and the side that lands face up is the direction the walks start off. We walk for an hour in that rough direction, aiming to keep off main roads where possible, then repeat the card toss. No one knows where the walk will end up. I liked it.

It was the first brutally hot day of the summer and for a change I had packed and dressed appropriately, I had the big camera and I wasn’t sure I could walk for four hours; the most I’ve walked in the past couple of years has been two and a bit hours. I hoped my knees and hips would cope.

Our first direction was north and we immediately left Euston Rd for a parallel street and meandered our way through Mornington Crescent and Camden.

We walked past the amazing Isokon Flats building in Belsize Park, I’ve see pictures of it but didn’t realise it was in London, it’s a very lovely grade 1 listed low rise block built in the early 1930s. The building had three very important creatives who fled Nazi Germany before the war; Walter Gropius the founder of the Bauhaus movement, Marcel Breuer, an early designer of modernist furniture and Laszlo Nagy the head teacher of the Bauhaus School. As well as being beautifully designed it also homed designers of beautiful things at a critical time. I only had the fixed 50mm lens so wasn’t able to capture the building in its full glory, which obviously means a revisit.

The second hour had us going further north, though Highgate and onto Hampstead Heath; drifting around residential backstreets rather than marching more directly along busy main roads. This is supposed to be a walk for conversation and feeling part of the environment, relaxing and enjoying what the surroundings offer. This is not a walk to get anywhere or be first. The group stayed together through most of the walk, splitting off into groups of two and three, changing members regularly. I think I spoke to everyone at one point or the other, they were a social and engaging bunch and it was quite enjoyable.

We stopped for ice cream, water and a loo break and Kenwood House before heading east for the third and then fourth hours, taking a slightly executive call to follow the Parkland Walk to Finsbury Park from Archway, the only place I had more than a passing knowledge of.

We ended up at the Finsbury Pub near the park of the same name to get some very well earned liquid refreshment. It had been a hot and enjoyable four hours and we knocked off over 15kms. I stayed for a quick pint before heading home with enough time to have a cool shower and head back out with Eleanor. It was a busy, but very enjoyable day and I will be back for another drift when I next get a chance.

A brutal weekend in Norwich

Sunday 18 June 2023 – Norwich.

I haven’t gone away by myself for quite some time, and now I’ve a tenant is in my flat the option for a weekend or a couple of days away with little cost has also removed itself. I like some time to myself so decided I’d go to Norwich for a night and spend the two days walking about looking for and photographing the brutalist architecture the city is known for.

I used to really enjoy taking weekends away in random places before I bought the flat and have visited a few places around the south of England, mainly walking and photographing things. I was sitting in a pub on Saturday afternoon sheltering from a brief, but heavy shower on the way back from walking around the university when I realised that I rarely go to countryside/beach places anymore and most of my walking trips are now urban. I barely even walk in Epping Forest anymore and that is 10 minutes from home. I’ve become almost exclusively an urban walker.

I took a train from Liverpool Street Station arriving in Norwich 100 minutes later. Time that disappeared in a blur of bad station coffee and a terrible fruit muffin, music and gazing wistfully out the window. I love train travel.

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I walked around for a bit looking for a record shop that might have some keen local enthusiast who could advise if there was any gigs on tonight, the internet was telling me nothing other than dire cover bands were performing in a student orientated city, something I found hard to believe. I got misplaced and couldn’t find the street I was looking for so walked to my hotel instead. The city centre is busy but like a lot of city and town centres it’s looking a bit sad, especially with large chain stores like Debenhams closing down.

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I needed to dump my backpack and work out how to get from the hotel to the University of East Anglia (UEA) campus, the site of some very good brutalist buildings and the main objective for the weekend. UEA was only a 40 minute walk from the hotel so I walked there though it was a bit warm out.

I have to say right up front that I totally loved the brutalist bit of UEA, it would have been so much nicer if bits of it weren’t covered in scaffold and if there were less students behind the huge slabs of glass that make up the front of their flats in the Norfolk Terrace building; though I guess they are more entitled to be there than I am. I took a lot more photos than those below.

I’m a big fan of concrete brutalist stairs and UEA had some great examples.

I was also really surprised when I arrived at the top of a set of stairs and was confronted by an Antony Gormely statue. There are three of them on the campus, and they’ve not been without controversy. Which is good in some ways, art should be talked about.

The highlight of the visit is the student accommodation block, like the rest of the interconnected brutalist part of the university it was designed by Lasdun and construction was finished in 1970. The site is true brutalist megastructure and the student block is the crowning glory. I tried to get up close but there were too many students working away in their lounge spaces behind those huge windows.

Leaving the university I caught a bus most of the way back to the hotel, stopping for a rehydrating pint at a decent pub on the way. I’m glad I stopped as the rain came in a sudden and heavy downpour just as I sat down. I waited out the rain before carrying on my journey. That evening I walked into the centre and found a not too bad tapas bar to sit down for some food and a glass of wine or two while I read my book.

Sunday I got up lateish after a lacklustre sleep, my room was warm but otherwise comfortable but I drank that frustrating amount of red wine that had me too drunk to fall asleep quickly but not drunk enough to drop straight off. I had planned a walk around central Norwich to look for some of the brutalist era buildings that fringe the old city centre.

There was plenty of concrete about and some classic late 60s/early 70s buildings that may take the fancy of a brutalist purist, but my god they were photographically dull and I pretty much spent two hours walking round the city with a backpack of clothes, laptop and a novel and bag with camera and a spare lens and a bottle of water.

I got hot and wished I’d had an open return train ticket rather than the significantly cheaper booked service at 14:00. I did find some great bits of city wall down a dusty and overgrown path which was nice.

My main objective for the day was a visit to the Anglia Centre which sounded like it was due to be bowled over any time soon. The Anglia Centre was in the north of the city and on the far side of the river so I took a slow and enjoyable walk along the bank, looking for shade where I can.

I had kinda hoped that any shops that were still there would be closed on a Sunday morning and it would be a bit deserted, though annoyingly that was not the case. It had the right rundown feel and was nice and grey and concrete but there were too many people about and it’s a bit run down and it felt wrong to be taking photos; I’m not into poverty porn.

I walked through the shopping area to the carpark at the back and took a couple of photos of the graffiti covered tower above the centre and briefly wished I could go inside then realised I’m on my own and a chicken.

I wandered back through town and up to the castle trying to find coffee that wasn’t from a chain. I found a place in the mall, but the coffee was pretty bad, I should have a gone to a chain. I took a photo of the original and most brutal building in Norwich, the castle, and then carried on to a pub near the train station where I had lunch and a cooling pint. It was hot out and I’d earnt it.

That London

May and June(ish) 2023 – London.

The last couple of months or so have been a bit of blur; mainly a happy blur of family and friends from New Zealand and excessive eating and drinking. I’m pretty sure I’ve added more weight and gotten slower in the last two months than the preceding two, and I thought those were bad. Much as I’d like to break the cycle it’s going to last until the end of summer. I’m not complaining. I like eating and drinking with friends.

May was a mad busy month, I’d started a new job and it’s been pretty full on, but so far I’m enjoying it and it’s been good being back with some familiar faces in a department I’d worked in before. My Auckland sister came to stay with us for a couple of weeks after attending a conference in Valencia. She timed it perfectly to arrive between the kitchen being renovated (contents of the kitchen stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere) and the bedroom she is staying being converted into a bathroom (contents of the bedroom/bathroom stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere).

I have been reading Tom Chivers’ book about what lies beneath the feet of Londoners, ‘London Clay’, and he mentioned the Mithraeum Museum, a small, free museum in the Bloomberg building near Bank station. It seems that very few people know of it’s existence, which absolutely adds to its allure… It was the perfect place to take my sister to. History mixed with something underground; in both sense of the word.

In 1954 while digging the foundations for a new construction on one of the many World War Two bomb sites archaeologists discovered the ruins of a Roman temple. It proved to be a temple to the Roman god Mithras. The ruin was moved to a nearby site so the construction of the building could be completed. This was subsequently demolished in 2014 for the Bloomberg Building to be built. Archaeologists we given access to the site again and hundreds of artefacts we found. Bloomberg had the temple moved back to its original site, now the basement of his modern building. It was very cool.

There was an installation on the ground floor above the Mithraeum; a bunch of small vessels, such as jugs, vases and small barrels, hung from the ceiling with microphones in them, created a weird drone as we walked around them. I really liked it. Definitely a hard recommend for something to do in London that is slightly different to the norm.

After the Mithraeum we took a slow stroll along the north bank of the Thames then up to the National Galley where we saw a post-impressionist exhibition which was quite interesting, though impressionism remains my favourite period in European art. We had a walk around the gallery’s impressionist collection as well.

This was followed by an even slower stroll through China Town and Soho where we had an early dinner booked at the utterly fabulous Gautier restaurant. The food was amazing, as was a remarkable red dessert wine we had.

In an attempt to bring my sister back down to reality we decided we would go back to North Cheam, in the south London borough of Sutton and do a walk-by of 177 Windsor Avenue; the house we lived in before we went to New Zealand in 1973. I had visited in 2013(ish) but my sister hadn’t been back since we left. I lived there for three months or so when I came back to the UK in 1985 and stayed in a shared flat with some old school friends and I often wonder if they still live in the area and if they are still friends. I guess now I’m over 60 I should wonder if they are still alive.

It was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed more than I did ten years ago; maybe because I was visiting with family and maybe because it was sunnier. North Cheam was seemed less rundown than it did then. We did a short loop walk, past Allerton Gardens where I stayed in the 80s, past my old primary school and then on to our old street and house.

177 Windsor Gardens.

We then looped back to the high street where we stopped for coffee and a wee in McDonalds; the other option was the Nonsuch Inn, which was the pub we frequented in 85, but is now a Wetherspoon’s pub and I won’t give their scumbag owner any of my cash.

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The following day my sister attended evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral, not something I wanted to attend at the time, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and it sounds like it was a magical and uplifting experience, even for those who don’t believe. It’s a beautiful building and I’ve never really explored the inside. I must add it to my to-do list.

While my sister was singing songs to someone’s Lord, I took the opportunity to drift around the streets around Smithfield Market. I had no plan, just wander where the streets take me and grab some photos on the way if I saw anything interesting. I have yet to explore the Clerkenwell area, but with only 30 minutes available today I didn’t get far.

My sister was here for two short weeks and it was great having her stay with us while she was in London and her visit was over all too soon. Before she had even left some friends from NZ arrived in London, though they were staying with other friends for a few days when they arrived. Two days after my sister left I took one of our friends on a walk from Camden, down the canal to Kings Cross for lunch at Spiritland, then further down the canal to Shoreditch; stopping for beers on the way. Out first stop was the Hawley Arms, where Eleanor and I had our first date ten and a bit years ago; not that we have been there much since Eleanor stopped working in Camden. The Hawley is a rock n roll pub and was a hangout of Amy Winehouse, The Clash, The Libertines and many others.

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It was a good walk. I’ve not done the canals in a while and it was a nice reminder of how many nice places there are to walk in London.

It was a really hectic couple of months, with visitors and work being done on the house, but it was fun and I’m grateful we had visitors from NZ over to stay. I’m writing this in mid-July, a month after our friends have left and since then we have had a bathroom fitted, but the work is almost over.