Newcastle – NLS maps
October 9th, 2017
I started here Side by side Wingrove and Elswick and changed to the transparency slider when I realised it was more useful.
Newcastle – map tiling and planning a visit
October 6th, 2017
The original intention – click image for full picture
To date I have walked Elswick, Jesmond, Heaton and Byker from the above and in addition Hebburn, Tynemouth, and North Shields from the larger image (click above).
It remains my intention to walk all the areas in blue excluding the city centre. The idea is to get a view of the city as a whole and not just Grainger Town and the bridges.
On passing the Apollo pavilion – Peterlee
October 6th, 2017
2017:09:29 16:22:44
It was a beautiful warm and sunny afternoon in Peterlee and as I was taking photographs of the pavilion against the sun a teenaged girl walked past me on the footpath, underneath the pavilion, and up a staircase I had barely registered on the far side.
Newcastle placeholder
October 1st, 2017
Petra – Jordan
November 26th, 2016
If you can afford to go, go. The Guardian article is right. Don’t take the donkey ride (unless you can’t walk), walk through the Siq because that will provide the long walk you need to get acclimatised to the environment. The Siq winds – you don’t see the Treasury until the end and its appearance around a corner is astonishing.
I was lucky enough to go there in 1990 but don’t expect it has changed much – and quiet is good. If the Syrian war has put people off then fine. I certainly wouldn’t want to be there when it’s crowded.
And yes. It really is that colour. It’s beautiful.
Glasgow – shipbuilding and architecture on film
November 12th, 2016
Films
All Our Working Lives – The Shipbuilders.mp4 (download and play)
Original 1984 documentary of one hour then a half hour update programme
British Connection Clydebank – Kelso.mp4
BBC Alba – subtitles in English – Clydebank forms the first half hour
Dreaming the impossible: Unbuilt Britain – A revolution in the City
BBC Four 58m59s
The Secret History of our Streets – Duke_Street.mp4
BBC Four – subtitles – 59m22s
Aberfan remembered III
October 29th, 2016
http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/AberfanDisaster_Page2.htm
On the evening of October 21st 2016 I drove from Merthyr to Cardiff to hear the Aberfan Memorial Lectures by five members of the London Geological Society. My recordings of the talks are linked below, split into the relevant parts:-
Introduction by Paul Maliphant - Development and Projects Director, Mott MacDonald Ltd
Aberfan remembered II
October 24th, 2016
The morning of Friday 21st October 2016 arrived cold, crisp, clear and sunny. I drove from Merthyr Tydfil via the nearby village of Troed-y-rhiw to a busy Aberfan already filling with cars and parked on a steep street before walking quickly up to the cemetery for the 0915 memorial service. I was handed the leaflet below on approaching the memorial area. (see footnote)
Despite the chill in the air, as the morning wore on the sun’s warmth won through and before long it was a lovely morning up on the hillside on this sad occasion.
Aberfan remembered
October 21st, 2016
“Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board” – Inquiry
“Chairman . . .
Could anybody before Tip 7 started — not necessarily a surveyor or an engineer or anything of that kind — could I walking up that mountainside before Tip 7 began fail firstly to see that there was a stream on the land which later became covered by Tip 7? If I used my eyes at all, could I possibly fail to see it?
A. – You could not fail to see it, my lord, no.
Q. – What about the spring you have been referring to? Could a lawyer, with no knowledge of these expert matters at all, taking a country walk up that mountainside, fail to see the place of the spring you have spoken of, or (if the weather was dry) that there was a place where in wetter weather a spring probably ran — could you fail to see that?
A. – He could not fail to see it, my lord, no.
Q. – Those are the stream and the spring, we understand, you tell us later on were covered by Tip 7?
A. – Yes, my lord.”
Paragraph 98 – Evidence of the slinger, Mr. D. B. Jones
Golden rules – scratchpad thoughts
April 30th, 2014
A considered look at artistic composition.
a) a winding path, brook, river or canal which leads the eye into the distance.
Stonebridge Park estate