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TYTN II's Pictures
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The town of Battle, mainly famous for the podgy pop boys of Keane and rightly so, but did you know it was also famous for something else? Oh yes, in a little known battle in 1066 King Harold and Duke William had a bit of a tiff. Oh of course you know, it was the battle of Hastings... just not in Hastings but I suppose then Battle wasn't Battle and the nearest town was Hastings so I'll let them off.
I must admit I turned up here not expecting much. I liked Culloden in a similarly unexpected way. I was expecting the same there, but I shouldn't have worried. So long as you're interested in what happened before and during the battle then both places are interesting but then again I suspect that's obvious really.
This picture is of the walls surrounding the Abbey that William erected on the top of the hill where Harold's men were killed. Battle is a pretty town but the main building is the English Heritage site so there's probably little else to see there but don't ask me, ask the guys from Keane.
| 0 comments have been left | 22:48 22 Aug 2009 | Tags: battle hastings abbey clouds |
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Dr Who seems to get about a bit which being a Time Lord I suspect is rather easy. Last time I spotted his vehicle at a Dr Who museum, before that I saw it at Crich Tram museum and now the latest spotting was at the Kent Police Museum strangely enough in Chatham's Historic Dock. The Police museum is small but rather interesting with a full display of cap badges for the whole of England a mock prison cell and a cheery retired policeman of 30 years to answer any questions.
Of course that museum wasn't the point of the trip. We were at the historic dock with a range of ships to walk around including a submarine and a ropewalk tour which sort of explained ropemaking giving you the opportunity to view the longest rope shed in thw world at a quarter of a mile long. Unfortunately whilst they were making rope at the time we didn't see anything much going on.
| 0 comments have been left | 14:42 21 Aug 2009 | Tags: dr. who phonebox museum chatham |
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With the sun out again it was time to head out to the beach because it appears that I was in possetion of far too much white skin apparently red or brown is preferable. So as the title suggested we popped down to Herne Bay which is just down from Reculver, a place we visited on Sunday. It's a smallish seaside town filled with people who sound like Ray Winston (when he's playing the part of Londoner which is all the time). Nothing much to report other than it was one of the places (the only place if the blurb is to be belived) that the bouncing bomb was tested and a place with not just one pier but two.
In this picture you can see both... Honest. The new one is obvious and not have friends trying to save it. We didn't look round it but it doesn't look like mutch. The old one is the small dark thing on the horizon and the only part left of it which is the pier head and apparently used to ttake passengers to France by boat of course but by the looks of it by the time they got there they would have travelled most of the 20 odd miles. Abandon in th early 1800's because of lack of interest and a deterioration of the structure this is all that remains.
| 0 comments have been left | 14:03 20 Aug 2009 | Tags: beach pier sea sand |
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Today was Dover Castle just thirty minutes away unless you believe the GPS then it one and a half hours away just off the coast from Ipswich. We would have to get a ferry from Harwich and drive overboard some time into the trip to Holland. Guess what? Today no-one got wet.
So to the real Dover Castle instead of badly input point somewhere in the sea. It's huge and similar to Pendennis Castle as it was a castle used right up to and including World War II. The difference is Dover Castle is huge but in some ways less interesting but a full day out anyway as there's lots to do. The medieval tunnels are OK with a tour of the larger medieval tunnels that were extended and reused for WWII which was pretty impressive if not a little rushed (at 50 minutes mind you). The Great Tower is good too with an impressive view of Dover from the top.
The picture is a statue of Admiral Ramsay at Dover who organised Operation Dynamo an operation to rescue troops from occupied France. He also organised the Normandy landings.
| 0 comments have been left | 12:04 19 Aug 2009 | Tags: admiral statue ramsay dover |
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What I have found strange is that there no car parks where you park you car and pay when you leave, only pay and display down here which makes it very difficult when you have absolutely no money on you. Despite this we took advantage of a Sainsburys to buy one pack of mints with a tenner.
Anyway on to Canterbury Cathedral, it's huge as you can imagine and similar to Seville's Cathedral in that respect. Unfortunately I felt tired and a bit uninterested in Cathedrals and the like (probably not the best day to be here but never mind). Despite this the Cathedral is beautiful and I'm hoping the picture come out OK so I can share them here at a a later date.
| 0 comments have been left | 13:18 17 Aug 2009 | Tags: canterbury cathedral clouds tower |
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In an attempt to recover out English Heritage membership we went to Reculver Tower which turned out to be free. The tower threatened by the sea was OK, but the off shore gun emplacements were more interesting and viewable with a really strong zoom lens. Unfortunately I left the tripod in the car so it was all a bit jittery.
With Margate looking as good as Blackpool we moved on to Ramsgate, my current location with a mobile signal. More than can be said for the holiday cottage.
| 0 comments have been left | 14:46 16 Aug 2009 | Tags: tower reculver clouds ruin |
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And for this weekend's delectation we have the Anderton Boat Lift. Similar to the Falkirk Wheel in that it moves boats from a lower canal or rive to one over 50 feet above, this on is at least the original. Built in 1875 and used up until the 1970s whilst the Falkirk Wheel was build recently.
With the Northwich Thundersprint happening on the same day we turned up, we also had the enjoyment of seeing a Spitfire fly past several times. What a Spitfire has to to do with the Thundersprint I have no idea, other than they have a fly past every year by the sounds of it.
Anyway back to the picture. On the right the boat lift, and on the left there's the impressive and imposing salt works. This doesn't happen to be the best industrial building as far as I am concerned. In this picture the boat lift looks quite tall in respects to the building across the water. What you don't get in this picture is the building is huge and in fact there are bigger buildings just around the corner all teetering on top of silos that are huge enough to start with.
Years ago I used to do site trips to companies and messed about with their computers in in small offices in huge hangars and I used to be impressed but none of it seemed as impressive as these huge constructions.
| 0 comments have been left | 23:34 11 May 2009 | Tags: transport boat northwich lift |
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With my luck there will be a film star of blue movies called Venice and now my hits will go through the roof. What is worse is as that when I started writing this wrote "With my luck there will be a" and Word Mobile suggested a word which it seems to wants to do anyway. It's an interesting feature that never works out the right word. In this case it suggested several words and suggested a line of three, in this case it suggested a word that made me chuckle. Top selection was a word that rhymed with plucker and started with an f. What is potty mouthed Word Mobile thinking about. It's got all post watershed.
Well today Murano (Uvavu) was a rather bad choice. If you like glass then perhaps it would be OK for you but after a while it starts getting boring. I got bored from the start. Also whilst there were interesting glass sculptures to snap (only photographically) I had no time to do it. I planned to take photos on the way back but there was no way back as we found a bus stop at the far end. We would have watched some glass blowing but it was a book only event and we were escorted off the premises quite literally. After such nice treatment and the fact the my Wife and I started to feel like we were bobbing about on the water despite being on dry land (no involvement with alcohol at all honest) it appeared time to go.
Back to San Marco and as luck would have it we stumbled upon the Helosphere, one of the performances we saw in the program that we though might be good but we thought we would just never happen to chance upon and here we were chancing upon it.
Now after a cultured day we are in Wylie Coyote territory on TV. In Italian or English it still makes as much sense.
| 0 comments have been left | 19:44 19 Feb 2009 | Tags: boat italy venice |
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In the search of Juliet's house we headed off by train to Verona. As luck would have it she was out which I found ignorant of a dead fictional character, but it did give us chance to nosey around her pad along with a few other people. I found it quite basic there were none of the mod cons that I would have expected and I've seen the film with Leonadro Di Caprio.
As for the picture I couldn't find any information on it. I think it's part of the old walls of the city as there are hints on the map to them existing and this could be them just near the Piazza Bra (no sniggering at the back please). This is just near the rather large Roman arena that I didn't have the guts to get to the top of but my eight year old had no problem with. I'm sure in time many more Verona pictures will appear her on wet Mancunian weekends.
| 0 comments have been left | 17:28 18 Feb 2009 | Tags: verona gardens clock italy |
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From the balcony of the basilica you can get a better view of St Marks Square this time with huge shadows cast. We had to come back here, for a start our boat home leaves quite near here. Also all the pictures I had taken yesterday with the Minolta were all taken at a fixed exposure by accident so I was pretty sure most of them would turn out poor, so I wanted to come back and take more. I always feel that there is a strong relationship between how much you are looking forward to the pictures and the severity of the bungle you have just made during all of them, the worst bungle of all is only finding out afterwards that you had no film in the camera.
Today's jaunt was a trip to the ghetto which resides in the most attractive part of Venice, apparently. The ghetto was where the Venetian Jews lived and so there were a couple of second world memorials and little else of note.
Today the opposite was true than of yesterday. We elected to take the water bus that then stopped frequently whereas the walk back appeared to be shorter. Perhaps we will get it right at some point. The water bus ride would have been more comfortable than the walk but for the fact that I decided to film the whole trip. By the time we got off my hands were frozen. I popped into the train station to warm my hands on a hand dryer which was a painful experience, silly boy.
| 0 comments have been left | 18:12 17 Feb 2009 | Tags: venice basilica square shadows sunset italy |
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