Tag Archives: travel

Evening Stroll Around Westminster

When we first got to London on our vacation, it was later in the afternoon. We got checked in to the hotel and dropped off our luggage before heading out for a stroll. We weren’t going too far and just restricted ourselves to the area around Westminster Bridge and up to Hungerford Bridge. There were so many people around, even walking across the bridges was something that required constant attention. Everyone was taking photos and not really paying attention to anything around them.

Since the sun was in the west, the main face of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament from Parliament Square were better lit as was the London Eye from across the river. I was only carrying my phone with me so was grabbing the occasional shot rather than focusing on the photography but it was nice to be back in Town and having a look around. It did feel awkward being a tourist when I have spent so much time there scorning the tourists but so be it!

Remains of The Woolwich Naval Base

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As I explore the Thames further, I walked along the shore heading west from Woolwich. I came across what is left of the naval base that used to be there. I didn’t realize that a naval base had been there but a few signs explained my ignorance to me! There was a gun emplacement facing the river that, judging by the guns, was clearly very old. Not sure how an engagement would have occurred but it would have been messy.

Additionally, I came across a couple of dry docks. They weren’t dry and they were permanently walled off from the river but they were a testament to what had once gone on here. As an aside, I recently learned a little more about dry docks as a result of something at work. I had figured that what I was seeing was a dry dock, and it is, but there is more than one type of dry dock. Some are floating docks (of which I have seen a fair few) and this type is known as a graving dock. Never too old to learn!

Preserved Defender

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My visit to the Army Flying Museum made reference to some of the exhibits having their own posts and this is one such post. As part of the recent refurbishment, they added a Britten Norman Defender to the collection. This was recently retired from service and was refurbished for display. Having grown up on the Isle of Wight, the Britten Norman Islander is a plane that I have a soft spot for. The Defender is the militarized version of the Islander and it has served in numerous roles around the world from the basic transport role to surveillance of those that don’t want to be seen.

This one is mounted in a dynamic pose which rather dominates the first display hangar. Things are rather tight in the space and definitely dark so trying to get some shots of it that I wanted was a little challenging. I did shot some panos to try and get more of it in than my lens would normally allow. There is a balcony around the upper level of the hangar and that provides a good vantage point on the Defender too. I was happy to get as much as I could of the airframe since I have had very few encounters with them while they were in service.

Mottisfont

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We got some good use out of our National Trust membership while we were over in the UK. One of our destinations was Mottisfont. I hadn’t been there before. There was the main house but, as is the norm for us, we actually didn’t go in that to look around. Instead, we wandered the grounds. I did take some photos of the house, of course, since we were there. It was a rather overcast day so a stone house with grey skies meant it wasn’t looking its best. The grounds were lovely, though. I shall post some shots from our wanderings in due course.

Missed One Chinook But Got Another

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During our day out in Portsmouth, we had lunch at a very nice pub by the harbor. We sat outside enjoying the various boats coming and going. I popped inside before leaving and, when I came back outside, Nancy had to inform me that, as soon as I went inside, three helicopters had flown by. There had been on Chinook with two smaller, unidentified, types flying formation with it. Needless to say, I was rather disappointed but such is life.

A while later, as we were walking along the sea wall at Southsea, the sound of rotors returned. The nice thing about Chinooks is that they don’t really sneak up on you. I had ample time to switch to a longer lens and set up the camera for something more appropriate for a helicopter (although the Chinook rotor rpm is so low, it still is not ideal). Sure enough, it came right towards us and flew through the harbor entrance and right by. A nice surprise. It then flew out to sea and I wondered whether it was going to return. Instead, it appeared to be hovering over one of the forts out in the Solent. That would have looked great from closer up.

Watercress Line

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The UK has a large selection of preserved railways. The cuts in the second half of the twentieth century that closed many branch lines provided opportunities for the preservation movement to get going and the result is a lot of lines that you can visit and ride on. They are usually very well run operations. The Watercress Line runs from Alresford to Alton in Hampshire. We wandered past the station in Alresford when we were visiting with some friends there but it wasn’t operating that day.

However, since we were nearby and staying for a long time, I did take the opportunity to nip back out at some point to see the trains in action. I got to see one of the services departing from the terminus at Alresford but, I was a little thwarted on that occasion because the locomotive was billowing steam forwards and almost totally obscuring the view of it from the bridge I was on.

I also stopped off at an intermediate station which had a passing location which allowed trains operating in opposite directions to pass each other and continue on their way. A steam locomotive is quite an impressive thing to watch as it works and a little video does a better job of conveying the impression than stills. Neither will give you the full sensation, though. The smell and the feel if it passing beneath you is hard to replicate.

Our schedule was pretty full and didn’t leave time for playing with train rides but it might be fun to have a ride on this line or another like it when we are next in the area. I’m sure it would be quite fun. However, watching one of these old things at work seems better from the outside than the inside. (The line does run along a ridge that parallels the main road and I would like to go back at some point to try and get some shots of this location too.)

Not Often You Get To See A 747 These Days

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Passenger 747s are few and far between these days but the freighter world still has plenty of them. Even so, seeing a 747 is coming in is a nice addition to an afternoon. Heathrow’s arrivals included a Cathay Pacific Cargo 747-8F which was a nice bonus. I haven’t had much luck with the Cathay 747-8Fs over the years so was looking forward to it showing up. I had positioned a lot closer to the approach path when it came in and I wondered whether I might have too much lens since the 8F is the longest variant. Fortunately, it all worked out just fine and the sun played ball too.

Biddestone (Edge Of Raison)

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The pun in this title will only mean something to you if you have seen the TV show Agatha Raison. If not, this will just be a picturesque Coltswold village post. After visiting Devizes, we drove on into the start of the Cotswolds. This is truly lovely part of the UK and it looks like it was created by film set designers. Needless to say, it is popular with TV and movies. Agatha Raison is set in the area and is filmed in Lacock and Biddestone for a good portion of the show.

We had been to Lacock before but did drive through. However, it was absolutely heaving with tourists and we decided to keep moving. Biddestone was the exact opposite. It was almost deserted. This is the center of the village in which the TV show is filmed and the titular character’s house is alongside the green. All of the villages in this area look very pretty and you can get quite blasé about it after a while.

P1A Tucked In The Back

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The Boscombe collection has a couple of interesting testbed airframes. The Avro 707 was in a previous post but another fine jet is the English Electric P1A. The precursor to what was to become the Lightning, the P1A is very similar in some respects but quite different in others. The nose is a pitot inlet without the shock cone that the Lightning adopted to house its radar. The rest of the front fuselage has quite a different shape while it also feels lower to the ground than the Lightning was. It is nice that a Lightning front fuselage is displayed alongside it for comparison.

Back To The Island So Back To The Hovercraft

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We left plenty of time to drive to Portsmouth to catch our ferry to the Isle of Wight so, naturally, traffic flowed smoothly and we got there with an excess of time. Nancy wasn’t in the least surprised that I decided to park up on the seafront at Southsea to kill some time. Oh, was this next to the Hovertravel terminal? Well, that’s lucky.

We had just enough time for one arrival and one departure before it was time to head to our ferry terminal. That wouldn’t be all though. The hovercraft passes the car ferry during its crossing so I was able to get some shots of it in operation from the deck of the ferry as we left Portsmouth. We also took a walk along the front at Ryde after lunch with Mum. Just enough time to see the hovercraft arriving and departing there too.

One interesting addition was Solent Express. This was used on Hovertravel’s services a few years ago but was withdrawn when the new hovercraft were commissioned. I had understood it was stored somewhere. Apparently, they needed space wherever that was because it is back at Ryde but still looks stored. There is plenty of seaweed around it making it look like it hadn’t gone anywhere for a while. I wonder what its future holds?