Continuing my round up of the remaining sights in London, I paid a visit to Greenwich where there is an observatory and the prime meridian. (Trivia notes from the future: People like to jump back and forth across the meridian but more accurate measurements have located the 0° longitude somewhat to the east of the metal strip. So all the old maps of Britain are just that little bit off. The French refused to acknowledge GMT for many years, instead calling it Paris Time diminished by 9 minutes and 21 seconds. GMT has been replaced by UTC which is neither an English nor a French acronym, offending both nations equally.)
I guess I didn't find the observatory photogenic so instead I took a picture of Cutty Sark, the famous clipper.
The Tower of London. It's not a familiar view because I took it from across a busy road. I didn't visit; I'm not into gloomy fortresses.
Probably a bank of the Thames. The long shadows and joggers suggest an early morning visit.
The Tower Bridge of course.
I can't make out which Tube station this is. A friend thinks it's Bank. I probably just wanted a picture of a station so it doesn't matter. A Tube aficionado would probably identify it in a heartbeat.
I spent a few more days in London before the return flight so I'll break the rest of the photos across a few posts.
Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. Many of the listeners were visitors like me there to observe this quaint British tradition.
Marble Arch, just a stone's throw away from Speakers' Corner.
Portobello Road Markets. Incidentally my guess to the date of the photo is either spot on or a week off since the antiques and clothing market is on Saturdays.
Another scene from the markets.
After Keswick I went to nearby Carlisle, which is near the border with Scotland. Hadrian's Wall is also nearby, and marked the extent of Roman settlement in ancient Britain. I see from descriptions that you have to go a bit out of Carlisle to see the wall so I think it's not in my pictures.
I took a couple of pictures of the city to record my passage.
I had decided to take a west to east train service to Newcastle-on-Tyne just to be able to say I had been there, before returning to London. I can't even be certain that these photos are from Newcastle, but I remember it the hour was in the late afternoon so the gloom fits. I remember the train service was slow because it was a cross-country route and not a major north-south route.
Presumably this is a pedestrian street in Newcastle. It doesn't look like a London scene. I also don't remember whether I overnighted in Newcastle or took a night train back to London. Probably the former. So really the detour was to avoid retracing my outbound route from London to the Lake District.
Well yes, I know I'm already in the Lake District but I have to find a general title for the places I visited. One thing I'm sure of is that I stayed at a series of YHA hostels. So based on the hostel locations, my guess is that I stayed at Windermere, backtracked north to Derwent Water, and ended up in Keswick. I probably caught a bus for the longer stretches and walked between hostels otherwise. The Lake District is fairly compact and you could make a walking holiday of your sojourn.
The lakes are in valleys so a short walk will get you to higher ground where you can survey the lovely lakescape.
I think the subject of this photo was the mill over the stream. From the bluish cast either the photo was underexposed, or it was a gloomy moment.
My walk took me past small farms. At one field a friendly horse came up to the fence as I approached, hoping for a lump of sugar or similar. Alas I didn't have anything but some pats for it. I also remember petting a friendly farm cat. Out of the city, farm animals are less fearful of humans.
I can't locate these pictures precisely but from the similarity to other photos on the Internet, I think they are of or around Derwent Water, between the River Derwent and Keswick.
I remember it also rained at times so I had to use my raincoat.
The English have also kindly provided rest spots along walks and this vantage point featured one.
A closer look at the lake, or more likely, the tarn.
The body of water in the photo is too small to be Derwent Water. Looking at a map it could possibly be Watendlath Tarn reached by a short walk from Derwentwater Hostel. At the time I visited, this was a YHA hostel. I see that they are now an independent hostel.
Not many hostels have a waterfall just behind it. I was so gobsmacked by the sight of a waterfall from the window of my dorm, complete with the hissing sound of falling water.
A typical Lake District country road.
Probably Derwent Water, on the way to Keswick.
At Keswick I visited the Cumberland Pencil Museum. Graphite used to be mined in Cumbria, and pencil making was important at the turn of the 20th century. These days tourism is king of course. The displays were very informative. I remember learning how the pencils are made from two slats of wood with a row of grooves to receive the extruded graphite leads. The slats are sandwiched with glue (you can see the join if you look closely) then individual pencils cut from the sandwich. The pencils are then finished to a hexagonal or circular cross-section.
After Birmingham I went to the Lake District. This is a beautiful rustic area of England that I wouldn't mind visiting again. I started off from the northern head of Lake Windemere at Ambleside. This splendid sunset over the lake was taken from the dining room of the youth hostel.
This is the YHA Ambleside hostel. Since there is a lake in the foreground it would seem that I took a walk across the lake head to the other side of the lake, or a boat cruise. It was a grand establishment, which felt more like a hotel, and I guessed had a history as such. I've just checked the Internet and my surmise is correct, the building dates from 1894. Apparently it was refurbished in 2013 and would be even more attractive now.
The Ambleside pier with water craft for lake cruises.
One of the local residents who didn't need a boat to go onto the lake.
The lake is popular for sailing.
I also took a ramble in the nearby woods where there were waterfalls.
The picture's not very interesting, but how I got there and what I did is a longer story. Wait a moment, you say, what happened to Glasgow, you wrote that you visited it? Well evidently I didn't think it photogenic enough. I have a hazy memory of a less attractive city than Edinburgh. Certainly I don't remember any landmarks.
I had a ticket for a microomputer exhibition given to me by the business contact back in the Lulworth Cove post. I took a sleeper from Glasgow, arriving at the break of dawn, hence the photo. Which reminds me, on London to Edinburgh journey I was asked by the conductor before retiring if I wanted tea for breakfast just before arrival. I hadn't even realised that this was included in the fare. It came in china cup with a couple of biscuits. I'm sure that this custom of yore is long gone and now passengers have to get their own breakfast from the dining car or a vending machine. But you probably get more choice. Such is progress.
Microcomputers were the hottest thing at the time. They were just starting to be put to use in offices. It may have been this exhibition or another where I came across a letter generator. The idea was you gave it a list of names and it printed out form letters with the names in appropriate places. The demo prompted for a name. Being the impish rascal that I am, I typed in Twithead. (My usage predates Twitter, by the way.) The microcomputer obediently printed out: Dear Twithead, Thank you for your enquiry, etc. etc. I made my escape before the booth staff got curious about the hilarity in the area of the microcomputer.
From Inverness I went to Fort William on the western coast of Scotland. I don't see a train link so it's quite likely that this route was served by railbus and the photo of Urqhart Castle in the previous post was taken from the bus. Despite being a small settlement of about 10,000 people, Fort William is still the second largest in the Scottish Highlands, after Inverness. That tells you something about Scottish population distribution..
I stayed at the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel, which appears to be still there, as the website mentions a history at that site going back to 1933. I probably walked the 3 or 4 km from the town. I remember that it was rainy so I had to take out my raincoat, and also noting from the signs that the same road would take me to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles. I wasn't going to scale the mountain but hoped that I might get a glimpse of it. No such luck.
Fort William could also have been the starting point for destinations further north on the west coast but this was as far as I planned to go. I would be turning south to Glasgow afterwards.
None of the pictures here have sufficient local detail to allow me to easily identify where or when they were taken, so we'll just have to enjoy the scenery.
