On Saturday we took a wee trip to South Queensferry really just for something to do but also to check out an antique shop we’d seen featured on the TV. (We didn’t buy anything in the end.)

Just by the jetty from where the boat trips to Inchcolm island set off there is this sculpture. The plaque mentions there is a large grey seal colony on the island.

South Queensferry is of course dominated by the two Forth Bridges but mainly by the original (rail) Forth Bridge. The trains seem to be every few minutes one way or the other. They look like toys against the Bridge’s sheer size. Here’s one coming off the bridge to the south. The photo captured the reflections in the water quite well.

The local shops etc make great play of the bridge connection. This is the Rail Bridge Bistro and Gift Shop.

I like the way the Rail Bridge motif is maintained on the fencing to the left front and also on the door handles on the entrance.

The sculpture of one of the bridge spans is to commemorate those who built the bridge.

This, I believe, contains the only commemoration to those who died in its construction, who are not enumerated individually anywhere.

A couple more pictures of South Queensferry have been added to my South Queensferry flickr set.

I’ve been waiting a couple of years to post this one. When I first photographed this building it looked like this:-

Prior to having been left more or less to rot for a good few years it had been a Vogue Furniture shop – in fact the good lady and I had bought a chair from it not long after moving in to Son of the Rock Towers. Long before that I believe it had been a garage, with those doors that opened very wide so that the cars could be driven in and out. That was many years before we moved to Kirkcaldy, though.

It’s been undergoing refurbishment recently and has now opened as an Undertaker’s – the business moving from a hundred or so yards away round a corner.

So now it’s much more spruce. This one shows a bit of the railway bridge over Nicol Street. And the clock on the wall.

You’ll notice the flagpole has gone. Quite why an undertaker’s needs a clock I don’t know. Here’s the front view. There’s a high tech steel staircase inside that you can barely see due to the reflections.

Crosbie and Matthew seem to call themslves Funeral Directors. (At least it’s not morticians.)

Two more photos – one of the dilapidated building, the other of the refurbished one – are on my flickr.

Cambridge is a curious mixture of mediævality and the modern. Plus you take your life in your hands walking about the place. People on bikes whizz around almost silently. We nearly got knocked down several times. So many bikes are there parked in one spot I heard one woman say to her companion, “Well my bike’s in there somewhere but I can’t tell where.”

It was morning when I took this, and raining slightly – not many takers for the punts.

King’s College (entrance below left) is impressive, but you can’t get back far enough to photograph it all. See below right for the chapel.

Access to the river is also restricted by the various colleges’ grounds.

On a lane down to the river we saw this unusual vertical sundial – well, actually four vertical sundials, one on each compass point of the tower I suppose.

This is from the footbridge over the Cam that we were able to cross. More empty punts – though if you look hard enough you’ll see one being poled just beyond the right arch of the bridge.

On the way down on our trip we stopped off at Wetherby just to have a bite to eat and stretch the legs. I didn’t spot much in the way of Deco but there was a nice bridge over the River Wharfe.

As you can see the river was quite high, in fact flooding the banks so that you couldn’t walk on the bank underneath the bridge.

Just to the right of the above photo Wetherby War Memorial stands on the bridge parapet – see photo on the left below. I’m not too keen on the ones which feature angels like this. A day later I also photographed Lincoln’s War Memorial, on the right below, a more intricate and to my mind more æsthetic design. A couple more photos of Wetherby are on my flickr.

I don’t know exactly how many Antony Gormley statues there are in total in the Water of Leith, though I have now seen at least four.

The latest two I photographed last Saturday.

This one is in the water by St Mark’s Park and was taken from the footbridge you can see in the next one.

It’s quite a nice footbridge. Pity about the plastic on the bank. They’re doing some shoring up work I think.

The last is right at the end of the Water of Leith. The pier is hard by Ocean Terminal shopping centre. The Royal Yacht Britannia is 90^o to the left of where I took the photo from.

We took a stroll around North Queensferry last week. It wasn’t much of a stroll because it’s not very big. It must be the best location in the world for viewing iconic bridges, though. It lies slap bang between the two famous ones over the River Forth.

The following two pictures were taken from the same spot. The angle between the photos is about 60⁰.

They’re doing some repair work on the Road Bridge which, thankfully, you can’t see from the road.

The next time I drive over it will be more scary than usual now I know all that is going on below.

Pictures of the northern cable anchor point and a support pillar are on my flickr site.

Looking west we could see the trans-North Sea ferry berthed at Rosyth.

There was an aircraft carrier at the Royal Navy base too. I had thought we no longer had any of those, or was it just the new ones the Coalition Government planned to scrap? My camera isn’t quite good enough for the distance involved but it was definitely an aircraft carrier. It had that upward sweep at the bow.

On BBC TV news yesterday – in Scotland certainly, and I think on UK-wide bulletins too – it was stated time and again that the Forth Road Bridge had been closed due to snow for the first time “in living memory.” For all I know other news providers said the same.

It was a significant event certainly, especially for all those inconvenienced by it, but since the bridge was opened in 1964 that would be the first time, then; first time ever, no qualification required. It was only 46 years ago after all, nowhere near three score and ten. There are loads of people older than me (and younger too no doubt) who can remember it opening.

It makes you wonder – again – about the accuracy of all the other comparisons we are provided with on these organs of supposed truth telling.

Maybe this isn’t really a linguistic annoyance; just one about those who don’t think about what they’re saying. Or writing, for those who composed the script.

The good lady and I took a short trip over to the west coast early in August. We travelled via the A 84 through Callander and past Loch Lubnaig up to the A 85.

Suddenly, on reaching Crianlarich, we had entered Gaeldom. The green background A-road signs displayed the English names of destinations in the usual white but in yellow there was in addition the Gaelic.* Glaschu and An t-Òban, for example for Glasgow and Oban. Fort William was easy to decipher being An Gearasdan – the garrison – how literal; as was stèisean for station.

Now, it’s years since I’ve been that far over but I don’t remember any Gaelic* road signs in Argyll and Bute back then. Up north, round Inverness and the like, yes; but not over in the west. Or had I just forgotten?

Anyway we passed through Connel. When I were a lad I’m sure it was called Connel Ferry. (Or was that just the railway station?) There’s no ferry now, of course. But there is a striking modern bridge. The photo is a stitch to get it all in.

Loch Etive, a sea loch, was running into the Firth of Lorne like a river tumbling down a slope.

The water was roiling and churning under the bridge quite fiercely.Though the water wasn’t very deep I wouldn’t have liked to be a ferrymaster dealing with that lot.

*This should, of course, be Gàidhlig.

On the way back up from Alnwick we stopped at Berwick to get something to eat. We’d have settled for a chippy but there wasn’t one on the main street or the ones leading off it.

On the way in to the town I had spotted this Art Deco garage but I took the photo from the opposite side of the River Tweed. On the way out I had to recross the river first and discovered it was built in 1937.

The old bridge over the Tweed has nice arches. There were lots of swans on the river.

I took this of the newer road bridge, and the railway bridge behind it, from the old one.

The town itself was down at heel and shabby looking even allowing for the fact that it was latish (after closing time.) This must surely once have been a Woolworths.

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This was another building that looks a bit deco.

Apart from the suffix on my previous Durham post you knew this was coming anyway. I can’t seem to go anywhere without seeing Art Deco/Modernist buildings.

Somehow though and despite my experience in Chester last year, I thought pickings in Durham would be small.

Yet entering the main square in Durham the first building we came across was Boots.

There was construction work going on in the square which is why the photo is cropped tightly. Down a narrow street leading off the square there was this:-

I forget who the tenant of the building is now but the Burton’s shop in Durham at the moment is actually the other side of the street from this.

This is the view from the window of the car park we used.

I took this photo because of the roofline of the building just across the river which reminded me of the former Raith Cinema.

Just for contrast here’s one of the River Wear from below the Cathedral (and without any Deco.) There’s a weir stretching from the building on the left diagonally across the river and one of Durham’s bridges in the distance.

On the way out of town I pulled into a cul-de-sac to check the map. The street was full of thirties houses!

The third semi down still has its original Critall windows.