Cockermouth’s most famous son is the poet William Wordsworth.

There is a huge statue of a Lord Mayo on Main Street, though. From the inscription it sounds like Mayo was a bit of an imperial adventurer. He became Viceroy of India and was assassinated in the Andaman Islands!

Anyway, below is Wordsworth’s boyhood home on the junction of Main Street (right) and Crown Street (left.)

Quite imposing. And difficult to photograph without a car in the shot!

We viewed the house and garden – both overseen by the National Trust. We got there just as it was opening at eleven a.m. and there was a queue. Apparently at the height of the tourist season it’s mobbed.

Here’s a view of the garden from the house. It’s a bit sparse looking after the coldest early spring in Britain for 50 years. The River Derwent is a footpath or so beyond the wall at the back. It was from the terrace there I photographed the bridge over the Derwent I featured a couple of posts ago.

There is a small bust of Wordsworth on a pedestal on Gallowbarro – the bar of the “T” to Main Street and Crown Street.

Just to the right of where I took the above photo is a memorial fountain to both William and his sister Dorothy. This was taken at more or less a right angle to where I photographed their childhood home.

On our trip last week we were based in Cockermouth, at the edge of the Lake District in Cumbria. It has an elegant bridge over the River Derwent.

Not to mention this rather Grand Theatre on Station Road. The lower windows prefigure Art Deco but the building as a whole looks older.

And of course there’s a War Memorial, which is further up Station Road from the town. (I’m not too keen on these ones with an angel on top.)

The names of the fallen are on the reverse side (which it is difficult to photograph while at the same time avoiding getting the petrol station in th eframe.)

Dunkeld War Memorial is in the immaculately Scottish shape of a cairn. It commemorates the dead of Dunkeld and Little Dunkeld (and I assume Birnam.) It’s set on a hill above the road into Dunkeld, just off the A9.

The photo below gives more of the effect from the road (and from Thomas Telford’s bridge over the Tay which leads you into Dunkeld itself.)

There are three plaques. One for the Great War:-

Below that is a plaque for WW2 and a solitary name for Northern Ireland.

On the way back from Dalmeny though South Queensferry I noticed a new memorial. I mentioned in this post that there was a lack of a proper memorial to those who died while building the Forth Bridge.

That omission has now been rectified.

The Forth Bridge was opened in 1890 or so and it has taken until now to commemorate by name those who died in its building.

I’m still getting round to posting pictures of the places we visited in October!

This is Cragside, Northumberland, from the path leading from the car park.

Cragside was built for the Tyneside shipbuilding magnate William Armstrong. The house’s main claim to fame is that it was the first in the world to be powered by hydroelectricity (from a system specially constructed for the purpose.) Later – sometime in the 1930s I think – the house was connected to the National Grid.

This is a stitch of two photos taken from the terrace on the other side of the house from the photo above.

This is the house from the rock garden. It’s a very impressive building.

One of the delights of the site is the gardens with several bridges over the burn, the most striking of which is the metal bridge.

Two rustic bridges can be seen from the metal one and there is a smaller burn hard by the house.

Inside, the most impressive feature is the massive marble fireplace in the main reception room. So big is this it had to be built directly onto the bedrock of the hillside to give it sufficient foundation.

There is some nice tiling on the walls, here seen below an engraving/drawing of the house.

We took a long walk down to the power house. The keeper of the power house used to sit down there waiting for a phone call from the main house to turn on the water. There is a brilliant model of the hydroelectric system – you pull up a lever to allow the water to flow onto the turbine blades (all contained behind glass) and you can see the increase in power with the flow, with lights on a panel coming on and getting brighter to simulate the lights in the house. If only my first year pupils could see that!

The Water Garden adjoins Fountains Abbey which I posted about yesterday. It’s a shortish walk from the Abbey to the Water Garden following the river; which looks canalised, a prelude to the artificiality of the Water Garden itself. (There is a paved path if you prefer not to walk on the grass.)

This is a stitch to show the trees and water along the way.

There are several neo-classical buildings in the Water Garden. This is the Temple of Fame.

This is the Rustic Bridge.

Again, a few more photos are on my flickr.

On the day we went to Ripon we had visited Fountains Abbey earlier.

Note the party of schoolchildren dressed as monks to the left here.

Ruins.

Nice waterfall on the walk to Studley Royal Water Garden (see link above.)

The monks built out over the river which is bridged at at least four points (one of which held the toilet block – I wouldn’t have liked to live down river of that!)

A few more photos of Fountains Abbey and its grounds are on my flickr.

Even Alloway has Art Deco.

That central portion looks like a converted doorway, though.

The River Doon was surprisingly bonnie. (Most hyped-up scenic views are disappointing but the Doon runs clear and sparkling by ye banks and braes.)

The Auld Brig O’ Doon, immortalised in Tam O’Shanter, also looks great. This is from a newer bridge.

The Auld Brig is protected now but amazingly there have been proposals in the past to demolish it.

Here it is from the east side.

And this is the view from the Auld Brig to the newer.

Looking in the opposite direction from the newer bridge there is a third.

Alloway is not lacking in scenes to photograph!

The Bridge over the Severn at Worcester is nice but not particularly striking.

This piqued my interest. It’s a gate across an alley hard by the Railway Station. It may lead to a car park there or something. Very childrens’ story like.

Just opposite Worcester Cathedral at the edge of the town centre is this statue of the composer Edward Elgar (who wrote, among many other pieces, Pomp and Circumstance March No 1; sometimes known as Land of Hope and Glory, though the words were a later addition.)

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.