On the Beat

I also seemed to spend a fair bit of time wandering between Moorgate and Smithfield, through the futuristic landscape of the Barbican, which is when I took these pictures.

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I was staying in Euston, near the station. I was in London to go to the Convention on Modern Liberty, which was taking place on Saturday, and to go to a party on Saturday night. On the corner opposite my hotel was a disused tube station – the original entrance to Euston underground station. This was abandoned when the mainline station was redeveloped in the 1960s and the tube station integrated into the new building. (By the way, this is a fascinating website giving the history of some disused tube stations… but not Euston, which is still in use, except for this bit.)

Meeting up with frankie_ecap gain, we walked through Bloomsbury – past Maynard Keynes house – and down through Holborn to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to go to the John Soane Museum. This was a wonderful place, crammed full of paintings, sculpture and architectural remnants, all seemingly random. I can’t imagine why I hadn’t been here before – it was just my kind of place.
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I spent several days down south this month – in London and Oxford. On two different visits – so I am concatenating them

The first was a very good, though very emotional, visit.

For starters, I was met at King’s Cross by frankie_ecap, which was very good indeed.

After dropping my stuff off at the hotel, we decided to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum – or, if the last time you visited was in a professional capacity in the mid-1980s (to talk about ferns, if you are interested), the British Museum (Natural History). It is the same place, anyway.

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I spent New Year with my friends over on the west coast; 150 miles by road (and only 84 miles as the crow flies!). The drive over was glorious: from Edinburgh as far as Furnace, I had stunning weather. There was frost on the trees beside the M8; there was ice on the sea loch Fyne. I stopped at Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, but they were too busy to feed me (this was probably a good thing; it isn’t as if I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough over the holiday), so I had a baked potato at the garden shop next door. I am somewhat overdosing on baked potatoes at the moment: they just seem to hit the mark with the cold weather.

I make this trip several times a year, and every time I do, I look at the old bridge at the head of Loch Shira (an inlet of Loch Fyne just outside Inveraray) and think, I really must photograph that one day. I thought it again as I sped past, so I did a u-turn and parked a couple of hundred yards before the bridge. The light was glorious, but actually photographing the bridge was difficult: it was hard to get a suitable view, the shore of the loch being fenced off.

It was a good weekend for sunsets. I watched the sun go down behind Carradale from the jetty at Claonaig.

When I left on Monday morning, I saw the sun rise over Arran; the clouds made it spectacular.

It was a cold weekend, and that meant the air was clear. (Or vice versa.) The light was beautiful.

I walked along the coast in both directions – north for a couple of miles towards Tarbert, and south to Claonaig.

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On my way to Kintyre last weekend, I took a detour to Knapdale and Loch Sween. No real reason, but I had time, and I thought the sunset might be good.

I think I was right. I stopped with a view west to the Paps of Jura, which were snow covered, and to Gigha, Islay and, eventually, Ireland and the Atlantic. There were cormorants and gulls; and a large, yellow sun.

Instead of heading north, we headed south: we went to see Antony Gormley’s monumental sculpture the Angel of the North. Again, I have seen the sculpture both from the train and whilst driving north (it is much easier to see heading north than south, due to the bends in the road and rails). but I had never been close up. It was very impressive - awe inspiring.

Driving back south, we stopped to walk to Dunstanburgh. The sky was heavy. As we left, the sun was setting, the tall clouds catching fire and the ruins dyed deep orange. It was spectacularly glorious.

Over a year ago, we spent a week in Alnmouth. I took a lot of pictures, but I have only just processed them.

One morning, I woke early and went down to the beach to watch the sunrise; the next day, we both went down.

It was very cold, the wind coming in off the North Sea. But it was also very beautiful watching the sun slowly rise behind the clouds.

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