Showing posts with label Bridlington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bridlington. Show all posts

Thursday 5 November 2020

The Class of 2020


This year's graduates are the usual noisy, raucous bunch, with no manners or respect for their elders.

This one graduated with first class honours.


Herring gulls take four years to sexually mature and become completely white on the head so this one is probably a three year old and still has a lot to learn. The oldest recorded herring gull was forty nine years old.

Saturday 21 December 2019

Forgotten Evangelicals


Blogger allows you to make draft postings and somehow this picture has been hidden away in the "draft" for so long I've forgotten what I was going to say about it (maybe something witty about fishers of men, or has that been done already?). So I thought I'll just leave it here and if anything comes to mind maybe I'll add it later. I can tell you this is in Bridlington and it's tucked away down a steep alley way close by the harbour but then you might guess that from the sign.


The weekend in Black and white is here.

Friday 8 November 2019

Pier review

Bridlington pier attracts all sorts who bring along all the right gear to catch either the light or the odd passing codling or flounder ... I have a tripod, I just can't be bothered to traipse around with it.

These guys are not allowed to fish off here during the summer in case a passing tourist (there are still a few who pass) might be harmed by seeing grown folk waste their time in the pursuit of the big 'un. There must be some hidden thing I'm not getting, each one finds their own way through that gap twixt cradle and grave.

Sunday 20 October 2019

Please wait ... six months.


We went to Bridlington the other day. It was closed. Hibernating until well into next year, waiting for those glorious post-Brexit days, Armageddon, who knows? Anyway it was shut...


The Yorkshire Belle was where she always is, still going strong after taking folk on trips round the bay and sometimes further for must be over seventy years now. I know she had a refit in Hull recently and clearly needs to rest up.

The Gansey Girl statue and the ferris wheel were just made to go together so  ...

Tuesday 23 January 2018

Harbour Wall


I was going to call this something like 'next stop Hamburg' since if you keep going East over that horizon you'll end up close to that place but then I guess no-one or very few from Hamburg these days thinks 'heh if go that-a-way I'll end up in Bridlington' well at least not for the past seventy five years or so... This was taken in October when by rights it should have been posted then but though the body was willing the spirit was weak ... Besser spät als nie as they might say over yonder ...


The City Daily Photo theme for January was 'Photo of the Year'; it's not too late to go have a look.

Monday 22 January 2018

Audrey's x 2


Serving battered fried fish and chips must be a lucrative business as Audrey's in Bridlington seems to have doubled in size since I last noticed ...

Monday 8 January 2018

Puffins


Well it's not quite a beautiful mosaic (not even close) but for a public convenience in Bridlington this brickwork doesn't look too bad at all. OK it's a bit clunky but at least they tried, come on ... c'est seulement un pissoir ...

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Lifeboats and Water Works


A few yards further along from the Spa is this new-to-me lifeboat station which with its white curves and windows pays a passing homage to the art deco-ish Spa. However a few yards further brings us to this piece that seems to be a relic of Rommel's Atlantikwall, I believe it's something to do with the sewage out fall pipe they were putting in a while back. It does make for a fine vantage point if you clamber up the top of it, and from there, of course, you can't see it; so win-win. 


If you're wondering why the RNLI needed a new station it's because the old one (below) was a) not even close to the beach and b) it was across the road and traffic had to be held up and so on whenever there was a call out.


Friday 12 May 2017

A trip round the bay


Though Pirates grow old
And their beards go grey
It's never too cold
For a trip round the bay.



OK I'll give up the doggerel and stick to the day job...

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Mad Dogs and Englishmen


...In Rangoon the heat of noon
Is just what the natives shun ...

I write this as snow and hail are gently falling like a flensing knife on bare flesh to the merry accompaniment of thunder and lightning. It must therefore be April and springtime.
This crazy muttkin took a fancy to me and jumped in my bag some time so long ago in the warm hazy days of winter.

Saturday 22 April 2017

Questions, questions


By the harbour side and no doubt as part of some tourist trail or other these two figures appear demanding answers. I'll start with the guy in the Arab head dress, T E Lawrence (of Arabia). It seems that after ruining the Middle East in WW1 he served in the RAF near Bridlington supervising the armour plating of power boats for target practice. I guess he was tired of all the heat and the camels. The other guy, well, that is Captain John Paul Jones of the Continental Navy. During what would nowadays be called 'hard Amexit' or some such aka the American War of Independence he took a small fleet across the pond and proceeded to cause a bit of mayhem in British waters. The Battle of Flamborough Head of 1779 rarely gets a mention these days especially now that the UK and US have a 'special relationship' and more especially since the British Royal Navy lost to a bunch of colonials so least said soonest mended.

Friday 21 April 2017

A tale of two towers


I'm keeping out of the city of culture for a few days; they have taken to dancing in an old graveyard while stuffing their faces all the name of culture and it's not a pretty sight. So I return to Bridlington Priory and its two odd towers. It's looks on the face of it like it's the real deal; an old Gothic building with a perpendicular tower. Well partly. The church as it stands is the vestige of Bridlington monastery which would have looked a bit like this in the early 16th century. As you all know if you were still awake in history classes the monasteries in England were dissolved by HenryVIII. Now the Prior of this place decided to take part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rising in Yorkshire against Henry VIII which did not end well. The monastery quickly lost all its valuables and gradually fell into disrepair until only the nave remained standing and that in no good condition.  The pictures below show it in 1786 and 1842. Note there are no towers by the front entrance. So enter our old friend and saviour of fallen churches Sir Gilbert Scott and his passion for the Gothic revival and up rises one perpendicular Gothic tower in the 1870's and one stump of a tower as a permanent reminder not to trust planners ...




The rear view, those buttresses are all Victorian.


I came across this helpful little site on my travels

Thursday 20 April 2017

Bridlington Bayle's back door


Being too lazy to step back a bit in order to get the whole gateway in view I thought I'd just take half a dozen pictures and stitch them together with the rather skewed result you see. The bayle, as I mentioned ages ago, is the former gatehouse to Bridlington Priory. This is the back door, as it were, and it should look a bit like this.


Wednesday 19 April 2017

A slight difference of opinion


I couldn't go to the seaside and not take a picture of seagulls, well actually Margot took this but that's just nit picking.

The parliament that England is the mother to has just voted for an election by 522 to 13. Now don't get me wrong I'm all in favour of elections, have one every year (a la Chartism) if you will. Vote early, vote often is my motto. No, what boils my renal filtrate is the continual news media banging on, speculating, asking the same old same old rubbish of the same old so-called experts and commentators over and over and over and over for six whole goddam weeks. (I know other places have it much, much worse but that's their problem) It should be the law that the news people announce the election and then STFU about it.

You might think that there is some subtle visual pun about the gullibility of the electorate in this picture, you might very well think that but I couldn't possibly comment.

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Costa del Brid


You can achieve wonders by upping the saturation and artfully cropping out unwanted chip shop chimneys to give an almost Mediterranean look to a Bridlington snicket. 

There's going to be an election in June which apart from boring folk to death will return the present lot to government, destroy what's left of the Labour Party (not much), annoy the Scots and the Irish (no bad thing in itself) and solve no problem whatsoever. But then that's politics for you.

Monday 17 April 2017

Renewables: the new blot on the landscape


Bridlington's south beach has a wonderful view of a wind farm which I suppose is a step up from the view from the beach near where I grew up, Hartlepool's very own nuclear power station (there were also steel works and petrochemical plants as well but they just seemed to blend in so well). That's progress for you.


Margot took this picture.

Friday 7 April 2017

Building Tomorrow's Bridlington


You might think that having suffered two years of orange barriers in Hull you would be safe to take a day out and not come across any of these damn things. But no, it seems Bridlington is being regenerated as well which seems to mean knocking down a street of Victorian houses and digging up Bridge Street above. Maybe they'll get some culture too, we've got lots to spare.


Thursday 6 April 2017

A Seaside Terrace


Hard now to imagine the thousands who came to Bridlington for their annual holiday but the evidence of their visitations lies in these typical seaside lodging houses and hotels. This one has six storeys and all were no doubt priced accordingly. I'll take a wild guess that it was built in 1878. In those days holidays were unpaid and in the north of England whole towns would take a week off at one time, the Wakes Week,  and all would descend by train on the seaside; there was nowhere else to go. Nowadays everyone goes off on their own little adventure to the Med or Bali or California or where ever a plane can fetch up and these old places have become rented apartments not necessarily to the highest calibre of clientèle. Some seaside towns, not Bridlington especially,  have attracted the unemployed, and possibly unemployable, the homeless, folks with mental health problems, former prisoners and so on. I say 'attracted' some might say these people have been deliberately dumped on these places, cheap and out of the way. Naturally this is  bringing attendant social, drug and criminal problems. So though the sky is still blue and sea and the sand are just the same we've come a long way from the days of the bucket and spade holiday makers with their kiss-me-quick hats and sticks of rock.


Wednesday 5 April 2017

It's like déjà vu, all over again


In those optimistic years of 2007/08 a Ferris wheel stood large and proud on Bridlington's north shore fun fair. It styled itself as the Bridlington Eye after the much (~3x) bigger London Eye. Well we all know what happened in 2008 but that had little to do with the demise of the Brid Eye that was due to poor weather and lack of visitors. So down it came but not before someone stole the engine or so I'm told. All that is so much history because now the same people are putting up yet another Ferris wheel slightly larger than the first and it's hoped to be running by Easter. Unlike the first one this one will have open gondolas so I expect they are really, really hoping for warm weather; those North Sea breezes can be very unforgiving even in Summer.
Anyhow as the Bridlington Eye v1.0 was up and down and gone before I started this blog I never posted about it. So here's an ancient pic taken in 2007 when I was still a young man with no grey hairs and had money in the bank ...