Palm Paper Factory, King's Lynn

Earlier this year I posted that this place was a sugar beet factory. Well I was just showing my age and my ignorance. There was a sugar factory here many years ago when I first came to this land (early 1980s) seems it closed mid-1990s. Now it's this magnificent, steamy place. This I read has the "world's widest, largest and most powerful newsprint machine in the world" and to show you just how whoopy big that is I read that it can produce 2000 metres of 10.3 metre wide newsprint every minute, that's ample space for a lot of lies I think you'll agree.

There are in fact two bridges across the Great Ouse in this picture, the front is for local traffic to and from West Lynn, the rear one carries the A47 road which goes from Birmingham to Great Yarmouth (and back again) should you wish.

"Looks like an accident in the cutlery drawer"

Over last weekend and to the annoyance of many gridlocked motorists Castle Street was blocked off and the new footbridge (which we last saw parked up in preparation in a car park a few weeks ago) was shuffled into position in a faultless manner and much quicker than expected. The road was reopened fifteen hours earlier than forecast to much rejoicing. The bridge is only the small matter of thirty odd years late (who's counting?) ... and it won't be fit for pedestrians until spring.

The title was Margot's comment upon first seeing this. "Like the dish ran away with the spoon?" said I. Still you don't have to look at it when you're on it.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

And quiet flows the Don

Here's the river we've been trailing all the way up to Sheffield. The Don was once a jet-black flowing cess pit of pollution but since the 1970s it's been cleaned up and now salmon and other fishes spawn and thrive in its rushing waters.That's a nice little success story that's no-body shouts about for some odd reason.

Things ancient and modern

Here you might be surprised the ancient or rather slightly older thing is Doncaster's station not the gothic church that would like to dominate the skyline of this ancient town. The station was built in 1848, some five years later the 12th century church of St George burnt down completely and had to be rebuilt by, well who else could do the job, none other than our old friend Sir George Gilbert Scott. I'm told that the bill for rebuilding came to £43,126 4shillings and 5 pence and even Queen Victoria raided her piggy bank and gave £100. It's Grade1 listed and has interesting things in it you would love if you could see 'em (try here).

A new shopping centre/bus station/railway interchange thing has sprung up since I was last in these parts. I think it's called Frenchgate, something like that, anyway new to me.

Doncaster station is still as busy as I remember it. This is where the suits get off, taking their loud conversations with them, and head for the mainline London train ...

Now Doncaster or Donny as the train conductors and locals call it is only here because the Romans needed a place to cross the river Don and move on up North to York and civilisation. They fortified the place and, because they knew no better, they named it Danum, the natives called it Don - ceaster, the roman fort on the river Don, sensible eh?. Not wishing to flow against the tide of history this is us doing just that crossing the Don and moving on ... next stop Sheffield which is also on the river Don but named after a different river altogether.

The Ouse

So to avoid any confusion this is the Ouse. Not the Great Ouse the we met in King's Lynn, nor yet the Little Ouse not even the Sussex Ouse; just the plain old Yorkshire Ouse that runs down from above the city of York until it reaches the Trent and forms the Humber. Like the Great Ouse, this river brought trade and invaders up into the heart of the country to the ancient trading city of York. It has been estimated that a sailing ship could reach York in a few hours from Hull on an incoming tidal bore known locally as the aegir. In 1066 Harald Sigurdsson, king of Norway, aka Hardrada (the hard ruler) took his Viking fleet of several hundred ships up the Ouse to York in one day and defeated the inhabitants at the Battle of Fulford.

So the river is historically important, less so now that Hull took away York's trade, sea going vessels go no further inland than Goole and Vikings have found oil and gas in the North Sea and have settled down to making detective films instead.

The bridge we are going over is the Ouse rail bridge near Goole for we are on a day trip to Sheffield on an  errand so ridiculously silly that you really wouldn't believe grown up, responsible adults would countenance such behaviour.

A Sunday Morning Stroll

"...it's oh so nice to just wander
But it's so much nicer, 

yes it's oh so nice, to wander back"

On this bright and not very warm Sunday morning, while gentlemen in  England were abed, I set off down Hotham Road North

carried on down this grassy path

over this tastefully decorated footbridge

down Priory Drive, a quiet back street filled with the chirping of sparrows

trudged along the soul destroying Hotham Road South

walked down Wold Road

passed this young crow sitting on a fence

and arrived at my destination ... Ta daa

well yeah erm underwhelming doesn't begin to tell it ... "Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see" was Dr Johnson's opinion of the Giant's Causeway, this gravity defying rubble is not even worth seeing. This is all that remains of Haltemprice Priory farmhouse built in the early 16th century or thereabouts. It said that some of the building uses stone from Haltemprice Priory which if HenryVIII hadn't dissolved the whole lot would have gone into receivership or the medieval equivalent. The site of the priory is a scheduled monument though there is nothing to see but a huge security fence.  As you can see it's a lot of a wreck and despite being Grade2 listed it is on that list of buildings at risk.

The whole walk was about a little bit over two miles to this place and was proof of that old saying that "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive". Better still though is the coming back and putting your feet up.

Just don't drop it

What's this? Some kind of fair ground attraction at the back of Staples, a place well known for attractions of an all together different sort? No, not even close.

Back in April I mentioned that work had started on building a footbridge across Castle Street. Well in the past few days in this car park just a few yards down the road this has spring  up. Yes, it looks like the long awaited bridge just needs lifting up and putting in the right place and we should be good to trot. But quite how you lift a girt heavy and wide load like this and place it with pinpoint accuracy on its supports is thankfully not my concern. Let's just hope they don't drop it.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

A Good Wall Spoiled

There's a craze to paint murals in this donkey's ass of a town. You've got a few square feet of blank  Victorian or Edwardian brickwork doing no harm to anyone and it just can't be left in peace; it has to be coated in some "artwork". We've seen it on Hessle Road and other places and it's creeping all over the place. There's even a plan to paint houses on Spring Bank in gaudy colours just because some layabouts want a grant from the Art Council or the stupid Council and they have nothing to offer the world but vandalism dressed as "community art". The themes in this case we are told were suggested by primary school children because, as is clear to any fool that has ever breathed, uneducated, uninformed 5 to 11 year old youngsters are a positive fountain of inspiration and objectivity. So the four corners of this unfortunate bridge on Chanterlands Avenue have the above garbage (Aim high, never give up, pshaw! How often young children come out with such phrases ...), a sporty theme featuring two unknown sporty people celebrating  sporty events from before many of the children born, a badly drawn collage of Hull images (including Larkin's Toad an image familiar to all Year One intake children at all primary schools) and a long "Eco" thing involving a whale, an octopus, a shark, a large green turtle, some penguins and a polar bear oh and some floating plastic bags to remind us all what sinners we are. (It seems youngsters have a very depressed view of the world and quite possibly think it is all doomed) Quite what all this has to do with Chants Avenue I haven't a clue. It's just plain old fashioned prattery. Worse though; it is condoned vandalism, a good wall spoiled.

This squat little building was once a gents' urinal now closed because of Council cuts ... which leads me to ask  who will pay to maintain this tosh because in a couple of years they'll all fade and date and you can never go back to the nice, cool red Victorian bricks that just did their job and harmed no-one.

And you can imagine the whimpers of condemnation when someone came along and put up their own shitty little "artwork"; without permission (shocking!) not at all in keeping with the theme (The horror, The horror!). I do not recall this bridge ever being 'tagged' like this before they decorated it with their murals ... Well, as ye sow, so ye shall reap

Mr Venn's Intersection with Hull

Here's the Drypool Bridge once more. Last time I posted about it I mentioned it was being redecorated in tasteful lime green and diarrhoea brown quasi camouflage colours which I'll spare you by posting a monochrome picture. As I mentioned (and as you can see) it was to be dedicated in some way to John Venn who left Hull before he was two and never came back ...but never mind that makes him or at the very least his meconium (which was quite possibly the inspiration for the colour scheme) and his delightful soiled nappies part of Hull and isn't it just great to breathe the very air of the place ... I'll stop now before I get carried away again (by the men in white coats). So anyhow, near this fine bridge, where {East Hull} ∩ {West Hull}, some crazy fools have made a nice blue plaque that I'm sure you'll all appreciate ...

Even the drains have beauty ...

...in the City of Culture. Barmston drain again with the onset of Autumn

Margot took the second one, and quite possibly the first; one camera, two idiots.

Weekend Reflections are lurking here.

Bang a gong, get it on

In a way the idea of turning this useless bridge to nowhere into a musical instrument makes as much sense as an unlamented 70's pop hit with pastiche hippy lyrics (Well you're dirty and sweet Clad in Black. Don't look back And I love you ... I guess you had to be there and I wasn't!) So it will come to pass that "tuned" metal plates will be attached and struck in the manner of Indonesian gamelan and folk will invited to whack the bridge with a hammer to make "music". To quote the idiot in charge of the asylum "By Playing the Bridge, participants and audiences will form a new relationship with and think differently about a city landmark. It is also a fantastic opportunity to learn a new instrument and be part of an amazing City of Culture project." Nuff said!

A load of codswallop

I don't know about culture (that's probably not come out the way I meant it) but I do know there's a tidal wave of propaganda filling the streets of this incomparable town. And, as any student of physics should know, a wave moves nothing forward but simply shifts stuff up and down often causing destruction as it passes through. Anyhow the hunky hipster fisherman dressed in waterproofs and a sou'wester doing something unspeakable to a dead cod has surely got to win some sort of award for camp cliché of the year. More of this please!

Wellington Street Bridge

This little swing bridge allows you to nip across the entrance to the marina without having to go over the dock gates. For some reason, probably economic, it is often closed (that is open for boats but closed for foot soldiers, you understand) but I guess with the thousands attending the Humber Street Sesh cacophothon on Saturday it was deemed safer to allows folk to cross this way. (But this photo shows I was wrong to think so; this event seals off public streets and charges people to exercise the freedom to pass along the highway. It is in plain words highway robbery! with noise!)
The bridge would have had rail tracks on it originally as part of the Humber Dock rail system. 

There, now you've seen it from both sides, aren't you lucky!.

A little bridge

If this looks a tad familiar that's because I've posted the other side of it here in glorious technicolour..

The weekend in black and white is here.

Lake view

I've posted about East Park before so I've absolutely no excuse for doing it again ...

Weekend reflections are here

Anyone for extras

A film crew was at work on High Street on Monday filming some Victorian costume drama about a woman who poisoned lots of people (charming) and I came across a motley crew of extras tucking into their dinner on the new swing bridge. The lady with the yellow tail was also carrying dinners. 

"...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood"

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Susan Brownell Anthony

...or just two women on bikes.

Today's City Daily Photo start-of-the-month theme is bicycles, those things that fish really need ...

Stylish nonsense

As the winner of several design awards the Scale Lane bridge has many of the attributes of stylishness. It was hideously expensive, looks like someone's doodling made real and serves no useful purpose other than to amuse Hull's hardy tourists.

I noticed after I had taken this that the demolition of the Clarence flour mill in the background has begun, I was guilty of looking at the clouds and not at what was in front of my nose.

City Daily Photo's monthly theme is 'Stylish'

Brickwork

I'm thinking they had a job lot of bricks that, erm, fell of the back of a lorry, as it were, and well it's a shame they don't all match but who is going to notice? No-one ever comes down here and certainly no-one with a camera ... here's Park Street bridge in all its colourful glory.

HUL1/1

Park Street bridge is not just Park Street bridge; it is bridge HUL1/1 and not to be confused with any other bridge.

The weekend in black and white is here.