The Khyber Pass

I mentioned before that Hull had a large garrison protecting the entrance to the river Hull and when it was demolished parts of it went to make a feature called the Khyber Pass in East Park. Until the other day I hadn't been over the bridge that crosses this odd folly nor had I realised quite how large it is.

Tall tyre man

Taken last week on Holderness Road and it really was that dark and overcast, well, OK I may have tweaked the saturation a tad here ...

Man's best friend

I don't have a dog but if I did I think it would be a greyhound, they're such elegant looking beasts (unlike me). I've read that greyhounds despite being extremely fast actually require very little exercise, just 30-40 minutes the park a day keeps them happy. This one had clearly had had enough and was leading his owner homewards.

See more of the Weekend in Black and White here.

Adorned with a handsome fountain

The Boulevard was planned as a grand thoroughfare running up from the Humber to Anlaby Road and possibly beyond. It is a fine, wide, tree lined road with many fine villa residences built for the well-to-do of the time. In the 1870s someone writing of the Boulevard noted that "about half-way down, the street widens into a spacious circle, the centre being adorned with a handsome fountain”. Fifty or so years later a car crashed into the fountain and completely wrecked it. And so for eighty years the Boulevard was sans fontaine. After a seven year campaign of fundraising this delightful restoration was installed in 2008. 

If you're thinking this looks familiar it is a copy of the mermaid fountains that adorn the Avenues area, only this one works.

Horse and Cart

The big moan in Hull at the moment concerns the state of the roads. They're full and traffic is moving sometimes at three or four miles an hour. It's a headache caused by repairs to a bridge and another set of roadworks (including digging up my street) all coinciding. With all the disruption it's probably quicker to walk or go by horse and cart.

Distressed colours

It being 60 years since the unelected head of state took over the onerous tasks of leading this glorious nation, Cottingham Parish Council took it upon itself to buy some bunting in red, white and blue, very patriotic except it was probably made in China. Hundreds of yards of the stuff have been fluttering around noisily (it's plastic bunting!) since May I seem to recall. The sad thing is that the red was never a particularly dark shade, more of a light pink really, and  that quickly faded to, well, white. If there's an analogy to be drawn from the state of these tattered rags and the state of the nation after 60 'glorious' years I leave that up to you.

Poster ponderings

You can tell the students are back by the lengthy queues for the bus and promos like this for a drinking establishment in town. Today the fresh faced first years all seemed to be carrying rolled up posters to stick on their walls with blu-tak, maybe another batch of tennis players with an itchy bum or perhaps Che Guevara least that's how it was in my day.