Aberfeldy, Crieff and Pitlochry

Thursday 22 June 2023. Thursday morning and we are back in the coach and on our way to Crieff for a brief stop to see the memorial to the Black Watch regiment.

This is the view from our front seats on the coach. It's a glorious day and we are looking forward to another day in the Trossachs visiting places we have never seen before.

Wade's Bridge at Aberfeldy over the River Tay dates from 1866-1868. It has four arches of voussoirs (wedge-shaped stones) that take the B846 road. We cross and then turn right as the Black Watch Memorial is on the river bank. There's a small park with putting green and a class of primary age schoolchildren are enjoying its facilities as their school year comes towards an end.

The Black Watch were originally the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot, formed in 1739. In 1881 they were amalgamated with the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot, dating from 1780 and at that point the Black Watch Battalion was born. "What's that silver line?" someone asked. "It looks like a lightning rod..." I suggested, "Either that or a personal telephone wire to the statue..."

Then it was back on the bus for the drive to Pitlochry. We passed a small herd of red deer to our left. I saw them but wasn't sitting for the full journey with my phone camera at the ready, so you'll have to imagine them. Antlers and everything...

We came to Pitlochry and I saw a signpost to a salmon ladder on the river down to our left. This is where salmon swimming up the river to breed come to a taller waterfall (or in this case a dam) than they can leap, so a series of pools act as steps that they can make the rise in short jumps.

After getting off the coach we went for a bite of lunch and then walked back to the roadsign, under a railway bridge and found ourselves at the restaurant. The river gurgled its way under the road to our right and stretched off to our left. There were no more indications as to the direction of the salmon ladder so we decided that unless we stumbled across it by accident we would probably miss it. We were right - we missed it... In fact as we got back to the coach park there was another signpost pointing in the opposite direction that we had walked. Why they send cars down that way I have no idea...

We walked back under the bridge to the main road and passed a small park. At the corner of the park and main road was the town's War Memorial.

The town had loads of inviting pubs. It was a very hot day. Ignoring them was a bit like torture, but I am under doctors' orders not to let alcohol pass my lips and probably having it via intravenous drip is probably not a good idea either.

I could have murdered a Guinness too... Miss Franny was very sympathetic and bought me an ice cream cone. As a treat she had some ice cream put into it as well. It still didn't taste like Guinness...

Another Wade's Bridge - this was the old bridge near the hotel, very narrow and now disused for all traffic except pedestrian and replaced by the new Tummel Bridge at it's side. As we rounded a blind corner a BT Open Reach van came flying round far too fast. How he avoided us I'm not sure but he had to reverse back. This was made a little difficult because a split second later a small black sports car did the same and just managed to stop behind him. Mr BT hadn't seen this though so set off backwards at the boggart (fast!)

The sports car driver had very good reflexes I have to say because he had his car in reverse pretty smartish and managed to avoid a collision. Both he and our driver Steve were frantically pipping their horns to try to get the BT van to slow down. All ended well, though we kept a wary eye out for BT vans the following day!

Once back at the hotel we went for a little wander on the lawn down to the loch but there were a few midges about and we thought discretion might be the better part of valour!

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Curiosities: Bridges Index

A series of articles with bridges as the theme. Old ones, not so old ones, well known or relatively obscure, with a bit of history thrown in here and there.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

Newcastle Bridges, September 2006

13 September 2006. I'm in Newcastle for the night and take the camera for a walk along the Tyne bank.

It's one of those warm, sunny evenings that you get in September when Summer seems to want to hold on to the year and not let go. This is the Millenium Bridge.

The Tyne Bridge is the most famous and is an icon for the city. Behind it low down is the Swing Bridge and further on again the High Level Bridge.

The Tyne is at a considerably lower level than the city and the approach road to the bridge from the Newcastle side is an elevated roadway above rooftop height.

From the approach road, before you get to the actual bridge there are some unique views of the quayside slopes and buildings.

Designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson engineers, it replaced a series of wooden and stone bridges the earliest of which was Roman and on the site of the current Swing Bridge and last a stone bridge of 1779. Tyne Bridge was opened by King George V and Queen Mary on 10 October 1928. The King's opening speech was recorded by Movietone News and released on a single-sided 78rpm record whilst the reverse blank side carried an engraved image of the bridge.

The Swing Bridge of 1876. 171 metres long (561 ft), it has a central pivot allowing the central length of 85.6 metres (281 ft) to swing at right angles to allow tall ships and yachts to pass up or down river. Behind it, the High Level Bridge of 1849 was having some renovation work done, hence the drapery along the sides. It was designed by Robert Stephenson as a dual level bridge allowing trains from the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway and later the Great North of England Railway (GNER) to pass along the lower level whilst road and pedestrian traffic used the upper level carriageway.

Having crossed the road and returned back to stand over the northern bank of the Quayside, we are looking once again at the Millenium Bridge with the modernistic Sage Centre on the Gateshead side of the river over to the right.

On the Millenium Bridge. This is a curved pedestrian-only bridge, the curve being the same radius as the arch which acts as a balance for when the bridge is opened to allow ships to pass underneath. The walkway tilts upwards as the arch swings downwards to form a dual archway and the effect for onlookers on the quayside is a little like a winking eye.

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1930s Photo Album Kettlewell and Burnsall

Today we are having a look at the earliest photos from the 1930s photo album I bought from an antiques store. Today it doesn't really matter that I don't know the family who put the album together, because they don't appear in any of today's selection. I'll make up for it in the next article...

These photos were all taken in two villages along the River Wharfe in Yorkshire. I haven't been to either of these villages myself, that I can remember, so it's as much a journey of discover for me as it is for any of my readers. Anyway we have yet to arrive, for we are simply "near Kettlewell"

In any other year I would have been in the car and off to have a look at these places, no doubt taking a few of my own photos. However, as we currently sit in the Coronavirus lockdown, this isn't possible. I'll look at it as a challenge for happier times. I'll be looking to identify the original location and if it has changed beyond all recognition to take some photographs to illustrate what has happened over the last 90 years.

This is something that hit me only after I had been through the album myself. There are no babies in the family. The youngest child would be around six or seven in 1930 so that even if they were still alive they would be in the second half of their nineties today. The likelihood is that no one shown in the albums still survives. If by any chance one or more of the family's children still survive, I would love to meet them and go through the album with them. Wouldn't that be something?

Now that we are actually in the village itself, I'd be expecting to still be able to view this scene - though perhaps on a slightly more level plane. It is likely this was taken on a Kodak Box Brownie camera. Many cameras of the day had no viewfinder. You simply pointed the camera at the required scene and squinted along the top of it, or the side of it. Plenty of scope for tilting it a little bit. Lots of scope for looking in the wrong direction and missing your intended subject altogether! Anyway, for added interest, just let me point out that this is Kettlewell's Village Hall and it was the location for the WI in the movie Calendar Girls.

St Mary's church Kettlewell is mostly a rebuild of 1882-1885, although the west tower (the tower - there is only the one...) is a survivor of a previous church and dates from 1820. Pevsner wasn't all that interested in it I'm afraid though this approach up the lane to a lych gate looks attractive enough.

And here is the River Wharfe itself. One of Yorkshire's major rivers it flows for 65 miles from its source in Langstrothdale near Beckermonds to its end as it flows into the mighty River Ouse, which at 129 miles - all within a single county - stops the Wharfe from getting above itself. I haven't yet found out when the current bridge at Kettlewell was built. It takes the B6160 road over the river. I doubt it is the same one that the Abbot of Fountains Abbey paid over two shillings to repair in the mid 1400s.

A few miles south of Kettlewell the B6160 touches the River Wharfe again at Burnsall. The album contains just two photographs of Burnsall, so I've tagged them onto the end of this article. The bridge dates from 1609 but what we see today is mostly, or perhaps entirely, of an 1884 restoration after flooding damaged the original.

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Last Day In Disney's Magic Kingdom

Sunday 1 May 2016. In the last article we took a walk through the huge shop along Main Street U.S.A. so I suppose this could almost be part two of this day in Florida's Magic Kingdom. There will be at least one more to fit in all the photos I took (never mind everybody else in the party!) so we still haven't finished with Disney just yet!

This would be our last visit to the Magic Kingdom so I did go a bit berserk with the camera trying to capture as many reminders as I could. Even so there's loads of stuff that over the weeks since we got back I've thought "I don't have a picture of ----!" This is the beautiful Crystal Palace.

The fountain helped cool you down just by the gentle sounds of the water splashing. Many guests dipped their hand in it whilst passing. The gardens are kept immaculate.

This is Princess Tiana from a fairly recent Disney cartoon, The Princess and The Frog. Perhaps a trifle older than the Tiana of the film, though we did notice that one or two princesses had grown up somewhat during the stay! She had no one waiting to meet her which we thought must be a bit off-putting for her so whilst at this point we didn't have the EGGs with us to use Grace as an excuse. we went up to give her a photo opportunity.

She held out her hand for a handshake but you can't just shake the hand of a princess, so I raised her gloved hand and lightly kissed it, which caused her to give a surprised (but it did sound quite pleased!) "Ohhh!"

She said, "Can I take your arm, Sir?" Well of course you can my dear, but please bring it back quickly as we fly home tomorrow...

Water plays a large part in the landscaping. Considering that everything you see here was a swamp before Disney arrived, it's hardly surprising that there should be some water I suppose, but it does make for some wonderful views.

The other thing that water does is require you to either cross it or circumvent it. You have the choice to do both mostly, but let's have a look at some of the bridges.

This one crosses from Adventureland to Liberty Square. It's on a direct line from the previous one that led from the Crystal Palace. Square lanterns light the board walk after dark.

Looking from the bridge we see another similar bridge which leads from the central hub of the park also to Liberty Square. This time the lanterns are slightly more modern in style and sit on extensions at the side of the bridge's piers.

Whilst looking at the above bridge I suddenly noticed that the tree on our right was loaded with long bean stalks or seed pods. So if you want to go looking for any Disney magic beans...

At the foot of the tree was this gorgeous bush. Please don't look for any plant identification from me. My knowledge only extends so far as to be able to say that this is a bush with flowers on...

And looking even further down... I sent Miss Franny running back to Princess Tiana to tell her we had found her frog...

Join us next time for a closer look at the sumptuous Cinderella's Castle amongst other things.

Disney World Holiday Index

107-Year-Old Sad Note Postcard

A postcard from my own collection this time. Cliftonville is an area of Margate in Kent. We stayed in a hotel on the seafront several times when I was around 14-17 and I remember it well if only for the rather lovely memory of being 15 and a girl rushing up to me in the street and flinging her arms round me and planting a smacker of a kiss on my cheek. I'm easily pleased like that...

This is not a rare card. On searching online for information about the Newgate Capway, all I managed to find were adverts for similar postcards. They were variously dated from 1905 onwards. Searching for Newgate Gap led to a little more information. The gap was a cutting through the cliffs, made by farmers who collected seaweed off the beach for rotting down as fertiliser. The bridge dates from 1861 and had a framework of iron with wooden decking. It was replaced in 1907 by one with steel and concrete with sides encased in decorative marble. This in turn was refurbished in 2005 with the marble smashed off and replaced with bricks and concrete - very classy...

The message side of the card is a trifle hard to read... Even the postal franking is a bit hit and miss. You can make out "10AM OC 1 09" so I would hazard that it was posted in October either on the first or between the 10-19th in 1909. Hence it showed a bridge no longer in existence at the time of posting! The written message has fared even less well, having faded just about to nothing. Most of the address though is readable: It was sent to a ship - SS Dartmoor or perhaps Dartmouth (?) care of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company at Victoria Dock, Canning Town.

The cargo ship SS Dartmoor was built at South Shields in 1892 and was sunk during the First World War by U-Boat UC50 en-route from Gibralter to Garston (Liverpool) with a cargo of ore. A search for SS Dartmouth failed to turn up any relevant information - possibly exacerbated by the fact that the town of Dartmouth has a lot to do with ships...

To try to read the message I used Adobe Photoshop to play with brightness and contrast, hue and density of colour, until most of the message could be deciphered. I'm missing the name of the person it refers to I'm afraid, but this was no "Wish You Were Here" message. It says:

"D.16 (or 46). P----- had an accident, call if able." It is signed I (or J) with a long surname beginning with H - Hunnisford, Houseman - it could almost be anything. The card raises more questions than it answers. Which is part of the appeal of postcard collecting. The photos are interesting, particularly those from the beginning of the 20th century, but just on a very few occasions, the message gives a brief, but not always complete, glimpse of events that affected the people involved. And without asking to plough through any old documents of ship departures from Victoria Dock (it would have been the Royal Victoria Dock by this date) this is where we must leave the unfortunate P-----.