Pleasure Beach at Night 1981

Taken during October 1981 here are a few photos of Blackpool Pleasure Beach at night.

This shows one of the very early rides of the Pleasure Beach and certainly the oldest still in existence, the Hiram Maxim Flying Machine. Maxim was interested in flight which was in its infancy at the time and he built several of these machines which must have given thousands of people their first experience of what it must be like to fly in an aeroplane. As it spins, centrifugal force lifts the gondolas outwards from the base.

It has recently been announced that the Magic Mountain ride is to be demolished to make space for a more modern attraction. A fairy grotto dark ride, it was built on the southern half of the Pleasure Beach at a time when this space was reserved for children's rides.

I rode this myself as a young child in the 1950s and used to love watching the robot, an animated mannikin figure that "played" an organ console at the front of the ride. It's visible on the photo if you look hard. The ride dates from 1934 but sadly 76 years is all it will get.

And from the older rides to one that was bang up to date when the photo was taken. The Revolution was Britain's first looping roller coaster. It was (and is) a short track. Riders climb to the starting point on a level with the top of the loop and the ride goes down a dip, around the loop and up the other side then repeats the journey backwards. In order to have the power to climb as high as the starting point there is a catapult mechanism at either end to give it a boost.

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Brixham

Just to round off the posts about our weekend in Torquay (before the next weekend actually hits!) here are a few of views of Brixham.

We had been before and the roads are somewhat exciting around the harbour - very narrow streets with at least one hairpin bend that requires you to try your best, then reverse and try again! Single-track streets that are two-way etc. etc. Anyway we chickened out and went on the bus. This made it more relaxing and used less fuel which was a bit hard to come by that weekend anyway!

The harbour is lovely. A typical fishing harbour, with pastel painted cottages lining the hills behind and to the sides of the cove.

This is the unlikely landing point for William, Prince of Orange who led The Glorious Revolution to become King William III and deposed King James II who it was feared would lead Great Britain back to Catholicism. It is called the Glorious Revolution because it was mainly bloodless (though I'd be willing to bet someone got a bloody nose over it somewhere...) However the fact that he turned up from foreign parts with a dirty great army and was suddenly given the crown of England could justify the thought that there had been an invasion. It may have happened to have been a convenient time to be invaded but when he jumped onto the quay at Brixham and gave his speech the locals were probably a bit bemused. He couldn't speak a word of English...

"Woss he say?"
"Dunno - it's all in foreign innit? Oy! You! I'll buy your fish, how much a pound? Talk in English can't you? Ow! Me nose! I thought this was supposed to be a bloodless revolution?!?"

His imposing statue is either less than flattering...or the nose has fallen off at some point. William III of England was the son of Dutch ruler William II of Orange and Princess Mary of Orange, who was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In an effort to totally confuse readers William III (not William II) went on to marry Mary (not Mary his Mum) but Mary, his fifteen year old cousin, daughter of his Uncle James, the Duke of York. They ruled England jointly as King William III and Queen Mary II (the first Mary being Henry VIII's daughter, Bloody Mary).

Fran decided to go for a look around the shops whilst I walked around the harbour taking the odd (sometimes very odd) photo and reflecting a little on royal inbreeding which just a decade or so later would lead to the most severe case of Habsburg Chin in the person of King Charles II of Spain whose ancestors had spent eight generations in happy incestual relationships. Keep it in the family then... There was a notably unmodern ship in the harbour, so I went to have a nosy.

It was a replica of Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, in which he sailed around the world. (I mean in the first one...not the replica.) In fact there's another replica in London and they look nothing like each other. This is possibly because it's hard to build a replica when we haven't a clue what the boat looked like. What we do know are the measurements of it and the fact that it is highly likely that there was a pointy bit at the front, a window or two at the back and a deer's head stuck on it somewhere as otherwise it would have been called something else.

"'Ere - wossat on 'is boat?"
"Aw no... it's Bambi's mam, ain't it?"

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Along the Champs-Elysées

First we had to get there... Seeing as the Metro station nearest the Eiffel Tower was closed we decided to hoof it to the Arc de Triomphe, so crossed the river and headed to the right of the Palais de Chaillot with my trusty street map to hand. It was further than I thought...

If you ever want to test your nerve, or your skill at driving, then there is no better place than the Place Charles-de-Gaulle. This huge roundabout has the silliest rule on Earth.

This is that traffic already on the roundabout has to give way to traffic trying to enter it. So if it is already choked, anyone trying to get off can't because of a never-ending stream of suicidal Citroen jockeys all heading at 50 kilometres an hour for the central lane so they can ogle the Arc de Triomphe. Fran gave a shriek at one point as a bloke in nerdy spectacles zoomed in front of four lanes of moving traffic and cut right to the kerb of the island in the centre. The percentage of Parisian cars with dented bodywork is quite high and this roundabout is the main reason. Well, that and the fact that French people have a thing about having to detour around other people...

Having reached our starting point we set off to walk a straight line, all the way down to The Louvre a distance of somewhere in the region of 4 kilometres. It's a straight line route through quite a bit of history, as we shall see. Actually, you won't see all that much but I'll tell you. There's not a lot along the route to tell you any of the history. The Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, to give it its full title, was built by Napolean along the lines of ancient Roman archways as a monument to his victorius armies. Building was completed in 1836, 20 years after the Battle of Waterloo brought a fin to his ambitions. His remains were housed here for a while. In 1919 someone flew a biplane under the archway. The year after, an eternal flame was lit before the grave of the unknown soldier, who was given a place of honour at the site. A chap was arrested in 1962 for frying eggs over the flame.

First landmark along the road is Fouquet's. Apart from having a name that instantly causes Brits to laugh and mispronounce it, this is one of the more famous restaurants of Paris and if you have some celeb spotting in mind it's as good a place as any. Staying here may cost a bit more than your local Premier Travel Inn, but you can have your own personal butler - ah, Jeeves, can you furnish kitty with a saucer of milk and a plate of froi gras, please... The French call this "the most beautiful avenue in the world". They don't get out much perhaps... It has lots of shops, although admittedly thay have attempted to resist it looking like anytown anywhere by banning the opening of some chain stores.

The avenue has seen some notable parades. The Germans marched down it in 1940 to celebrate the Fall of France and the Free French and American armies marched down it once they had picked it up again in 1944. Every year the French march down it on Bastille Day, July 14th in remembrance of the day the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille prison. As the shops run out and the majority of pedestrians disappear, the avenue none-the-less continues. The rows of trees, set out in straight lines are much as they must have been when Marie Antoinette drove along in her carriage on her way to her music lessons. The roadway however is leading us to a place she must have dreaded and with very good reason.

La Place de la Concorde was known under a slightly more gruesome name during the Revolution. It was La Place de la Guillotine. It was here that the King amongst many of his nobles lost their heads on the guillotine. As the blade was raised above him the king said "May my blood bring happiness to France." He must have suspected that it would not. The avenue comes to an end here and traffic has to veer to the side. The pathway carries on through the old gardens of the Tuileries.

They were laid out in the 16th Century by Catherine de Medici and a carriageway was laid through them by Marie de Medici in 1616.

In this area someone sat on a deckchair for the very first time and also the saxophone was first heard; being played by its inventor, Mr Saxophone. Today the gardens have been restored and it is a pleasant walk of ponds and fountains whilst you can look either way along the old carriageway and see a triumphal archway. We started at one and we approach the end of our walk with the other one.

The Arc de Triomphe du Carousel is smaller than the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile. It was built in 1808 by Napolean to commemorate his victories in Austria. The statue of the horses on the top replaced the original statues of horses which he stole from St Marks in Venice. This was returned after Waterloo to the grateful Italians who forgot to mention that they had stolen it from Constantinople in the first place. Having walked under the archway we are now standing before the glass pyramid of the Louvre. The buildings of the palace of the Louvre, the original royal residence before Louis XIV built himself a plusher place at Versailles, originally plugged a gap in the old city wall.

The Louvre museum famously houses the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. One is a woman without eyebrows, the other a woman without arms. The Louvre and Mona Lisa have had a fresh rush of tourists since the success of Dan Browne's novel The DaVinci Code. By now, my feet are reminding me that not only have we walked further already than on most days but that this is the third day constantly on our feet.

I ignored their moaning enough to head off up towards L'Opera and we piled into a cafe and ordered some lunch before heading back to the hotel for an afternoon's relaxation.

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