A Spin on the London Eye

Saturday 30 November 2002. There's some sort of event on in Wembley on Sunday 1 December so Fran and I are staying in a Premier Inn at Wembley for the weekend. I can't quite remember what it was advertised as, but there was a large record fair and a particular draw was that both actresses Caroline Munro and Ingrid Pitt were to be there. We had met them both some five years previously and thought it would be fun to meet up again.

9:30am Saturday morning we head for Waterloo Station on the Underground. We had decided to try to get on the London Eye. At this time of morning there were no queues. We got tickets and walked straight on.

Whilst we were near the bottom it was interesting watching the pods discharge and take on passengers!

There's a fabulous view all the way around and it's easy to spot landmarks such as St Paul's and Big Ben.

There were few enough people in each pod to be able to get to a window to allow a good viewpoint.

It wasn't what you would call the sunniest of mornings - the view must be even better when it's sunny. But given that we are on the last day of November, we can't really expect sunny skies and weather fit for t-shirts and shorts.

At the top of the wheel with the next pod on the same level. The pod looks very space age!

Starting to come down. The whole trip takes half an hour. A great view of the Houses of Parliament, or the Palace of Westminster whichever floats your boat. Though if you're going to be picky then your boat is the one turning sideways further up the river past Vauxhall Bridge...

After passengers leave a pod it is scanned with metal detectors before anyone else can enter. This is done quite quickly so that the wheel isn't forced to stop to long each time a pod unloads and loads.

As we walk away to wonder what to do next we notice a piece of blue string fastened to a lamp post - obviously the lamp post too was trying to remember something...

Return to London and Wembley Record Fair Index

Blackpool Pleasure Beach, 1983

This time we are in the year 1983 and once again meandering around Blackpool's famous Pleasure Beach.

We'll start with the Wild Mouse ride, now sadly gone to much public outrage, it disappeared overnight. What a fabulous ride it was. This was the ultimate white knuckle ride, much more so than far newer rides such as The Big One which gave about the same amount of bruises but far less of the terror of anticipation. The photo was taken from a balcony in front of the Cresta Cafe.

We saw the Go Karts briefly in a previous article but here they are in wondrous Technicolor. Yes, for a while the film brand most associated with the cinema brought out 35mm film for cameras and I used to use it quite a bit. This was print film rather than transparency or "slide" film and, as with all my colour prints, I've scanned the original negative strips wherever possible.

Taken on the same day was this shot of the Space Tower. Looking a little as though it's in need of a lick of paint, the once-bright red building with portholes for windows was an amusement arcade and held some older coin-operated machines and games for a bit of nostalgia. Whereas riders of the Space Tower entered the ride on a lower level, this is where you got off so that you had the temptation of the machines and less of the crush with any queues of riders awaiting their turn.

One evening with the other members of Blackpool & Fylde Photographic Society, we had a wander around the Pleasure Beach and I took this shot in the sunset. Except it was a bit too early for the colours to be so sunsetish (hey, if Shakespeare can make up new words, why shouldn't I?) so I put a filter in front of the camera lens and wondered when Adobe would get around to creating Photoshop. Given that my Commodore 64 was still pretty much state of the art, (unless you were a teacher just hearing about something called a BBC Micro), it would be probably another 10 years before I would see a decent (make that "half-decent") attempt at a photograph being displayed on a computer...

The same filter was used here for a shot looking through the spiral staircase of the Casino building.

The Pleasure Beach Express in the station with driver Ted Askey on the footplate. He was a hugely popular figure with both children and adults alike, always willing to pose for a photo and he was sadly missed by all when he stopped working on the Pleasure Beach Express. He died at the age of 83 in 2016.

The Tom Sawyer rafts were a strange ride. Well, perhaps not so much strange, but they were sadly let down by their surroundings I always thought. You got on and off them on a huge circular platform which continued turning whilst you did so. A lot of people didn't like this, though there are lots of rides with similar boarding and exiting in Mr Disney's parks. Also after a trip down a short length of water - call it canal or river or trough as you see fit - it emerged onto the lake under the tracks of the Log Flume which dripped onto the roof of your raft. (Aha! That's why they had a roof...!)

If all this excitement wasn't enough, some isolated attempts at rustic scenes had been put up here and there. I seem to recall a wigwam with Native Americans? Was there a dinosaur somewhere? Someone must be able to remember it better than I can - please leave a comment. To me they seemed totally out of place as though someone had given a sheet of hardboard and a few tins of paint to someone and said "Just do your best..."

Gulliver! He held up the Monorail track in the southern half of the park. Well someone had to... There was a clown with different faces front and back too. I must have a photo somewhere but I'm struggling to find it.

My daughter and dad on the Little Dipper. She always insisted on the front seat. I always made for the back seat of coasters when I could. That way you go fast down hills instead of up them. The ride gets through names like I burned out gussets in those horrible woolly knitted swimming trunks in the 1950s... It was the Little Dipper, then the Zipper Dipper, then (I'm astounded to find) the Warburtons Milk Roll-A-Coaster and now the Blue Flyer.

The mind boggles at the Warburtons one. Apparently they sponsored it, but the signage didn't change. Why not the Arctic Roll-A-Coaster, or the Jam or Chocolate Roll-A-Coaster? The Fancy-A-...? The Little Dipper described it perfectly. What is "Blue Flyer" all about?

The Big Dipper meanwhile has determinedly held onto its original name and well done it! Here it approaches the footbridge on the way back towards the station. There's something disconcerting about being on a ride that appears to be about to crash into a solid chunk of concrete. It does dip at the last minute to pass safely underneath the bridge though. Come to think of it, there's something mildly disconcerting about standing on a bridge watching a train full of screaming people hurtling towards you...

And bringing this article to a close is this shot of mini-motorbikes being ridden by mini-people somewhere close to the track of the Pleasure Beach Express. Judging by the queue, they were quite popular!

And now I want my readers to be especially brave... I have no photos of the park from 1984. [GASP] I know. But we'll be back for a look at 1985 in due course. It was in 1984 that I started working in the Education Sector and visits to the Pleasure Beach started to dwindle I'm afraid.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach Index

Candids from Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1974

Back in the 1970s and 1980s I took lots of photographs for magazine use and as many magazines stipulated that there should be some "human interest" in the photos they used, that meant I included lots of candid photos of people working and enjoying themselves on the Pleasure Beach.

It was a standard and mainstream subject for photographers. The photography magazines like Amateur Photographer and Practical Photography and a host of others ran regular articles on the best ways to take photos of complete strangers in public and there were competitions for such photos too.

I like the one above because, apart from including a family reacting to the drop of the Log Flume, it also show the spherical finial on the turn of the Big Dipper which was shortly to be replaced with a tear drop shape.

Before the shops of Ocean Boulevard were built there was access right to the side of the old boating lake of the Pleasure Beach, south of Watson Road. It was a great vantage point for taking photos of the Log Flume.

Up on top of the bridge over Watson Road were these cage swings. You did the work yourself, pushing and pulling on the bars to make the cage swing and with a lot of work it was possible to make it perform full 360 degree rotation.

She caught my eye as she is an obviously very pretty girl - if a trifle bored at the lack of a queue of people wanting popcorn!

Come to think of it, many of my photos featured pretty girls... I didn't particularly worry about this at the time - and I'm certainly not going to start now!

All of the photos in this article were taken in 1974 - forty one years ago! These young ladies will be in their fifties or sixties now. I hope they enjoy seeing their younger selves if anyone recognises themselves!

The Pleasure Beach had a double Ferris Wheel at the time. It was rare to see both wheels turning at the same time. If I remember rightly, one turned as though rolling forwards and the other turned as though rolling backwards. A huge clown figure was built on the side as though turning them by hand.

There were several amusement arcades on the Pleasure Beach. One at the north main entrance, one opposite the Wild Mouse, one opposite the River Caves and one on top of the bridge over Watson Road which acted as an exit from the Space Tower. There was another under the Hiram Maxim Flying Machine. I have a feeling though that this photo was taken in the arcade on the South Pier. It shows a teenager playing Air Hockey. These games were fairly new at the time and quite often a small crowd would gather to see the novel sight of the plastic puck hovering on a bed of air blown from tiny holes in the playing surface. Play was fast and frantic. It was common for the puck to fly off the table!

I'll finish this time with riders on The Monster ride. In 1997 the Playstation (now Ice Blast) opened on this site. If anyone recognises themselves, why not leave a comment? None of these photos made the pages of any magazines I'm afraid - but they were fun to take and are fun now to look back on. I'll feature more in future articles.

Return to Blackpool Pleasure Beach Index Page

More About Morecambe's Polo Tower aka Blackpool's Space Tower

This is by way of an update and correction to my article on Blackpool's Space Tower on 15 March 2015. I ended that article by saying the Tower had now been demolished at Morecambe. Thanks to a response on Facebook by Dave Oldfield, I now know that not to be the case.

The tower itself is still there, fulfilling its secondary and contracted purpose of mobile telephone mast. These photographs were taken yesterday on 30 March as I found myself in the Morecambe vicinity and stuck the camera bag in the car boot to take advantage of being near!

The revolving gondola has indeed gone but the tower is indisputably still there. A rather sad remaining reminder of the Morecambe Pleasure Beach or Frontierland as it became in its later years.

There are a few other elements of the park remaining too as this photograph shows. Thank you Dave for posting a response via Facebook and giving me a chance to give the true facts. I know... it's rare I allow facts to get in the way of a good story...

Howard Brothers Gallopers

I've just got in from spending the morning mooching around Fleetwood's Tram Sunday. Not too many trams in evidence, but we'll save the transport for another article, because of all the things on show, this took my fancy the most.

The carousel of gallopers presented by Howard Brothers of Derbyshire looked absolutely wonderful in the bright sunshine - yes for a change, the sun made an appearance today!

The ride has a three-abreast layout, is driven by steam from an onboard steam engine and has a 54-key Limonair organ fitted by the present owners, whose own website has a comprehensive history of the ride.

Built in 1886 in Kings Lynn, the ride's carriages for younger riders are decorated with paintings of 19th century military heroes such as Lords Wellington, Roberts and Kitchener.

The ride has been restored to a spectacular condition and with the organ playing and an occasional puff of steam from the engine made a great alternative to the static displays of buses and cars which were, perhaps, meant to be the main focus of the day.

Large versions of the photos: carousel, horse, birds, head,