Tourists For A Day

Yesterday we decided to be tourists for a day. We started off with breakfast with Gill and Grace and David and Jeannie in Quilligans and then whilst the ladies went shopping and D&J went off to do their own thing, I took myself off down to the North Pier.

It was a gorgeous day for being out and about and I decided to go onto the pier and take a few photos.

As you walk down the ramp onto the pier this Victorian Penny Arcade faces you at the bottom of the ramp. I love these places. They are bits of my childhood that I can relive and wallow in. When I was a boy and Mum and Dad took us to Blackpool, the arcades were still full of these wonderful machines, hardly any of which relied on electricity. They were all mechanical machines.

Most of the machines are a little later than Victorian, but many of them date from Edwardian times - 1901-1910.

Above, the Bryans Clock on the right is one such. A game of chance where winding the key after dropping your penny causes the big hand to spin. If it stops over a red line, you win. They hardly ever stopped over a red line of course...

The shooting gallery used tiny ball bearings to shoot at targets. They were fired by spring action, the spring contracted when you pulled the trigger until it was released as the trigger reached its full draw. Animal welfare would have a riot with these today - many of them had metal cats as the targets, which fell over backwards on a pivot when hit.

The North Pier never went in for the full scale amusements and darts and hoopla stalls along its length. It remained true to its original purpose - that of walking over the waves and resting in the sun. Just a few shop kiosks were to be found along its length and even those sold more refined goods. They no longer sell fur coats, but most are food related. Being on holiday obviously requires stoking up at regular intervals. Ok when I was a slim teenager - not so good now...

At the far end of the pier is a fairly modern 2-storey carousel. Of more interest is a smaller kiddies' roundabout with some far older items to sit on or in. I'd say they date from the 1940s or 50s. Western stagecoaches, rocket ships and train locomotives - engines as we used to call them.

I met up with Fran again and we took her shopping home. But given the weather which was showing no signs of reverting to the year's usual heavy showers, we decided almost immediately to go out and ride one of the new trams. They had started running in April and we had yet to set foot on one.

So we decided to play tourists for the day and got on a tram at Bispham, heading for Fleetwood.

I've described the trams in the previous entry, so I won't repeat that here. The people sat opposite smiled indulgently when I whispered to Fran "Ooh! We're on a tram!" in best excited schoolboy mode.

I gathered they were from London. They spent the entire journey moaning about how long it was taking. "We've been on this thing half an hour already!" he complained in a refined voice. She vented her spleen with a vicious (but refined) slap against the window, crushing a small fly with a satisfied grimace. I struggled to keep a straight face...

We arrived at Broadwater. "Oh, Broadwater," she exclaimed in a surprised tone, "It's lovely there!" Now I don't know which Broadwater she had in mind. I used to work in Broadwater, Fleetwood at the Nautical College in the mid 1980s and it's a nice place for certain, lots of houses and a couple of shops where the tram tracks cross the road, but "lovely"? A step too far methinks...

And so we reached the terminus at the Ferry. As we got off he stopped me and said "Where is Freeport?"

My surprise must have shown. "Freeport's out of town - you should have got off about four stops ago for there." The stop after Broadwater in fact...

"Can we not walk there?" he gasped. The tram conductor told him to get on a No.1 bus. We left them to it and bought ice creams from the large fish and chip restaurant nearby.

We wandered up the Promenade which is very pretty. The surface has a different coloured sinuous line like a river with tiny metallic fishes stuck to it that kiddies love to walk along and there are statues and memorials to fishermen who have been lost at sea over the years. There are a couple of lighthouses, one huge and one small.

We started to walk back and watched the ferry cross the River Wyre from Knott End. We stopped for a coffee at a pavement cafe, sitting outside, watching people and trams going by.

The latest female fashion for wearing tights under incredibly short shorts requires a restraint that wearers do not always possess. Like mini skirts in the 1960s and early 70s, the fashion only suits a minority. Unlike mini skirts, this particular fashion calls for a sense of gusset management, or perhaps selection, that, I have to say, causes several spectacular fails...

Ah well... mini skirts > leggings > tights with micro shorts. Times move on...

We had bought day tickets for the trams, this being cheaper than a single return trip. So to make the most of them we decided to ride the tram all the way to South Pier and went for tea to Pablo's Chippy on the Promenade.

The last time I was in there was probably when I was taken in by my parents with my brother some time in the 1960s. I remember distinctly that fish and chips with bread and butter and a cup of tea was two shillings and sixpence. Today it is six pounds and twenty five pence but you also get mushy peas and a choice of tea, coffee or a standard cup of fizzy mineral. You would have paid extra for the peas and alternative drinks in the 60s. 50 years on the price has increased 50 times. Which is probably about right. So with the extras this was darn good value. I don't recommend restaurants lightly.

It was clean, it was fast service and the food was excellent. As a bonus, the two blokes on the table behind Fran made it hilarious. Somewhat the worse for drink, one was trying to teach the other to speak French. So this is the conversation as it went. I swear I am not making this up...

"Bonjour..."
"John Bower"
"No - bonjour..."
"John Bower..."

Repeat ten times...

"Try again: bonjour"
"bun jower?"
"Now try: je m'appelle Martin"
"Je propel Martin..."
"No... je m'appelle..."
"My uncle used to say that to me. He's not with us now."
"Was he French?"
"No, he went to a better place"
"Oh dear... well you still remember him though?"
"Yes... he moved to Torquay..."

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Riding Blackpool's Flexity2 Trams

Yesterday Miss Franny and I decided we were going to have a ride on one of the new Blackpool Trams, the Bombadier Flexity2.

The Flexity2 came into operation from April 2012 and has replaced the older trams for which Blackpool was so famous. Some of the older trams run as a heritage fleet, running from the Pleasure Beach to Bispham only with a round trip costing £5 per adult or with an option to pay £10 for a full day ticket. It operates on a 4-stop hop on-hop off basis.

But it's the Flexity2 that we are about today. Our first trip took us from Bispham to Fleetwood.

We were lucky to get a seat, it was fairly crowded, though this we were to find was the norm. The interior shot was taken looking forwards (though the trams are symmetrical - they look the same from either direction) and to explain the above sentence was taken later in the day after leaving the Starr Gate terminus.

We are sitting close to one of the flexible junctions between our section and the one in front. The Flexity2 has five such sections which severely restricts the number of seats. There were far fewer than I had expected.

There are two wheelchair stations included - one each in the second and fourth segments. The entry points for these are helpfully marked on the platforms. The new platforms mean that you walk onto the tram from the same level as the tram floor rather than having a step to climb.

In this shot the tram is turning quite steeply to the right (taken at Fleetwood Ferry loop). The flexibility of the trams is very smooth, with the flooring coping by having a circle from one segment fitted into a socket on the next segment. It means people standing are not affected unless they have one foot on the circle and the other in the next segment and even then one foot will move in relation to the other no more than six inches at the very most. Again although the tram has spare seats at this stage, this was after leaving the Fleetwood terminus.

But it is the standing aspect that I found the most disappointing. The trams run every 15 minutes. In the middle of August in Blackpool that is nowhere near enough. The effect is that unless you get on at one of the terminus stops - Starr Gate or Fleetwood Ferry - there is a very good chance that you will have to stand or may not even get on.

The number of people standing was ridiculous. It also meant that not only was it hard to get off when you reached your stop, but the poor conductors had one hell of a job. I suspect at times they were taking only a quarter of the potential fares through no fault of their own.

So no way should Blackpool Transport claim it would be uneconomical to run more trams - I reckon that even running them every 5 minutes they would still have been full yesterday and the conductors would have a chance to collect all fares due.

As it was, the trams were uncomfortable - even sitting down I was constantly prodded with whatever the person standing next to me was carrying. At every stop there were huge queues, some of whom were left behind, who then faced a further quarter hour wait. The old trams used to almost move in convoy. So should the new.

A case of design by someone who had never been to Blackpool and could not envisage the demand. To end on a positive note - whilst one or two adverts have started to appear on the sides of trams I'm glad to see that they have not been painted over the windows. The amount of complaints about that from riders of the old fleet were sky high.

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

Keswick On A Sunny Day

Yesterday we were motivated out of the house by a strange glowing ball in the sky and picked up daughter Gill and Granddaughter Grace to have a day out up in the Lake District.

We ended up in a rather crowded Keswick, managing to park in the fourth car park we tried! First stop was lunch - a dire need as far as Grace was concerned - and then we had a look around the shops and I seemed to find and photograph but sadly not sample (I was driving) a large number of pubs!

Here's the Lake Road Inn as an example, but you'll find more pub photos from the day in this Flickr set.

Keswick has two rivers running through it. This is the River Greta, taken from the bridge leading to the wonderful Pencil Museum. Cumberland pencils and crayons were part of my childhood and this is a fun and interesting place to visit.

Their Morris J Commercial van is parked outside. I remember these on the roads in fairly large numbers - the Post Office used them extensively in the 1960s.

And contemporary with the van, we found this old style traffic direction on the side of a building. Before more reflective materials became available glass beads were inset into the letters and numbers that reflected back headlights at night.

It looks as though the B5289 used to be an "A" road and was downgraded at some point as the letter "B" has been stuck on top of the original letter.

We didn't get down to the lake as with Grace with us, our day revolved around being in an appropriate place to feed her at times dictated by her internal clock!

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Where The Trains Ran To Blackpool

I was doing a bit of scanning last night. In my folders of black and white negatives I've now reached mid 1985.

This one made me go "Wow...!"

Taken from the road bridge on Waterloo Road opposite the site of the South Shore Station featured a couple of entries ago, this shows the route that through trains used to take to arrive at Blackpool Central Station.

The station was demolished in 1964 against the recommendations of the Beeching Report which had recommended closing North Station instead. Blackpool Central Station had more platforms in 1901 than some London Stations in the current century.

The station site itself was replaced by Coral Island, though not until the later 1970s. The space left by the removal of the railway tracks remained largely wasteland until the late 1980s although Blackpool's main police station occupies some of it.

All sorts of rumours floated around Blackpool regarding planned use including Disney's European theme park. That eventually was built on the outskirts of Paris instead.

Almost inevitably the site became a huge car park with the large embankment turned into a link road joining the end of the M55 motorway and channeling cars directly into Blackpool and the car park. To make it seem more like a strategic decision and less like desperation the Corporation gleefully set up ticket machines along the Promenade, bringing to an end decades of free parking for visitors.

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Background Details

Taking further the thoughts I expressed yesterday (see Blackpool South Shore Station Demolition) about not taking photographs of things that change a lot but instead taking views of lakes, stone circles, major public buildings etc., I never the less find that the background detail of many of my 1980s photos often has reminders of the past. As a few examples, here's a selection taken over a period of just half an hour at the most.

In this photo of Blackpool double decker bus 355 traveling along the Golden Mile in April 1985 are reminders of Mr B's amusements arcade, the old corner of Coral Island before the present large sculpture of pirates and skull and as a bonus I've identified a Mini Clubman and Datsun Sunny amongst the cars. Datsun were soon to rename themselves Nissan, the company's Japanese name.

OMO (One Man Only) tram No.8 taken from the same spot but looking south. On the corner of the Promenade and Chapel Street, opposite the Central Pier, is the Talk of the Town pub. It would become a MacDonald's restaurant and then later a market which it remains today. On the side of the pub is a large notice quoting an advert that immediately brought the advert tune into my mind - Smile, you're in Greenall Whitley Land. Greenall Whitley... whatever became of them?

Balloon tram 724 in front of Pricebusters which had taken over the old Woolworth's building. Woolworths would not have a presence in Blackpool until Lewis's had vacated their store which would be gutted and transformed into a new Woolworth's, lasting until the company's demise, now Poundland.

Demonstrating that traffic queues along the southern route on the Promenade are nothing new, although forcing all traffic into a single lane cannot have helped! Double deck buses 323 and 338 are followed by a single deck bus and an Austin Princess in the taxi rank on the Promenade opposite makes me wonder... I've met people who almost worshipped this (to me) hideous wedge shaped car.

My Dad had one and driving it made me hate it even more - finding gears was awful. You could literally grasp the gear stick and move your hand in a wide circle, it was such a loose gearbox.

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

Blackpool South Shore Station Demolition

It always happens that the things I should photograph, things that are about to disappear, I never seem to get round to until they either are no longer there or are already smashed to bits.

As witness these photos of Blackpool's South Shore railway station, the buildings of which, when I arrived with camera in hand in March 1985 are well on the way to nothingness... I could also cite the lack of any colour photos of those stocks on wheels I featured a while ago. Long gone by the time I went looking again with some colour film in my camera.

And yet I regularly take photos of things that don't change over and over again. Take a typical town. People take photos of its grand public buildings, town halls, parks etc. Not so much the shops on the High Street. Particularly not the small shops on the High Street. But they are the things that change. They are the photos you can look back on and come over all nostalgic. Stonehenge looks pretty much the same as it did when I were a lad. The stones I mean not the now elaborate entrance and gift shop. You see? The small shops...

So I have no photos of the South Shore station before its demise. No photos of the wonderful model railway set that resided within. #fail as my Twitter friends would say.

South Shore station today is still in use as Blackpool's second terminus. Just a couple of shelters adorn the platforms. The line that comes to it splits from the main route into Blackpool North at Kirkham and stops at Lytham, St Annes and the Pleasure Beach.

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Relief at Last

No... not anything to do with the Siege of Mafeking, or shift work or massage parlours...

After 3 days of hell, the midge bites sustained during the garden party gig on Saturday are at last starting to go down! Phew!!!

The things are voracious! Whilst looking for ways of reducing the appalling itching I came across loads of surreal (and useless) tips. Dabbing toothpaste on them looks unsightly (minus one point) but does make your arm smell minty (plus one point) but does absolutely zilch to stop the itching (minus one million points...).

Also there was a mix of "use a mild acid like vinegar" and "use an alkaline like baking soda" - come on, make your minds up!

Then the really surreal ones - "Put an elastic band around the arm and snap it onto the affected area" huh? It went on to say, "...however the pain of this may not be preferable to the itching!". Well thanks for nothing! Minus two million points...

In the end I went into Boots for some antihistamines. The bloke ahead of me in the queue insisted on showing the assistant a couple of spots and whining how painful they were. I have at least 50 of the bloody things and was on the point of snorting at him when he finally decided to take the assistant's advice.

She looked at my arm as I asked for the same stuff and held out the money. "Now that does look like something to whinge about..." she commented.

Apparently it's only pregnant females that bite you but then are so overcome at your kindness in giving up a miniscule amount of blood that they immediately send out a signal to all other pregnant females who swarm around you and dive in for a snack.

And if you are playing guitar at the time it's not easy to brush them away or move yourself out of their vicinity!

King And King To Be Locations and News

The Facebook page for my book, King And King To Be now has several photos of different locations to be found in the book.

I've found it amazing how much it shoots up the bestsellers lists when a sale is made and how quickly it drops when no sales are being made - a bit like a yo-yo!

Today I have uploaded a photo of the location for one of the final scenes - the slope from the Roman fort Camboglanna ("Camlann" in the book and possibly the best candidate in real life) down to the River Irthing at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall.

Facebook users can "like" the page and I'll be very grateful if they do!

The URL address for the page is https://www.facebook.com/#!/KingAndKingToBe

The book received a 5-star rating recently from Mr W J Peacock who wrote: "As an avid reader of any books about the dark ages and the Arthurian legends in particular. I was interested when I heard of a new author entering this popular arena where the competition is so tough. As soon as I stared to read this well written and engaging book I was hooked. An enticing mix of fact, fable, legend and fantasy with a clever twist. I would certainly recommend this book and am looking forward to this author's next book, albeit sequel or prequel."

Well I can reveal that I've started writing a prequel which will concentrate on the story of Myrddin and Nimue/Vivien. Don't hold your breath... I remember how long the last one took...!

Went to a Garden Party

Yesterday saw Creeping Bentgrass out at Darwen, playing at a friend's garden party. I took the blue Mexican Stratocaster along for a change - nice to play it again.

Huge garden on several levels and a lot of people there - not that I am surprised by this in any way because Chris and Brian are excellent hosts and the food is always scrummy.

Not that Mr Lancaster gave me much chance to get my gnashers around much of it... "Keep playing while they eat, we'll stop in a bit..."

My fingers are an inch shorter... Great party Chris and Brian, thanks for inviting us!

The Giant Childe of Hale

In March of 1985 I was freelancing photos to magazines and was particularly successful with those of things that had a story attached. In the trade they were called curiosity photos.

This is the cottage of a certain John Childe. He was born in 1578 and lived in this cottage in Hale in what is now Merseyside. He was a giant of a man. He grew to an incredible nine feet and three inches tall (2.82 metres).

When he was inside the cottage he could only stand up in the very centre of it with his head up in the eaves.

He was taken to Court to see King James I where he fought and broke the thumb of the King's Champion. James wasn't too pleased at that, but gave him half a crown and sent him home!

In later years his height was thought to have been exaggerated but, when his grave was opened, the bones proved the height of nine feet three inches. The local pub is named The Childe of Hale in his honour.

Hale also has this row of thatched cottages opposite the village green and a lighthouse on the shore.

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Austin J40

Just harking back to last weekend's Tram Sunday event in Fleetwood for a moment, there was one other item of interest on display that I haven't mentioned.

The Austin J40 was based on Austin's A40 model, scaled down for children and fitted with pedal driven power. These were not pedals as in a bicycle but square hoops that you pushed alternately, first one foot then the other to power the car.

At Fleetwood there was a roundabout operated by Howard Brothers (see the entry about their gallopers).

The J40 model produced for roundabouts had no pedals fitted but was fitted with two steering wheels for two children sitting in each car.

The Austin J40 was built in a factory in Bargoed in South Wales and provided jobs for miners who had either been injured or who had become too ill through lung problems to carry on working underground.

The J40 followed a previous pedal car called the Pathfinder.

Here are a number of Pathfinder pedal cars presented as an attraction in Great Yarmouth. I took the photo in 1981 whilst on holiday there.

These were expensive toys. The Austin J40 cost £33 including purchase tax which in the day would have been 3 or 4 weeks wages for most people.

I emailed my son-in-law, Eddie, a copy of this one. I'm not sure he was all that impressed though...!

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Bristol Temple Meads

The other day I had to go to Bristol for a work meeting and took the train. It's a fair chug down from Blackpool to Bristol, involving changes at Preston and Birmingham New Street.

As I got off the train onto the platform at Bristol Temple Meads I thought my luck was in and that a steam train was in the station. It turned out to be a static display of old coaches bearing adverts for the Dartmouth Steam Railway in Devon. This used to be known as the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway so what Paignton have done to be so ignobly dropped from the name I'm not sure - the train still starts from there.

Bristol Temple Meads has an interesting history, being the original western terminus of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway (GWR). The original station has changed a lot, being expanded twice and having extra platforms slotted in when the broad gauge (7 feet and a quarter inch) track originally used by Brunel was converted to standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches.

It has platforms numbered from 1-15. Passenger trains do not use platform two and platform 14 does not exist. Some of the signage refers to an older platform numbering system. Altogether my sort of station!

Temple Meads refers to a nearby church built originally by the Knights Templars and "Meads" being an old word for meadow - the area around the station was meadow at the time of building.

Large version of the photo: temple meads

Fleetwood Tram Sunday, 2012

Yesterday we went out for a morning's stroll around Fleetwood as it was Tram Sunday, the town's annual transport festival.

In common with the last few years, there weren't all that many trams at Tram Sunday. But that's not really why I like to go anyway. I like to go because it's a chance to see some of the cars I remember from childhood and my own early driving years.

We'll start off with a 1960s Ford Anglia Super - no that was the name, the word Super replacing the more common Ford term Deluxe. The standard model did not have the chrome trim down the sides.

The owner was sitting by the car and kindly opened the door for me to grab a photo of the Anglia's unique dashboard. I really can't understand why car manufacturers moved away from the dash-mounted keyhole for the ignition. Something to do with the wheel lock I suppose, but how frustrating is it when you can't see the slot and have no idea whether your key is aligned with it! You get used to your own after a while but I'm always driving different cars for work.

An early 1970s Hillman Hunter GLS (another version of Super!) Grandad had one of these and passed it onto Dad once he had done with it. It was a nice car to drive, but my favourite Hillman will always be the massive tank that was the Hillman Minx - my own first 4-wheel car, after owning a couple of old Reliant 3-wheelers.

A couple of Jaguar MkII cars. My brother had a couple of these at one time. One that he used to drive about and another that he poached for parts. A lovely car though. The car of choice in all 1960s British gangster films...

The van that revolutionised vans - the Ford Transit MkI. Here presented in a motorhome variant. This van sold like the clappers when they first came out, they were everywhere. The alternative seemed to be a chugging Bedford or Commer and those just didn't have the same modern lines or appeal. And just look at the size of those indicators!

Not only were trams in short supply this year, but buses and certainly coaches were few and far between aswell. Here a 1955 Leyland Titan PD2/11 gets a wash and brush up ready for the visitors of the day. I'm not sure if I even saw another half-cab bus there...

And finally, a car that wasn't entered as an exhibit. We found this superb Jaguar E-Type parked on a back road as we walked back to our own, far more modest, car.

Don'tcha wish your own car was hot like me - don'tcha?

Fleetwood Tram Sundays Index