Cwmorthin

Cwmorthin is one of the many huge disused slate quarries and mines around Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia, a mile walk up into the Moelwyn Mountains from the town and station.

Most of the workings are underground, in the many miles of mine tunnels that climb and descend inside the mountain, some of them still open to cavers, others now damaged by the attempts to use explosives to aid the extraction of slate in the quarry's final working years in the 1990s.

But there's still lots to see above ground, around the portals beside the lake, Llyn Cwmorthin.

In addition to the huge spoil heaps, which send tentacles reaching out into the lake, the quarrymaster's house is intact, but boarded up and getting scruffy. But the quarrymen's barracks, whose residents had a life expectancy of 44 years, have been in ruins for several decades.

These photos were all taken early one May morning. There's a lot more industrial archaeology in the Cwmorthin valley that I didn't get to see that time — I must go back.

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Burst of bicycle couples

A short set of photos I took in the autumn on Zeeburgereiland, one of the artificial islands off Amsterdam's waterfront. Surrounded by all sorts of bridges and tunnels, shipping canals and dams, motorways and tramways, but with these three silos standing alone in a big empty wasteland...

I have added the Netherlands to the site's collection of galleries.

The ruins of St Colmac's

I went to the little island of Bute, in the Firth of Clyde, on the southern edge of the Highlands.

On the road to Ettrick Bay you pass St Colmac's church and graveyard.

Built in 1836 for the second Marquess of Bute, of the nearby Kames Castle.

The award of listed building status in 1971 wasn't enough to preserve the church. Services ceased in 1980, windows and doors broke, and the roof collapsed in 1996.

The burial ground is still growing, but the church itself is being left to turn from derelict mess to picturesque ruin.

I've discovered quite a few Highland ruins over the past year -- they might form a theme. I've already posted on the Moine House.

Winter fogs past

I love those freezing winter nights, when everything condenses into one big fog.

And the light blurs...

And the shapes merge...

Christmas orders

I will be organising a batch of prints and frames next week, on Friday 2nd. If you wish to order framed prints in time for Christmas please get in touch during the next week to discuss requirements. I can take UK orders for prints until mid-December but can not guarantee that frames could be built in time for orders after the 2nd. You can find out more about ordering on the prints page.

Haystacks

Not a big hill by Lake District standards, but a popular one.

Because of its pleasant ascents past the tarns and rock formations.

And the view over Buttermere and the valley.

More on Wikipedia.

Flashride for Blackfriars

In 2000, London's previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, began the process of fixing forty years of mistakes that had been made in the pursuit of the impossible -- the comfortable accommodation of mass motor vehicle use in a dense city centre. He recognised that cities are supposed to be places for people and returned key locations like Trafalgar Square to use as more than mere traffic gyratories.

But the current mayor has not quite caught up with the modern age and still labours under the delusion that congestion and the problems of the motor vehicle can be solved with bigger and faster roads.

While claiming to be the cycling mayor he tells us that a splash of blue paint along the gutter and through the bus stops is enough to fix the conditions that prevent most people from ever using their bicycles.

And his officers at TfL push through these wider and faster roads in the name of, er, accommodating pedestrians (wider roads are good for pedestrians, right?). While ripping out the pedestrian crossings.

After ignoring the thousands of objections to the wider and faster road layout at Blackfriars, TfL announced last week that they were bring in the earth movers on Friday night. So with 48 hours notice we assembled a thousand cyclists for a go slow.

It might be too late for Blackfriars this time around, but we still have a mayor who is stuck in 1970s, determined to force ever more motor vehicles through the centre of the city, at the expense of the sensible majority who combine walking, cycling, and public transport, and the vibrant city activity that depends on attracting people. It's not the last he's heard from us.

More at:

http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com/

http://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/tag/boris-johnson/

http://ibikelondon.blogspot.com/search/label/Boris%20Johnson

http://cycleoffutility.wordpress.com/category/mayor-of-london/

The Moine House

The geology and landscape of the Scottish Highlands are famously divided by the Great Glen fault. Less famous is the Moine Thrust Belt, running almost parallel to the Great Glen a hundred miles north. Here the rocks and landscape of the northern Highlands are pushed over those of the Hebrides and far north west, forming a belt of steep hills and cliffs from the north coast at Eriboll down to the west coast at Skye. It's named for The Moine -- the moss -- the vast peat moor that sits at the top of the hill on the northern Highland rocks above Eriboll on the northern coast of Sutherland.

As you climb the A838 from the sea inlets — from Loch Eriboll heading east, or from Kyle of Tongue heading west — the great flat empty moor stretches to the distant mountains, Ben Loyal in the east and Ben Hope in the west, interrupted only by two curious steep pyramids almost on the horizon. As you cross the bog they grow into the gable-end walls of a house, a perfectly ordinary little highland cottage isolated in the middle of the moor.

With two rooms, a porch, and a loft, Moine House was built with the road in 1830 as a half-way stop for travellers. Occupied by several generations of Mackays, up to ten people at a time, the house still acted as an inn for travellers throughout the 1800s, until the motorcar era negated its original purpose, and the Mackays moved on to less harsh and more profitable locations.

The roof fell in sometime around 1987, though there has been some attempt since to preserve what remains. The EU have since "improved" the A838 by building a whole new road over the moor on a different alignment, straighter, wider, faster, allowing the old single track road outside the house to slowly fade under the moss. Despite its isolated location, miles from anything in an already sparsely populated region without cities, it has managed to acquire some murals, distinctly urban in style, slightly faded now after three or four years exposed to the relentless rain of the northern Highlands.

More photos in the Highlands gallery.

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