Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year and photography for 2018!

By pure chance I spotted this pre-1933 (when they were standardised) weight limit, and stabbed a finger climbing up to get it behind the bushes which had covered it since. It's also unusual as every other one known has the issuing authority underneath while this is blank like post-1933 signs besides ones with an RAC badge.
It does (like many of the era) have the law above it, Motor Car Acts 1899 and 1903

Trees lining the rows in a car park in Welwyn

Country cottages just to the north of above

My camera coping with the darkness somewhere in Hertfordshire

When the cold easterly winds get up across the bay, these crazies come out to play... And the winds have been rather fierce these lat few days. I know that it was probably tropical here today compared to how it is in some parts of the United States at the moment, but my eyes were streaming within just a minute or so after arriving at Preston Beach here on the English Riviera!

I remember this moment, when I was with my beloved.

A water tower north of Welwyn

One of a pair of some of the best pre-1964 direction signs I've found in place. I am old enough to remember these, especially as London kept many till about 2000.

Buckfast Abbey in Devon has recently had two new organs installed by the Italian Fratelli Rufatti company of Padova, the first instruments of their kind in Great Britain.

The organ installed in the western gallery is fixed in position whereas the larger Quire organ console has been designed to be fully mobile; it can be positioned and played from any location within the abbey. The Quire organ consists of five stands - four manual and one pedal, whereas the gallery organ consists of two manual and one pedal stand.

Both organs have been designed to complement the mix of Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles in which the abbey has been constructed. These fantastic organ pipes are known as 'Pontifical Trumpets' and are located high up in a fixed position within the western gallery casework of the abbey.

O2 phones HQ in Slough

Here is the partner of the first sign in Bourne, Lincolnshire

Fancy offices in Maidenhead. The A4 has modern offices along a lot of it through here and neighbouring Slough which has mainly technology companies.

A great thing about collecting is the unknown and unexpected, I came across this set today in Chingford that aren't like anything anywhere else, and although they don't follow the textbook versions of the national style of signs I suspect they are as without the pointed end they are exactly the same as a very rare type which use the location panels standing alone rather than put them on a border. I have sent it around the various communities for their opinions and a couple of people may even remember them from the old days.

I often had issues with attracting the attention of some of my younger subjects and then maintaining it. That was until I bought myself a little bag of novelty finger puppets... They work!

A communications tower near Lincoln

"The Ghosts of Totnes"

Not really... Just a late night long exposure image taken in the little Devon town's historic high street as a reveller made his way home after leaving the pub.

I used to spend up to a month a year near Totnes and haven't seen that view for ages. Going with the nostalgia here is Gibraltar in 1974.

A castle entrance north of Lincoln

The church in Bourne, Lincolnshire.

The greyhounds left a few years ago but at least they kept the sign.

This unique exhibit at the world famous tank museum at Bovington, Dorset is the ACAVP or Advanced Composite Armoured Vehicle Platform also known as the 'Plastic Tank'. Of course it isn't made of plastic but it is built from composite materials; a prototype vehicle testbed for the feasability of building vehicles which dispensed of the traditional steel and aluminium, replacing them with a modern lightweight material known as 'E-Glass' which has resulted in a weight reduction of between 30 and 40% over comparably sized traditionally built AFV's.