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Stock photography by Peter+Marshall at Alamy

Other sites with my pictures include
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All pictures Copyright © Peter Marshall 2018, all rights reserved.
High res images available for reproduction - for licences to reproduce images or buy prints or other questions and comments, contact me. Selected images are also available from Alamy and Photofusion

Carter's Steam Fair

Englefield Green, Surrey. Sun 30 Sep 2018

Man and mermaid on John Carter's Jubilee Steam Gallopers
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We cycled to Englefield Green, where Carter's Steam Fair was in full swing, walked around a bit and then cycled home. And I took a few snaps.

Englefield Green isn't far from us, but it is up a hill. Not a huge hill, but 65 metres above the level of our house, or, what sounds more impressive, a bit over 200ft. Where we live is dead flat - why they put Heathrow Airport next door despite it otherwise being a very poor choice of location, and pottering locally around on a bike as I do, I'm not really used to hills.

Back when we were training for a cycling holiday years ago, I used to go out on the bike and ride up one of the several roads from Egham to Englefield Green, then down another and repeat the circuit a few times. Today I could hardly struggle up it, though it wasn't helped by finding my front changer that drops the chain onto a much smaller chainwheel wasn't working and I was stuck in the higher range of gears. And coming down wasn't made easier first by choosing to come down Coopers Hill Lane, parts of which are unmade and second by finding my brakes were rather ineffectual. You hardly need gears or highly effective brakes in Staines.

In between going up and coming (rather too fast) down we walked around the fair, soaking up the atmosphere and admiring the painted rides. We didn't take a fairground ride - but the ride home made up for that, though I wasn't in a position to take pictures. I did lose the bike a couple of times, but managed to get a foot down and skid to a stop. And when I got home had an hour or so with spanners and screwdriver to put it back into proper working order. Just have to remember now that if I pull too hard on the front brake I'll go over the handlebars now.
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Deptford Panoramas

Deptford, London. Sat 29 Sep 2018

Pedestrian Bridge across Deptford Creek
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On both my own walk and later when walking with the others on the Srt & Gentrification Walk I made a number of panoramic images.

Alhough I usually present these in a 1.9:1 format (slightly more extreme than the standard widescreen 16:9) these are here shown as the full 1.5:1 version. In almost all of the images the horizontal angle of view is around 147 degrees.
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Deptford Art & Gentrification Walk

Deptford, London. Sat 29 Sep 2018

The Birds Nest, a popular venue with free music close to the Tidemill Garden
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This was the second such walk and was an afternoon of discussions on the relationship between art and gentrification and the changes that are currently sweeping through Deptford visiting community spaces, galleries, studios and landmarks on a walk along the streets, waterways, green spaces and new developments.

The walk took place because of the continuing struggle with Lewisham Council over their plans to build on the 20-year old community run Old Tidemill Garden, the adjoining council flats, Reginald House, and Tidemill Primary School, which closed in 2012. Local residents, including those whose homes in Reginald House are threatened with demolition have opposed the plans, and at the end of August a group of them occupied the Old Tidemill Garden.

The group opposes the new development on two main grounds; firstly because of the loss of environmentally valuable green space but even more importantly because of the replacement of council housing at social rents by private housing, part of the social cleansing of London that every London council, but particularly Labour run councils such as Lewisham are engaged in.

The site is planned to be developed by Peabody with 209 housing units, 51 for sale at market prices, 41 in shared ownership schemes (which require relatively high incomes) and 109 to be let at London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London Affordable Rent, something like 65% higher than current Lewisham council rents. As well as paying much higher rents, tenants under this scheme will have for less security of tenure.

The campaigners have approached the council with alternative plans, which involve development at a higher density on the redundant school site to leave the Tidemill Garden and council flats intact, but the council has refused to talk with them, and terminated the community lease on the gardens on August 29th - when residents decided to legally squat it.

The garden was established in 1997 with the aid of Groundwork, the London Development Agency, the Foundation for Sport & Arts, Mowlem plc, Lewisham College and Lewisham Council, and much of the work on it was carried out by parents and children from Tideway Primary. It now includes 74 well-established trees and has been shown to improve air quality in the local area.

The walk took place during the Deptford X Festival and visited some of the key sites in the area, including the Deptford Cinema, the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden where there was a long discussion, Goldsmiths MFA Studios (where one artist had a display about the development), the Art Hub and then up to the mouth of Deptford Creek before going along past Payne's Wharf and down to Deptford High St where we descended into Gossamer Fog. The walk hadn't quite ended but I had to leave.

Deptford Panoramas includes some more pictures from this walk.

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Deptford Walk

Deptford, London. Sat 29 Sep 2018
The DLR goes over Deptford Creek - the tide was very low
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I decided to go to Deptford an hour or two before an event I was attending and take some pictures of some of the parts that were not going to be covered, partly because the weather seemed fine.

Though I've photographed parts of Deptford a number of times over the years, beginning in the 1980s, more recently I've seldom strayed far from the Thames Path, and I decided to start the day taking a look at Deptford Creek and some of the area around. I took along a copy of my book 'Deptford to Woolwich' so I could compare some of the pictures I took in the 1980s with the same places now, though some were hard to identify.

Deptford Panoramas includes some more pictures from this walk

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Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green, London. Thu 27 & Fri 28 Sep 2018

East End Dwellings
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I attended two meetings at Four Corners on the Roman Road, a photography and film space which ran for some years a few doors from Camerawork and which now houses that organisation's archive.

On both occasions I arrived with some time to spare, and took a short walk around the area on my way. I knew Bethnal Green quite well in the 1980s and photographed a lot of its buildings, with a few pictures finding their way into the National Building Record, and also providing most of the illustrations for the book, The Romance of Bethnal Green: A Tale of London, Past and Present by Cathy Ross (ISBN: 9781901992748) published in 2007 by the Museum of London Archaeology Service.

I first came into contact with Camerwork when it was the magazine published by the Half Moon Photography Workshop, based at the Half Moon theatre in Whitechapel, where they ran exhibitions and photography events. I subscribed to the magazine and still have a box containing almost all of the issues, though in later years it degenerated, becoming more concerned with theory than photography. Four Corners had put on a show, Radical Visions, which included a great deal about the early days of Camerwork and you can know read all 32 issues of the magazine on the Four Corners Archive site.
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Hands Off Amadiba

South Africa House, London. Thu 27 Sep 2018
Protesters pose on the pavement outside South Africa House

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Protesters at South Africa House in Trafalgar Square call for the release of lawyer Richard Spoor, arrested on Monday 24th September when local residents were prevented by police using teargas and brute force from attending a so-called public hearing by South Africa’s Minister of Mines Gwede Mantashe into plans to mine titanium in the Xolobeni sands.

They stood with posters and handed out fliers outside the embassy and handed in letters to the High Commissioner and Minister of Mines calling for Spoor's release and an end to violence against the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC) whose chairperson Bazooka Radebe was earlier shot dead.

The residents in the ACC want the region developed through agriculture and ecotourism and have taken the Ministry of Mines to court to insist the community's opposition to mining is fully taken into account.

The Xolobeni project is run a local front company for Australian company MRC whose coastal mine on the west of South Africa has caused widespread environmental damage. MRC is thought to be 40% owned by London financier Graham Edwards.
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Kings College workers await council decision

Kings College, London. Wed 26 Sep 2018

Students and trade unionists support the staff with a protest on the Strand outside Kings College
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Unison Cleaners and security staff from Kings College, supported by students and others wait to hear the decision of the college council whether to finally agree to bring them back 'in -house' employing them directly rather than through contractors.

The staff have waged a long campaign to end the poor management, harassment and rock-bottom conditions of service given them by contracting companies making savings at their cost on contracts awarded to the lowest bidder who want to profit from their work to pay dividends to shareholders.

Students and supporters protested on the pavement in front of the college where they were joined briefly and given support by two striking RMT workers and then joined the cleaners in the quadrangle inside the College in the open area outside where the meeting was being held, signing in those including myself who were not members of King's as visitors.

Among those supporting the protest and speaking were workers from SOAS Unison who recently won their long battle to be brought back in-house. Unison were hopeful the council would agree to being the workers in-house but were preparing for a strike ballot if necessary. I had to leave several hours before the decision was taken, with the council agreeing the workers should be directly employed.
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End executions in Iran

Trafalgar Square, London. Sat 22 Sep 2018

There were some heated contributions though I couldn't understand them
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On the 30th anniversary of the massacre of 18,000 political prisoners in between July and September 1988, protesters in Trafalgar Square call for an end to the continuing executions of any opposition to the regime, including national minorities such as the Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Balouchis and communists and other progressive movements.

The mass protests which began in January 2018 across the country by the young urban poor have been followed by brutal repression with more than 10,000 arrests and new waves of executions of political prisoners, including the six Kurdish activists shown on one of the banners executed on 8-10th September.

The protest, called by the People Fadaii Guerrillas of Iran in London and the Democratic Anti-imperialist Organisation of Iranians in London condemned all the executions and called for the release of all political prisoners in Iran, as well as for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic regime.
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People's Walk for Wildlife

Hyde Park to Westminster, London. Sat 22 Sep 2018

This looked to me like a bit from one of the many London Plane trees
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Several thousands march through London on The Peoples Walk for Wildlife set up by naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham.

The event was to support the People’s Manifesto for Wildlife drawn up by Packham with the aid of 17 independent experts and scientists aimed at halting the drastic decline in British wildlife. It was supported by many NGOs, schools and environmental activists.

The marchers met at Hyde Park for a rally in the rain, and then walked to Westminster for another rally in Parliament Square. I took the underground instead, and met them again as they came down Pall Mall, then went home rather than go to the second rally.
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Please feed the lions

Trafalgar Square, London. Sat 22 Sep 2018

The bright orange lion was less friendly than the other four
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The large fluorescent lion in place at the front of Nelson's column for the London Design Festival is modelled on the four that have been around there for 150 years, but unlike them it roars. It also supposedly creates and spouts poetry if you feed it a word, and people were lining up to do so. All I could hear was it roaring.

Designed by Es Devlin, it seems its main purpose is to defeat photography, and a number of published photographs show it has done pretty well on that count. But having had similar problems over the years with those over-bright orange Guantanamo-style jump-suits, I think I have it more or less cracked.
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Belper (& Birmingham)

Belper, Derbyshire. Sat 15 & Sun 16 Sep 2018

Belper's parish church
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We came to Belper, possibly for the last time, for a family event, and booked in to our guest house a couple of hours early so went to take a little walk around the town. One of the places we visited was the parish church, we had had never been inside before on our visits to Belper. The Strutt family whose mills gave Belper its main industry and built much of the town were Unitarians, and started with a Unitarian Chapel, which we had toured on a previous visit. As they moved up in society they built a Congregational Church (now converted to flats) and then the Anglican, still in use.

On the Sunday morning we also had some time to spare before catching the rail replacement bus to Derby, and I took a few more pictures. Our journey home was in crowded trains via Birmingham, where we had to change, and as we approached New Street I took a couple of views from the train window, one of which included Birmingham's first grand railway station which I think is to be brought back into service for the HS2 link from London, assuming that is ever completed.
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100Women protest at BEIS

Dept for Business, Energy & I S, London. Wed 12 Sep 2018

Nanas sing in protest against fracking at the BEIS
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At the end of their rally in Parliament Square, anti-fracking protesters in Suffragette dress marched around the square and to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Victoria St for a noisy protest there.

The march halted on the pavement in front of the offices, but before long one of the protesters had climbed on the low wall and others had moved around behind it to support her, and the protest continued there between the two wings of the offices, with much shouting and singing.
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#100Women against fracking

Parliament Square, London. Wed 12 Sep 2018
Lancashire Nana Tina-Louise Rothery speaks at the protest
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Anti-fracking Nanas from Lancashire along with other campaigners from around the country called on the government to stop ignoring science and the will of the people and ban fracking, which threatens the future of both the areas of country in which it is to take place though pollution and earthquakes and the future of the planet through its high level of carbon emissions.

The event followed 3 months of "Love & Defiance" that took place from April-June in Lancashire,and many of the campaigners wore suffragette costumes to mark the 100th anniversary of women first getting the vote and to challenge Parliament now to make voting actually mean something. Several Green and Labour politicians came to support the protest, and both parties are officially opposed to fracking.

Speakers at the rally included Ruth George, Labour MP for High Peak, Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, Mike Amesbury, Labour MP for Weaver Vale, Lancashire nana Tina-Louise Rothery, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green Party Deputy Leader Amelia Womack.

Also speaking at the rally were campaigners against the application by the Emmeline Pankhurst Trust has to remove the statue of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst from outside the Palace of Westminster and relocate it to Regent’s University in Regent’s Park. The Pankhurst sculpture, funded by suffragettes, was unveiled in Victoria Tower Gardens, near the House of Lords, in 1930 and they describe the proposed move as an "act of vandalism against women’s history".
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Trump told to close Guantanamo

Parliament Square, London. Wed 12 Sep 2018

Baroness Jenny Jones came to visit the vigil
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The Guantanamo Justice Campaign hold one of their monthly vigils opposite Parliament calling on UK Prime Minister Theresa May to make urgent representations to President Trump to close Guantanamo and end the brutality and torture which is continuing against the 40 men still held there in indefinite detention.

The campaigners call on Trump to respect human rights and international law, stating that the illegal camp is a legal and moral outrage and a symbol of US torture and injustice. They were joined briefly on the vigil by the Green Party member of the House of Lords Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb.

Also present in Parliament Square was political artist Kaya Mar, and I took a picture of him holding his picture of Boris Johnson
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Class War visit the Rees-Moggs

Westminster, London. Tue 11 Sep 2018

Rees-Mogg, Ian Bone, a police officer and Adam as Rees-Mogg with the Class War banner
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Class War held a theatrical protest outside the Westminster £5.6m town house of Jacob Rees-Mogg calling for the release of Veronica Cook, his nanny who now looks after him and his six children.

Class War say she ceased to exist as an independent human 50 years ago and has been subsumed into the Mogg family as if she was being confined in the tower of a gothic mansion. Their playlet starred former Class War Westminster candidate Adam Clifford as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jane Nicholl as Nanny Crook, as well as a giant penis.

The Rees-Mogg family were aware in advance that the protest was to take place and the small group of protesters (six in all) were met in the street by two police officers (with a man in a suit watching from the doorway) and a brief discussion took place in which it was made clear that this would be an entirely peaceful event and there was no intention to cause any damage.

As the protesters began to get ready, Jacob Rees-Mogg came out of his house to welcome the protesters, and a loud discussion started, with him being questioned about his nanny and how much she was paid. Unfortunately he came out too soon for the woman with the giant penis costume as she was having some problems getting this inflated.

After a minute or two, he was joined by his wife and eldest son, and shortly after his wife and another son with Nanny Crook carrying a baby. The two elder boys in particular were clearly very interested in what was going on, and at no point in the event did they seem particularly upset in any way.

Ian Bone continued to loudly question Mr Rees-Mogg about the pay and conditions of Nanny Crook, repeating his questions as he failed to answer. After some time he invited Nanny Crook to speak and she told the protesters that she was very happy with the arrangements, though she did not answer about what these were. They offered escape to Veronica Cook, saying she is paid at below the minimum wage, calling Rees-Mogg a "Slave Owner - The Leopold of the Mendips" and also suggested that she joined a trade union, offering her membership of the UVW. Her employer made clear that she had no interest in the offer of trade union membership.

At one point Bone turned towards the elder of the boys watching the performance, telling him loudly that a lot of people didn't like his daddy and giving some reasons at some length. This part of the event was captured on a video taken and posted by one of the protesters and led to a national outcry from press and TV channels.

There were at the time two journalists present, myself and another photographer, and I think neither of us has ever been approached for our comments, nor to my knowledge has the account of the event I posted on-line a few hours later ever been quoted. It totally contradicts the headlines that the media used about "ambushing" the family, which was simply a media lie to smear Class War.

Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family were willing participants in what happened in front of their home. Their children did not seem upset, more fascinated with what was happening - and after they had been taken inside and the protest continued had to be dragged away from the windows. One made his way upstairs to continue to watch without being prevented from doing so. Almost all of the media commentary was a deliberate total misrepresentation of what had taken place.

Of course both Rees-Mogg and Class War revelled in the publicity from the event, and it gained Class War a notoriety and media presence they have not enjoyed for many years - probably not since Ian Bone was described by The Sunday People in 1984 as "the most dangerous man in Britain". And he was able to be labelled by an opinated right-wing radio show host as "foul-mouthed" for telling the interviewer he was talking "bollocks". Bone was actually considerably more temperate in his speech than the interviewer, giving a clear and accurate account of the event despite the ravings and bluster he was met with.

After a few minutes in the street in front of the Rees-Mogg home, in which the woman dressed as a giant penis who had been struggling to get her costume inflated earlier joined the other protesters, the protest finished and I went with the protesters back to the pub where they had met and put on their costumes. Had I realised the sensational way this small event would be treated by the media I might have rushed away to file my pictures, rather than put them in several hours later.
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Worldwide Rise For Climate

Tate Modern, London. Sat 8 Sep 2018

Protesters go on the Millennium Bridge at the end of the rally
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Climate Reality supporters hold a rally in front of Tate Modern, one of thousands around the world demanding urgent action by government leaders to leaders commit to a fossil free world that works for all of us.

The rally called for people to take personal actions to reduce their own contribution to climate change but more importantly to join together to press for action at local, national and international level.

The action by Climate Reality, a global and diverse group of activists, community leaders, organisers, scientists, storytellers and others united to act over global warming was supported by the UK Campaign Against Climate Change and Fossil Free UK and other groups and in particular called for local authorities to divest from fracking and fossil fuels and for government to end its support for fracking.

At the end of the rally people posed for a group photograph in front of Tate Modern and then on the Millennium bridge.
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Justice for Windrush descendants

Brixton, London. Sat 8 Sep 2018

Michael Groce holds a poster 'Yes, It's Racist' - in 1985 police shot and seriously wounded his mother
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A rally and march in Brixton calls for the Windrush scheme to be widened to include all families and descendants of the Windrush Generation and for an end to the racist hostile environment for all immigrants.

It called for an amnesty for those living here without secure immigration status and for free movement for Commonwealth Citizens. After a nummber of speeches the protesters marched noisily around the centre of Brixton, attracting much support from shoppers on the busy streets.

The protest, hosted by Movement for Justice By Any Means Necessary (MfJ) called for all immigration detention centres to be closed down and for an end to both Brexit and the racist government, and for a movement to oppose all forms of racism and bigotry and to fight for education, healthcare and housing for all.
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Ennerdale Holiday

September for me started with a week with friends in a holiday let in one of the remoter parts of the Lake District. Ennerdale Water is the most westerly of the lakes, and is also one of the least visited, with no road through the valley. Although it is on Wainwright's coast-to-coast walk, it gets relatively few walkers, though probably most of them stop off at least briefly in Ennerdale Bridge, a small village a mile or so west of the lake, which has the last cafe and two pubs for around 15 very strenuous walking miles. The cottage we stayed in was closer to the lake, and next to the River Ehen.

Ennerdale Water was dammed in 1902, with the water level being kept constant at a slightly higher level than before, and much of the hillsides are now Forestry Commisison plantations (much to the disgust of lovers of the area including Wainwright.) Although there is still farming in the area, most of the employment in the whole of this part of West Cumbria now comes from Sellafield. Ennerdale is an area which has been selected for deliberate 'wilding' and as a part of this the extraction of water from the lake will probably end in a few years time.

Penrith Castle

Penrith, Cumbria. Fri 7 Sep 2018

The castle and an empty paddlling pool in the park opposite the station (at left)
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The Tour of Britain cycle race was making its way through the area we had been staying in, and there were going to be a number of road closures. But we had to leave well before it made its way around to catch a train to start our journey home.

We were driven to Keswick to catch the bus for Penrith there, arriving with plenty of time to spare in case there were any delays because of the cycling. The buses run from Workington to Penrith, and seem to have been deliberately timed not to connect with the London train services. The hourly bus service is timed to arrive at Penrith Station at 3 minutes past the hour - exactly the same time as the train leaves.

Even if it arrived on time, unless the train was running late you would miss it, as trains now leave, or at least close and lock their doors, half a minute before the time they are due to depart. It's a move designed to piss off passengers (or as they now call us, customers) and give the rail companies a better chance of avoiding the fines for late running.

So we had to get a bus that should have arrived at 12.03 to catch the 13.03 train; as the bus was three minutes late, it stopped outside the station leaving us with 57 minutes to wait. Which gave more than enough time to walk around Penrith Castle which is directly opposite the station.

The castle is a ruin in a large park, which I also took a short walk in, photographing the war memorial. Apart from me the only people in the park were a number of apparently unemployed young adults sitting in small groups smoking and/or drinking.
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Crag Fell

Ennerdale. Thu 6 Sep 2018
Ennerdale Water from somewhere near the top of Crag Fell
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It was another fine day and my legs had more or less recovered from Tuesday's walk. Some of the roads in the area were closed for a cycling time trail, part of the Tour of Britain, and we decided to take a walk up the nearby fells, including Grike which overlooked the cottage where we were staying.

We went past Grike cottages and the Mill and across the River Ehen and then up a path through the wood to a long slope across the moor to Crag Fell, visiting both summits.

From there we walked across the open moor over some rather boggy ground to the summit of Grike, where a large cairn gave us some shelter from the wind to eat our sandwiches.

We then continued to walk downhill alongside a cleared area of forest and down to the very disappointing 'Great Stone of Blakely', which turns out to be only a fairly large rock of Blakely.

More exciting was a rainbow-coloured sheep and another stone circle at Scarney Brow, before we walked down to Ennerdale Bridge, most of the group went for afternoon tea at 'The Gather' and I sat down in the Fox and Hounds with a pint of Wainwright's Golden Beer which seemed more appropriate.
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A Lakeland Drive

Cumbria. Wed 5 Sep 2018

We stopped for our lunch on the Honister Pass
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Our friend who lives in Ennerdale Bridge took three of us on a lengthy car tour of the western part of the Lake District, going up through Lamplugh to Loweswater and then down past Crummock Water to Buttermere. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to find somewhere to park in some places we would have like to stop.

We stopped next to Gatesgarthale Beck on the Honister Pass for our sandwich lunch and then continued on to Borrowdale, stopping at Grange to walk around the village and then to Lingholm for afternoon tea. Then it was on to Castlerigg Stone Circle, before returning via the Whinlattter Pass to Ennerdale.
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Walking round Ennerdale Water

Ennerdale, Cumbria. Tue 4 Sep 2018

The path was quite rocky in places, but fairly easy to walk
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Tuesday the forecast was good, and looking out of the window confirmed it, so we set off to walk around Ennerdale Water.

Following our local guide we took a path over the top of Angler's Crag rather than sticking to the waterside, which did have the advantage of some fine views.

The second half of the walk along the north side of the lake was for much of the way along a road, open only to local traffic - only a couple of lorries and cars while we were walking along it, but rather boring as there were trees on both sides and little in the way of views. Once we were on the lakeside it improved greatly. According to the map we had covered only just under 9 miles by the time we got back to the cottage, but again I think the terrain added something to that, and I felt rather tired.
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Whitehaven

Whitehaven, Cumbria. Mon 3 Sep 2018
An outstanding corner of the town
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Whitehaven is a real gem of a Georgian town, developed at a time when it was one of the leading ports in the country after London.

The port grew with the export of local coal and also the tobacco trade from Virginia, and in the mid 18th century it was one of the largest UK ports for the trade, but this was soon lost to other ports such as Glasgow. The coal trade continued to be important, with Whitehaven a major port into the middle of the nineteenth century, when larger ships saw the rise of deepwater ports at Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. Railways played their part, reducing the importance of ports being close to the mines - and there were even some in the town itself.

The town had been purchased by the Sir Christopher Lowther, a hugely succesful merchant in 1630, and it was around 50 years later that his son, Sir John Lowther, began building the new town on a grid layout with strict planning rules which result in it being " the most complete example of planned Georgian architecture in Europe" according to Wikipedia.

Now a rather depressed area, plans were made this century to increase tourism, but seem so far to have met with little success. They included the opening of a fine museum overlooking the harbour, but also rather a lot of not very impressive art works rather superficially relating aspects of its history, and some frankly odd additions like a very large long wavy bit of metal along one of the quays, and an odd 'shelter' in which we sat swept by wind and rain eating our sandwiches. It was the last day of the school holidays and the museum had a few visitors, but we only saw a handfull of other tourists in the harbour area. Perhaps Sellafield - the area's only large employer (and it takes up almost a half of the museum display) - puts off people from visiting the area.
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Loweswater

Loweswater, Cumbria. Sun 2 Sep 2018

It rained during much of the walk
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After lunch the rain seemed to be easing a little, and a group of us drove to Fangs Brow for a walk above Lowes Water. We took the path that leads along the hillside at roughly 250-300m on the slopes of Burnbank Fell and Carling Knott, then came down to the lakeside to walk back through Holme Wood and then climb back towards Fangs Brow.

For much of the early part of the walk our view was obscured by the cloud and light rain we were walking through, though it cleared considerably later. Measured on the map it was only about five miles, but the winding of the paths probably added another mile or so.
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Cleator Moor

Cleator Moor, Cumbria. Sun 2 Sep 2018
Cleator Moor was once a prosperous mining town, now rather desolate and depressed
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Sunday morning several in the group opted to go to a morning service at the Methodist Church in Cleator Moor, and I went with them to take a walk around the town and take a few photographs. It rained a little, but that seemed to be in keeping with the mood of the place

Cleator Moor was a mining town, with mines for both coal and haematite, and together with local limestone these made it an important area for the iron industry in the early years of the industrial revolution, along with nearby Workington, then also a major port. The iron ore ran out around the start of the twentieth century and the coal also became too expensive to mine.

Many of the workers needed for this industry came from Ireland, and the town apparently became known as 'Little Ireland'. the well-konown compnay Kangol was gounded here in 1938, but now, like mining and iron, the jobs have one, although there is still an industrial estate.

The town conveys a strong feeling of depression, though lifted somewhat by a number of buildings of some quality, and parts of the main street have a pleasing uniformity, with simple terraced housing, its doors opening directly on the pavement. The central square, with library, municipal offices and a couple of fine parades, as well as some interesting sculptures by Conrad Atkinson who was born in the town. One of L S Lowry's close friends was a bank manager here, and he often came to stay, making a number of paintings, and I could see why the place interested him.
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Ennerdale Bridge

Ennerdale Bridge, Cumbria. Sat 1 Sep 2018
The village has two pubs, a church, school and a community-run cafe/shop
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Saturday we had been invited to take a tour around Ennerdale Church and to take morning coffee in 'The Gather', a community cafe and shop. Afterwards we had a drive around the area (during which I took no pictures) to shop at the Co-op in Cleator Moor before returning for a late lunch. Afterwards it was our turn to prepare the evening meal for the group, but as the rain had slackened off we did find time to go for a short walk.
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Ennerdale arrival

Ennerdale Bridge, Cumbria. Fri 31 Aug 2018

Ennerdale Water as the sun sets behind me
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We arrived in Ennerdale after taking the train to Penrith, where we got the bus via Keswick to Cockermouth and a friend picked us up for the drive to Ennerdale Bridge. After an evening meal we walked the mile or so from the cottage to Ennerdale Water.
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London Images

September 2018

Kings College
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As well as some of the usual views on my train journey through Vauxhall there are pictures from buses on the Strand and Fleet St and a few odd pictures from odd places.


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