Prowling my world, camera in hand

18 July 2012

Week 28: Newport, Cardiff, Bath

Filed under: — Administrator @ 20:17

The pictures for this week were taken during a brief trip to the UK, where we were going to watch my son’s first bodybuilding competition. Those pictures are elsewhere; what I show you here are (with one exception) pictures from Newport, where the competition took place, Cardiff, where we spent the following day, and Bath, where my son attends university.

28_1
In Newport, we stayed in a rented apartment near the banks of the Usk River. The river at this point is tidal, no more than 1/2 mile from the sea. The photo shows it at “low tide.” At high tide it rises to the level of the mud line shown on the bank opposite. The wharf shown was used for unloading ships that came up on the high tide. At high tide the river is quite impressive with the water flowing back upstream for a number of miles:
IGP4987

28_2
River, mud and bridge:
IGP4988

28_3
Newport is not a fancy place by any means. This is across the street from the Dolman Theatre where my son’s competition was held. I found the disconnect between the sculpture and the businesses in the background visually interesting:
IGP4995

28_4
A scene in the parking lot of our apartment in Newport. The little girl shows a high level of interest in feline anatomy:
IGP5142

28_5
I decided to include one bodybuilding image in this set, but my son is not in it:
IGP5019

28_6
The day after the competition we drove to nearby Cardiff, a city which I have visited before and which I like. There are statues in the shopping district, and seagulls everywhere:
IGP5148

28_7
Seagull, Starbucks and KFC:
IGP5152

28_8
Cardiff Bay is the old waterfront area, which is now full of restaurants and big buildings like this performance hall:
IGP5157

28_9
Lines and curves:
IGP5159

28_10
Sculpture commemorating merchant marine sailors who died in WWII:
IGP5154

28_11
Remembrance:
IGP5158

28_12
That evening, we drove back to Bath and spent the night in the house my son shares with 3 other students. Since they had already left for the summer, there was enough space for all of us. In the morning, I got up early and went for a walk in the neighbourhood. This is one of England’s and hence the world’s first railroads, built by Brunel in 1839-40. It connected Bath with Bristol and later London. When the line was built, Twerton was a separate village with its own station. Today it is just a rather non-posh part of Bath:
IGP5172

28_13
Same railroad, different view:
IGP5170

28_14
Local Twerton cemetery:
IGP5176

28_15
Our last day in Bath was largely spent on shopping. The skies looked iffy at times, but it stayed dry. Note the ever-present seagulls, even though Bath is not on the coast:
IGP5181

28_16
Seagull on the roof:
IGP5183

28_17
Lucky seagull scored a slice of pizza:
IGP5196

28_18
We ate lunch on the terrace of a restaurant near Bath Abbey and had a good view of the small square outside, where this couple seemed to be engaged in a making-out marathon:
IGP5191

28_19
IGP5199

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress