This weekend I have been in London. As usual, I took the train between Tiverton Parkway station and Paddington.
Today, I returned, and I found myself contemplating about several things actually, but one of which I am about to mention to you.
Although I had a completely valid ticket for the train on which I was travelling, not at one single point during my journey did I have to prove that I had it. This was a trip which cost me £12 because I bought the ticket in advance, but a walk-on fare from Paddington to Tiverton costs around £60. There are ticket barriers at Paddington Station, but if your train departs from platforms 1 – 10, then you can bypass them simply by walking around them (you can go to the footbridge at the end of the platforms and cross the lines that way). Not at one point on my journey did anybody ask to see my ticket, and Tiverton station itself has no ticket barriers. (The larger stations on the FGW network do have barriers though and I know that Exeter St Davids has been effectively blocked so that the only exit is through said barriers.)
Now, I don’t actually mind this, nor do I mind the fact that I spent money getting what I could have got for free. What does strike me though is that most TOCs (Train Operating Companies) are securing their stations with ticket barriers in order to make sure people buy tickets, London Waterloo has recently opened the longest single ticket barrier line in a station in the UK and, I think (though may be corrected) Europe, and I remember reading that First ScotRail has seen an increase in revenue due to the installation of ticket barriers. Of course, ticket barriers do have their issues, mainly that many rail geeks like myself, and those who have moved further up the geekery ladder to become trainspotters, can no longer get access to the ends of platforms without a ticket. I spent 90p a while back on what was possibly the randomest train ticket ever – a return journey between Exeter St Davids and Exeter Central – just to be able to get onto the platform to take some photographs.
So, I don’t really know what the point in this little rant was actually. I think it’s the hypocricy really that gets me.
Anyway – what’s wrong with sending somebody down a train with a holepunch or a stamp to actually check tickets, and why do we not see them anymore?
Another Thursday, another day out taking photographs with the AS Photography Students…
This time we went to the nearby National Trust property, Knightshayes Court, followed by a quick jaunt to the Grand Western Canal. As with the students, I took more photos at Knightshayes than the canal, but more importantly, today was the first day of using my brand new Nikon D60 DSLR camera, which is actually MINE!!! I no longer have to borrow cameras from work (having said that, I’m in London on Saturday and will probably borrow one of the J10 cameras!). I’ve only been taking photos as a ‘photographer’ (of sorts) for about seven years now…
Anyway – photos. Here you go. Enjoy!
Knightshayes
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Looking towards Tiverton with Heathcoats factory visible in the distance
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The National Trust tree? (compare it with the NT logo!)
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Pink Flower
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Pink Girl
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Seagull - GW Canal
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Jesus takes the photo? (on the water you see...)
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At the end of the day on Friday, I was given one of the Nikon D40 DSLR cameras by one of the students who had experienced some problems focussing it. This was the excuse I needed to borrow one of said cameras over the weekend so that I could take some random photographs.
So yesterday, after work at the Library, I was going to go to Barnstaple, but decided to head down towards Exeter, heading down the A377. I stopped off at Eggesford railway station on the way, took some photographs round there, but as I couldn’t really be bothered to wait for a train to come (I’d have to wait there about forty minutes for that) I continued down to Exeter.
Last time I was at Exeter St Davids station, I had problems accessing the platforms to take photos (bloody ticket barriers) so decided to continue on. It was while having my lunch at the Burger King at the M5 J30 services that I decided that I had never been to Honiton railway station so that is where I headed to next. When I got there, bizzarely I did see an ‘HST Stop’ sign on the tracks as I pulled into the station in my car, but even odder couldn’t actually find the sign when I got out to photograph it. Again, I had a bit of time to wait until a train appeared, but it did and it was number 001 of the class City of Exeter. That information won’t be appreciated by any except any proper train afficondios out there (of which I’m not quite one yet!).
Anyway… Photos… here you go.
And as it happens, I didn’t have any problems with the auto focus on this camera, so I’m not sure what the student was doing wrong…
People who have known me for quite some time (those who knew me back at Secondary School) will know that for a short while I appeared to have a bit of a fixation with the 307 bus, the route which back then was between Barnstaple and South Molton, occasionally down here to North Molton, occasionally Taunton. Run by First Red Bus (whose busses were painted yellow), this small and strange fixation continued before fizzling out at some point for reasons that I cannot quite recall but for which I’m glad.
Anyway, back a little while ago, can’t recall exactly when, First Red Bus, now First Devon & Cornwall, had a change of their routes, renumbering the 307 bus the number 7, truncating it at South Molton, again occasionally out here to North Molton but not to Taunton. (The 346 service that did the same route but continued onto Tiverton became the 155 and was taken over by Stagecoach Devon.) The 7 recently became the X7 and now zips down the North Devon Link Road direct between Barnstaple and South Molton, occasionally extending to North Molton, and leaving Filleigh without a bus service as Swimbridge and Landkey are now served by either the 5 or 6 (can’t remember which) new service.
The 307, it would seem, is no more.
Except…
Recently, I have noticed a couple of Stagecoach Devon buses with 307 showing on their matrix display (‘blinds’ sounds better but buses don’t have those anymore…) and heading to Bampton. So Taunton still doesn’t have a direct bus service from Barnstaple anymore, but the 307 Bus is once more. The bus doesn’t go directly to South Molton either like the X7 and the 155 do, but trundels its way along the old 307 route through Landkey, Swimbridge and Filleigh, then continues on what I assume to be the old route (along the B3227) to Bampton.
ADDITIONAL: Yesterday (21/03) I was in London doing a Random 15 Tube Challenge and at one stage was on the Picadilly Line for a fair stretch. The train number of this particular service? Yep, that’s right: 307
Today, work was a little different. Instead of spending the day in Tiverton, a minibus was taken down to the Eden Project in Cornwall so that some of the photography students could take some photos. Of course, I wasn’t one to miss out on an opportunity like this, so under the guise of ‘Technical Support’ I went along with Sharon to help out. Of course, everybody went their separate ways so actually my ‘technical support’ wasn’t necessarily required, but at least I was there.
The minibus was a bit dodgy though, especially as Sharon had problems finding fourth gear on occasions, and any form of gradient steeper than 3% would tend to conk it out. In fact, on the way back I was messing around with my phone as I was bored and set my Facebook status so it read ‘Richard isn’t sure that the college minibus will make it to the top of this hill’ and sent a couple of people text messages to that effect as well.
Anyway, of the 290-odd photos I took, I’ve managed to whittle it down to about fifty which will appear below for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy. Photos include stuff which will (eventually) go into the larger ‘Bridges Project’ that was started while I was a student at college and also ‘Photos of People taking Photos’.
Yes, OK – my life is this dull that two snow days on the trot I’ve made a post of photographs. Still, it’s not every day that it does snow and apparantly it’s going to all disappear by the weekend. Quite a bit of it has disappeared here today to be honest which actually is a bit of a shame as despite the inconvenience of not being able to get to work and suchlike, I like snow. I like the feeling that it makes under your feet when you’re the first person to walk over it. I like the way it makes everything look bright and clean.
(There is a paragraph about this in Rob Grant’s book Incompetence but I can’t find it at the moment – if you have the book it’s in the Prologue which you will find after Chapter 2.)
I also found out this morning that it’s surprisingly fun to drive over. For reasons that still aren’t quite clear to me, I decided that I should continue with my normal ploy of turning off the Link Road and nip the rest of the journey to Tiverton on the back roads to avoid the traffic that usually builds up around the Bolham Road roundabout.
Anyway – here are some photographs. Again, taken on my phone and while some are from the inside of the car I was not driving at the time, again caught on the roadworks just south of Knowstone. I will probably at some point touch some of these photos up in Photoshop but these’ll do for the time being.
A361 near Knowstone
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A361 near Knowstone
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A361 near Knowstone
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A near Knowstone
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On the Back Roads
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back roads
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Back Roads
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Near the ground on the back roads
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So when I got out of bed this morning, I was greeted with the horrible sound of my mum attempting to sing ‘Winter Wonderland’. Because it had snowed overnight.
It was still relatively OK though, but quite white outside. That was, until I got into work…
View from my front door, 7.50am
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A361 near Knowstone, around 8.15
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Obliterated Roadwork Signs on A361 near Knowstone, around 8.15am
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Still on the A361 near Knowstone, probably around 8.20am by now!
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... yet this was the view out of my office when I got in to work, around 9.10am.
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(all photos taken on my phone, and honestly I was not driving while some of these were taken – there were traffic lights on the A361 which caught me up! Images hosted on Picasa)
Admittedly mainly this afternoon the weather down here has turned a bit so it’s a bit more snowy, but it’s not settling. I don’t think I could cope with another snow-day to be honest as I just get really bored. I’m just amazed at how different a few miles can make in the weather – although it was a little cold it still looked rather summery down here when I got here this morning!
Yes, I’ve decided to give up on coding my own and have joined the masses who have gone over to WordPress. I’ve copied the posts over from the old site too which was a bit of a pointless gesture really but I’ve always tried to keep the same things up and running and it was just the database of the site collapsing a few years back that meant I’d lost things.
I will at some point – possibly – copy over the rest of the pages and the photo gallery thing that was also up, and possibly revert back to the old design depending on if I can be bothered to transfer it to a WP theme.
Hopefully I’ll be updating this site a bit more too – well, today has had two posts in one day but I can’t guarantee that it’ll be the same always. There has been a lot of stuff going on in my mind, not all of it good unfortuately, and I will probably try and note down those rambling thoughts .
So… well, there’s nothing left to say really so I’ll stop.
Laters dudes.
I’ve been thinking a bit recently on how the Internet has changed a little bit. For instance, I first discovered Google when first introduced to the Internet, by the fact that Yahoo!’s search was back then powered by Google. I thought that if the Yahoo! search is being powered by Google, then surely I’d get quicker results by going directly there. Now Google owns my life, not only in how I search the Internet, but I recently became the owner of a G1 mobile phone.
Yesterday while I was in the shower, for some reason I started thinking about the designs that have been on this very website in the past. I remember posting a copy of an old design which I found that had been done in MS Word, and other designs had been completed in MS Publisher and Dreamweaver before I started coding the pure HTML of sites. One design that I remembered yesterday was composed mostly of lego, where all the page headings and the like were created in Lego and then photographed. I mention designs because I’m currently contemplating switching over to WordPress so I’ve actually got a website that works…
I’ve also been looking at some old websites that are still around, and earlier on today came across this little snippet of text: “If your browser can cope with it, there is a bigger version of this photo (1402×1170 pixels, 168 KB).”
I very much doubt that you’d need to put that on images any more…
I’ve also forgotton what the main point of this post was except to say that I’m still alive… Take care all.
