travel: March 2003 Archives

I used to live in Befast and went back to visit my parents last weekend, we discussed a range of things and one of these was the sad notice of the final new ship to be built at Harland & Wolff, where the Titanic was built. There is a BBCi community forum about H&W.

The two gantry cranes, known as Samson and Goliath locally, are now redundant. They were commissioned as part of a massive shipyard expansion in the late 60s and can lift 840 odd tons each. My Dad deflection tested them to 1000 tons and the gantry dipped 11.5 inches, he also built the huge dry dock for oil tankers, one of the biggest in the world at the time, capable of 1,000,000 tonnes.

The shipyard expansion was one of the measures taken to maintain some semblence of order in Belfast, if the yard had closed and 10,000 unionists had lost their jobs, then chaos would have descended on early 70s Belfast. H&W has declined from a peak of over 30,000 workers to an SME of 135 largely engineers, sad but slow and gradual.

The land around H&W will be sold for apartments and a science park, the yard will continue to refit and repair ships, but there is no need for two cranes that can lift 800 odd tonnes. If they are scrapped the Belfast skyline will change forever, you can see them from all over Belfast, they are 350 foot hight and yellow, so they stand in quite a striking manner. Either taking them down or keeping them repainted will cost a fortune, maybe they'll be protected just as the BT tower in London has been.

I climb at Mile End climbing wall, one of the regulars there, a guy I know called David Burckett St. Laurent is attempting to walk to the North Pole to raise money for Children Nationwide. Dabs have sponsored them and provided wireless and video equipment. David is a really nice guy and if he suceeds will be the youngest person to reach the pole.

Matt Webb writes an interesting and thoughtful piece on London. I am similarly perplexed by London. I like it and dislike it, it offers anything I could wish for and many things I don't care for. However it is not dull or possible to ignore. It is said that more languages are spoken here and there are more different types of restaurant than anywhere else on earth, yet it is swarmed by branded store, Starbucks are legion, though the italian deli is right next door. It feels like little villages all packed together, not a planned city.

Today we got a card with a map of London from 1822, you can see the centre of London and all of the villages around the outside, like Hackney, Peckham and Brixton. A quick google search found this 1859 interactive map of london from the UCLA epidemology department, who have a study of John Snow. Nice map of Dicken's London, also via google, I do like maps.

London is a great place to walk in, you can see the details closeup, from the vacant site due to bomb damage from the blitz to the shiny new tower rearing up beside it. It is not a even place, you feel it pulls you in different directions, things clamour for your attention or it can be quiet and windswept.

Matt comments that the hidden Londons are the between things places, the maps show how these places formed, as each village grew to touch the next. Then London emerged from it all. London is such variety, turn the corner of one street and the neighbourhood changes. Walk a few tube stops on a sunny day and your footsteps reveal the mixed nature of the city. Desirable and not so, sit beside one another, somewhere might be on the up, hoping to be on the up or passé nothing sits still, but the city has a sense of continuity, London has a presence.

Driving to Calais from London to buy wine and food can be a tiring chore almost, but if you view it as travelling in northern france and take a weekend over it, then you avoid booze cruise shopping and get a short holiday in France. I really love this kind of short break, especially if it can be a long weekend, you get travel and eating and photography all combined in one go and an excuse to do some writing too.

It always amazes me that so many people get no further than the end of the tunnel or the local supermarket. I guess it is just down to time and money. However something so nice awaits you just over the road from the supermarket you are avidly shopping for wine in. If you can make a few days of it, then you can explore the Pas de Calais region.

The countryside is wide and the skies are large, but there are patches of forest and canals and lots of farmland. Small villages pepper the landscape. Though it is largely a similar land to the Kent countryside, it feels different, with the edges of frenchness blurred by Flemish and english occupation, yet still identifiable as northern france. On the way here through Kent you can observe on the map French names of villages, here the "inghem" of Flemish dominates in the village names. Happily this also contributes to the nice local beers too.

It feels quite agricultural here, but industry makes its presence known, paper factories on the river Aa leave their steam in the air. It is also more open here, less enclosed and built up than England. Though maybe this is a reaction of a Londoner to the wide open spaces, but the land does feel less hemmed in, the lack of hedges makes the views longer. People seem to value their space more, or maybe it is that there is more space here, after all France is a lot larger that the UK.

Coming to the north of France and visiting the markets and eating good food in the restaurants is an escape, and maybe it is that which I am reacting too, the different cultural influences the novelty and variety. Or maybe De Gaulle was right and the UK is not really part of europe. Listening to This Sceptred Isle - 1960s (buy it) in the car on the way back home makes you think odd thoughts. The parallels with today and the likely coming war are stunning.