Author: jamesclay

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Then and Now Take Two – Moor Lane

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.

I published back in March some photos of Moor Lane, so when I was there recently I decided to (intentionally) take a similar photograph and add it to the photographs I had taken there before. This time no snow, just some spring sunshine.

Moor Lane

My other photographs of Moor Lane though did contain some intentional similar shots. The first of which was taken in January 2010 when we had some of the worst snow for forty years. I had woken up to a deep blanket of snow on the ground, so myself and my son got all wrapped up and headed off to Morrisons to do some panic buying of milk and bread (as advised by the BBC, well I think that was what they were saying. I saw this view of Moor Lane in the snow and it reminded me so much of how I pictured Narnia.

This was taken with a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera which at the time was pretty good on taking photographs and video.

We had snow again in December 2010, so I took a similar photograph. Though we had snow by the time I got to Moor Lane a lot of it had melted and turned to slush.

In March 2012 the sun was out, and no snow.

We had snow again in January 2013, so yes, I took the same photo.

In 2016 the Moor Lane Bridge was closed to traffic for six months and then permanently closed to traffic. This has obviously had an impact of traffic on this stretch of road.

In March 2018 we had the Beast from the East and so I took a similar photograph again of Moor Lane.

So there is a distinct snow theme with these photographs, which is one of the reasons I took a new photograph of Moor Lane in the sun.

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Then and Now – Clevedon

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.

I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.

I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart.  The first instance of this that came to my attention was last year in May when I went to Manchester.

It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!

Clevedon is a small seaside town in North Somerset.

I took this photograph of Clevedon and its pier in May 2005.

Eight years late in June 2013 I took this photograph of near enough the same view.

And in May 2021 I took another very similar photograph.

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Thinking about photography

Realising that I am taking less photographs this year compared to last year. In the main as I am exercising less compared to lockdown last year, but also I am not doing the photo a day that I did last year. Might make more of an effort to take more photographs for the rest of the year.

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The one with the new Lego Friends set

Well the tease was one thing, now we have the full details of the new Lego Friends set, The Apartments.

Today, the LEGO Group announces the new LEGO F.R.I.E.N.D.S Apartments Set – which allows fans of the iconic Warner Bros. TV series the chance to recreate their favourite scenes. The 2,048-piece set, features both Monica and Rachel’s, and Chandler and Joey’s New York apartments, plus the adjoining hallway.

Following the hugely popular LEGO Ideas Central Perk set, which was released in 2019, the LEGO Friends Apartments set is complete with iconic features and props, such as the classic moment when Monica put the Thanksgiving turkey on her head, the one where Joey and Chandler only had a canoe as furniture and when Phoebe’s dollhouse went up in flames.

So it will be £134.99 when it is released later this month.

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Ashton Court

Back in December I posted a blog post in my Then and Now series on Ashton Court. I had over the years taken various photographs of Ashton Court from the basically the same location and perspective.

It probably wouldn’t surprise you that recently going through some old photograh prints (as in photographs taken with film and developed) I found this photograph of Ashton Court I had taken in the late 1990s

Though not quite the same perspective and location, it’s pretty close. Back then cars were allowed quite a way into the park to park (there were no meters back then either). You can also tell the age of this photograph from the age of the cars in the shot.

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Cost of railway station parking

Can’t quite believe that the cost of parking at Weston-super-Mare station is rising from £2.50 a day to £6.00 a day from the 17th May.

WSM Railway Station cost of parking

That’s not quite an inflationary increase is it?

So there I was thinking that the was an increase effort to get people to use trains, this is a bit of a disincentive.

Even at Worle Station it’s rising from £2 a day now to £3.

Guess who will be walking to the station now….

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Walking along Sand Bay

After a lovely sunny day and having spent most of it sitting in front of a computer I decided to go for an evening walk. First instinct was the seafront, but in the end drove over to Sand Bay. We parked at the bus stop car park, though I think it has a proper name. We walked towards Sand Point.

The sun was setting, but it was still very light.

We passed the world war two era bunker which is slipping into the sand.

We walked all the way to Sand Point.

We then walked along the bottom of Sand Point, something I haven’t done before. We reached the mud, so turned back.

It was a lovely evening walk.

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Back along walking down the seafront

Living in Weston-super-Mare and not being allowed to travel due to Covid-19 restrictions, we often make use of the seafront for our allowed exercise. It’s not as though we never walked there before, but now with limited choices, and only so many times you can walk around the area where we live, it’s nice to pop to the seafront. Its a short drive to the seafront from where we love and it was easy to park close to the seafront. This time we parked at Knightstone Island and popped some money in the meter.

I think for me one of the big changes over the last twelve months in the various lockdowns is how little I use cash now. Before the pandemic I would use cash for the parking at the station (though to be honest more often than not I would use phone parking). I would use cash for buying coffee or snacks. I would even use cash for larger purchases. However with the pandemic my use of cash declined dramatically as mainly I did less, bought less and moved much more to contactless payment.

It was a beautifully clear day, the sun was shining, and it wasn’t too cold. The tide was well in and even the ferry moored at the side of Knightstone Island was floating, something I don’t think I have ever seen happen before.

Generally we don’t see the sea, as the tidal range in Weston is so huge that for most of the day the sea is some distance away. Today as we walked along the seafront, it was high tide.

We walked all the way along the seafront to the old hospital and back again. When we turned back we had in the wind in our faces and it was hard going walking back and felt much much colder.

But soon we got back to the car and headed home for a coffee.