A final festive visit to Tyntesfield
For Christmas I got a National Trust membership. It’s being a few years since I was last a member, but now looking forward to visiting new places and going back to places we have been to before.
Back in 2016 I did start to keep a note of how much we saved with the membership, but looking back over the blog, I never kept up to date with that, but with this membership I am intending to blog about the visits we do this year and the savings we made.
We visited Tyntesfield back in January, I also visited in November. I had planned to go before Christmas, but the weather and other things meant that I didn’t actually get there until New Year’s Eve. This was the last day of my membership.
Tyntesfield
An ornate Victorian Gothic Revival house with extensive garden and parkland, just a stone’s throw from Bristol
Current saving £263.35
Adult Ticket £17.00
Parking £3.00
Total saving £20.00
Cumulative saving £417.15
Membership cost £133.80
Net cumulative saving £283.35
I really of feel I got my money’s worth from the membership. I do feel though I didn’t get as much out of it in the last few months, than I did in the first few months of 2023.
Anyhow onto my most recent visit to Tyntesfield. I liked the red ribbons on the bushes along the driveway into the estate. Continue reading “A final festive visit to Tyntesfield”
Not so Victorian
When I was working in Oxford ten years ago, I really loved how festive the Oxford Covered Market was, and some of the stalls made it feel very Victorian.
Obviously I have never being to a Victorian Christmas market, I am not that old. However, that concept of what a Victorian market could have been like, reinforced by Dickens, film, and television, meant that when I was walking around the Oxford Covered Market in December I did think I had gone back in time to the Victorian times.
On a recent visit to the Oxford Covered Market, ten years later, it felt a little different. It was still quite festive, but it didn’t feel traditional and Victorian any more.
However quite a few places had changed hands and were now eateries. There were more coffee shops, a pizza place, and other stalls (shops) to get something to eat.
The classic butchers had closed down, there was no fish stall, though there was a really long queue for the cheese stall. The fruit and veg stall was still there two.
This was still the Oxford Covered Market, but I did feel it had lost a little of the magic that had made it so special ten years ago.
Redcliffe Wharf #366photos2024
Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2023
In 2023 I published 99 posts. Now in 2022 I published 429 posts on the blog, though I really only published 40 “original posts” then, with 365 photo a day posts and 24 advent posts. In 2021 I published just 46 posts to the blog. I did 423 posts in 2020, in 2019 it was 68, in 2018 I did 89 posts.
The tenth most popular blog post was the Movie Advent Calendar #24 – The Muppet Christmas Carol.
The post at number nine was Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s Part One.
The post at number eight was Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s Part Three.
The post at number seven was Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s Part Six.
Whilst the sixth most popular post was Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s Part Two.
Fifth most popular post about Changes at the railway station in Weston-super-Mare.
The fourth most popular blog post asked the question “the cafe on tv at weston super mare is it real” which was a post about people Google searching that phrase and ending up on my blog. Now those same Google searches send people to this page rather than the original post on Cyril’s Cafe.
The third most popular blog post, dropping two places, was a nostalgic post about Remembering the Bristol Temple Way Flyover.
The second most popular post on the blog was a reflection on Young Sheldon about The significance of the cow…
Rising one place, the post at number one for 2023 was “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.” Which was Michael J Fox joining Coldplay on stage in New Jersey in 2016, playing Johnny B Goode from Back to the Future.
My top ten tweets of 2023
Last year I posted my top ten tweets for 2022, and I did the same in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. It was interesting to see which tweets of mine were popular.
However Twitter is no longer what it was. I stopped using the Twitter in September 2023, as it was no longer a place I wanted to be, and lots of others were thinking and doing the same.
I will admit to visiting the site now and again, but I am glad I left. Still not fully engaged with Threads and Bluesky as alternatives.
Rhyne #366photos2024
Cambridge in December
On a recent trip to Cambridge took some photographs of the city and some of the colleges.
Then and Now Take Two – Trinity Lane, Cambridge
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.
This is the view of Trinity Lane in Cambridge, taken with an iPhone 13.
I have now taken this shot a fair few times.
I grew up in Cambridge, but moved away when I went to university in York. I remember rarely visiting the University of Cambridge as a youngster, why would I? However I did do some specialist maths classes at Trinity College, so would walk down Trinity Lane.
This is a photograph of Trinity Lane taken in April 2023 with an iPhone 13.
This photograph was taken in July 2022 with an iPhone 13.
This was taken in the middle of the day in bright sunshine.
I stayed over in Cambridge back in January 2020 I took this photograph of Trinity Lane.
I took this with an iPhone 8 in late afternoon I did edit and enhance the image with Snapseed, but the iPhone was able to deal with the low light conditions so much better.
It was back in March 2009 when I was at a JISC RSC Eastern event in Cambridge I did take the time the day before to walk around the town and took this photograph of Trinity Lane.
It was taken in the early evening with a Sony DSC-W53 camera, which to be honest struggled with the low light conditions.
Routemaster
I was in London and driving down Fleet Street was an old London Routemaster bus.
I was curious was TFL now running a Heritage route using the quintessential Routemaster red bus.
A quick Google search revealed this:
There’s a new vintage bus service for Central London. Route T15 links Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and the Tower of London. Fares for all-day use are £7.50 for adults (including seniors), £5 for children and £20 for groups of four. It’s not a TfL service, so you can’t use Oyster cards
So it’s not TFL, but certainly a nice idea to relive what it was live taking the Routemaster around London. It must be popular, as when I saw it again, it was packed.