Today my parents came to visit me in Lancaster, and we drove up to Arnside for a fish and chips dinner. On the way we passed through a lovely little place called Beetham, and stopped at the top of a hill where I took some pictures of the view north towards the Lake District. I was using my 400D for the first time in absolutely ages, misplaced the battery charger whilst moving house which relegated it to being an expensive paper weight for most of the last four months. It’s back in action now though, and keeping me happy by bringing me photos like these.

It was an absolutely fabulous view, my pictures really didn’t do it justice – oh what I wouldn’t give for a wide angle lens. I got an interesting panorama, which I’ve cropped down in the gallery, I tried adding a drop shadow to it and it worked quite nicely. Just need a website which needs a banner making now.

If you look closely at the mountains in the distance, you can see that they’re all still dusted with snow on their peaks, and the shots off to the left (closeups so you can’t easily tell it’s left or otherwise..) have mountains with plenty of snow left on top. I guess even though it’s not been snowing, it hasn’t been warm enough to melt. Having said that, when we continued on to Lindale it started snowing again like crazy. Mental weather this year.

Next step is fixing the thumbnails and links, it is finally taking shape…

This entry however is focussed on my recent trip to Sweden. I went to attend a Winter School in Göteborg. I was there for five nights and the temperature was about what I expected. It’s spring, but we had days where the low was -6 C. The highs for the week were probably around 2 or 3 celsius. The killer was the windchill though, I had to wear a scarf to prevent it feeling like my head was going to freeze off my neck. The best (most interesting) photographs in the album are of the city. We spent one evening as the guests of the city mayor in an opulent palace with magnificent chandeliers. It was quite a surreal experience.

The Winter School was being held at a private university called Chalmers which is where we spent the majority of our time. It was a really quite nice place, lovely campus with bright open spaces and a lovely dining area. The only thing I’ll say is everything was incredibly expensive compared to back home, but I think that was partially me not having the exchange rate completely sorted. It also wasn’t a fault of the institution, prices were generally rather high everywhere we visited in the City. There was a distinct lack of eating establishments as well; we wondered if maybe we’d come during the off season… if cities have off seasons.

For one of the afternoons we were able to escape to look around the city centre. The place has a massive shopping centre full of shops I’d never heard of which I thought impressive. It also has a beautiful harbour with a number of interesting permanently moored boats. There was a tall mast ship named Viking which was being used as a hotel and restaurant. Also along the front was a maritime museum with interesting naval vessels, including a submarine. Sadly the museum wasn’t open so I could only look at them from the side, it was still a nice walk and out in the sunshine the cold was much less uncomfortable.

Much of the rest of that afternoon I spent wandering around the historic buildings and marveling at the architecture. The city was actually very interesting in that respect, lots of incredibly impressive buildings, which for the most part I have no idea what they did. The photo album contains quite a number of shots of architecture in the area, perhaps I got a little carried away but I wanted to take with me a proper feel for what the city was like. In some ways I wish I’d taken my SLR with me, but on reflection I think leaving it at home for University trips is the right thing to do. I get worried enough about my suitcase, let alone a camera bag.

So that was Sweden, if anyone has any questions about the place I’ll do my best to answer them.

The first thing I found on my walk was a lovely housing estate, really quiet and quite well to do. I’d quite like to live there I think. Then the path crossed the railway line and I found a house on the edge of some wide open grass with an old iron gate in the garden that had been taken off it’s hinges and left there at some point. I think it had been taken from the fence next to the house, but I can’t be sure. Anyway the more interesting thing was the sign attached to the old gate, a sign for “Royal Albert Hospital” in true NHS brown. I can only guess that when the hospital was open, the grounds started at the edge of the railway line, which is pretty amazing. At this point the hospital was merely a tower in the distance. I’d been intrigued by the hospital buildings before now, it’s yet another amazingly impressive gothic mental asylum in Lancaster, this one built in 1864. All I can think is that Lancaster must have had an awful lot of people deemed by the local authorities to be crazy given the sheer amount of provision for locking them up that existed. The hospital operated as a school for people with learning disabilities, and a secure premises for others. It closed it’s doors in 1996. I found a fantastic website dedicated to chronicling the hospital and it’s history – Unlocking The Past. Some of the stories on there are really interesting, for example the hospital had it’s own scout troop for the boys being held there, who used to go on camping expeditions in the grounds! It’s now being used as a islamic girls boarding school, so I couldn’t really go trespassing on the ground to take photos. There are plenty around on the Internet though if you go searching.

Moving on from there I went across the road to look at a derelict boarded up building which seems to have once belonged to the NHS. “The Derby Home”. There are references to a Derby Home on the Royal Albert website, as being a ward for “higher-grade” male patients, but I am not sure this is the same place, it seems strange it would be so far away from the rest of the hospital. It was quite an nice building to look at though, I’d love to know what’s still inside.

My next stop was the cemetery, which was a large and eerily peaceful place. I found a gravestone from someone who died in the “Blackpool Sea Tragedy” in 1983, a member of the Lancashire Constabulary and that led me to researching the event when I got home. Very sad, but something I am glad I’m at least aware of happening I suppose, I don’t think I would have known otherwise. After that I headed home, all in all a very rewarding walk, and a few interesting photos though not very artistic.

My main memories of the park were first of all the Polo Tower, then the cable car, then the ‘Texas Tornado’. As you can see the Polo Tower is still there, its in dreadful shape once you get close. My parents took me to the park, sometime when I was in high school, late 90s I would guess. They bought me a wrist band for unlimited rides, and on that particular day it also got me a free Polo Tower ride. The bit you ride in was a bit strange, quite claustrophobic but on the whole it was great. It rose slowly upwards and then stayed at the top for a while, where there were great views of the bay. The cable car was over near the log flume, I remember it took a path from the back of the park, towards the front over lots of buildings, nothing very appealing, sort of dirty, some people had dropped shoes on the roof. The ride went over the main road, and on to the sea front, where it turned around and came back. From what I could see in the park there was nothing left of the cable car, including at the far end over the road. I’m sad about that, I remember one of the cable cars had a life size plastic model of ‘Frontier Fred’ the park mascot, and as we were queueing to get on there was a bunch of three lads waiting in front. The operator made one of the lads get on the car with the plastic dog, and his friends were absolutely dying of laughter. Lastly the Texas Tornado coaster! I remember queueing to get on it, or more accurately, waiting on my own. I must have gone on that ride about 10 times in a row with my unlimited armband because each time I got off, there was no queue and I just cut through to the front again. It was a tame ride really, but good fun, lots of trees in the way as you went around. I did a bit of a research and it seems that ride was one of the first to be demolished in 1999, since no one would pay the £100,000 they wanted for it. A shame as it was a good historic roller coaster, orginally called the Cyclone and imported from Paris in the 1930s.

All in all the experience was a bit weird, hence the longer than average blog entry. Plus the fact I haven’t updated this page in forever, its been a while since I’ve taken any photographs of note which is a sad thing. I found walking around underneath the Log Flume, surrounded by broken up toy trains quite surreal and definitely creepy. I know I am a wuss about these things, I have a love/hate relationship with fallen down or disused things, I find them fascinating but they frighten the life out of me. Especially stuff thats sunken in water, so finding the sunken toy train was.. interesting. I definitely love the entrance signs we found, my Dad and I had great fun piecing them back together like a jigsaw. Its sad to think that they’ll probably soon be gone and there wont be anything left. I’m sad I didn’t come and do this longer ago, when there were more rides left standing, and more interesting things around, alas these photos are better than had I never come and it certainly brought back some great memories.

Anyway my real reason for posting; my parents and I went on a nice trip to Milnthorpe, and surrounding area. We actually ended up in Grange-Over-Sands for a nice meal in a lovely coffee shop overlooking the bay. I saw a pair of RAF Tornados too, but no photographs. We came back through Arnside, and then Milnthorpe, through a piece of land belonging to a stately home Dallam Tower.

The grounds were *full* of deer, and I mean full. I have never seen so many. They were really cute, young deer bouncing about drinking from the river. I got some pictures but they aren’t fantastic, the light was terrible and I was having an attack of the shakes and no tripod. Still I got some pictures and the deer are lovely so I thought I would share.