wings over Bristol

pru-ning, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

Beats there a heart that does not quicken at the sound of an unusual piston-engined aeroplane?

Loads, actually, because it's a funny old world.

But not at Schloss Marland.

On Saturday I heard an aircraft droning overhead and dashed to the window in time to see it recede into the distance. But it was back again a few minutes later. By the fourth time it passed over, I was ready with the big lens. And, when I got it up on the screen, I learned that it is the Ordnance Survey's Cessna 404, flying along at 6000 ft, taking pictures of Bristol.

Here are some other recent passers-by: a Fairey Swordfish, rumbling sedately towards Yeovilton...

..a tantalisingly distant shot of a Lockheed 12 Electra Junior, or possibly Beechcraft H18...

 ...the Battle of Britain Flight...

the Airbus A400M military transport...

the Airbus A380...

...and a Spitfire showing off over Filton, the day they closed the airfield

"The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft"

The Rule of Threes kicked in yesterday. When three different people mention an unlikely subject, it probably means that Something Must Be Done. In this case, it was Christmas.

Yes, I know. Sorry, me too.

But then I thought that it'd probably be a good idea to get cards printed, ready for when people (those wise folk who don't leave this sort of thing until three days after the last posting day for Christmas, as I do) need them.

So I did this picture. Obviously all this goofing about on narrowboats has been affecting me.

I'll also be printing some cards of this painting, which I did to go with Thomas Hardy's poem The Oxen.

Ann Wood-Kelly flies under the Clifton suspension bridge

(available as a print)

Ann Wood-Kelly was an American pilot who came to Britain in 1942 and flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying warplanes around Britain and, later in the war, Europe. Whitchurch Airport, in the suburbs of South Bristol, was an ATA base, as well as an important centre for civilian flights abroad; it was on a flight headed for Whitchurch from Lisbon that the Douglas DC-3 carrying Leslie Howard was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.

It was on delivery flights to Whitchurch that Ann Wood-Kelly twice flew under the Severn railway bridge at Sharpness, once in company with another pilot who led the way, and then next time alone; on the latter occasion, the tide was in, and there was 30ft less clearance than on the first time. Her obituary in the Guardian relocates these flights to the Clifton suspension bridge, which is presumably an error; but I thought it would make a good picture anyway, and who knows, maybe Ann did indeed fly under the Clifton suspension bridge- it would certainly have been less of a squeeze than the Severn railway bridge!

As for the poularity of flying under the Sharpness bridge, here is a description of it during the war from Brian Waters, in his book Severn Tide:

"The builder constructed this bridge so that river traffic could pass beneath it. What would he say if he could return to see airmen in their Spitfires and Hurricanes diving beneath his bridge like swallows on the wing? I admired their daring, until I saw the men whose job it is to paint the bridge, hanging in their cradle, while an aircraft dashed within a few feet of them"

The Clifton Suspension Bridge was also quite popular with pilots; I've found stories of Gloster Meteors and even a Canberra going under it; and Ken Griffiths, of Bristol's Fiducia Press, recalled watching a Vampire whizz by as he stood on Observatory Hill. This was not the most usually-recalled Vampire underflight, which ended in disaster....

Severn railway bridge; photo by Ben Brooksbank (Creative Commons)

panorama of Kings Weston House

This is a new panorama, centred on the estate of Kings Weston House in the northern suburbs of Bristol.  The present house was designed by Vanbrugh. It's been used for all sorts of things in the last few decades, and known troubled times; the Kings Weston Action Group, formed by architect David Martyn, is dedicated to its conservation.

Here's a close-up of the house.....

 ....and here is a more detailed picture of the house

...which I've inserted into the big picture

-undecided which is the version I prefer!

on the complexity of the octopus

octopus, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

The octopus, the octopus;
It has four times more arms than us
You think that's lots, as I once did?
It's still two fewer than the squid

on the difficulty of saying 'Pontcysyllte'

By Akke at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

With the aqueduct at Pontcysyllte
English bargees get put out of kilter
Cos they can't say it proper;
They just come a cropper.
Though Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch's undoubtedly tougher.

(as an anglophone who tries to pronounce welsh words properly, I suggest you pronounce the 'll' in the same way that you would say the 'tl' sound in 'Bentley' (though this is no help if you use glottal stops), and the whole word as something like Pont-ker-su(tl)-ter, so 'tougher' is a closer rhyme than 'kilter')

hoist the fairly Jolly Roger

Some of Bristol's publishers will be getting together on a book stall this weekend, for the Bristol Harbour Festival. We'll be at the Benjamin Perry Boathouse on Phoenix Wharf, in Redcliffe.


View Larger Map

It's a good place to seek out; there it is, that big black wooden building there. You can either walk down the long ramp from Redcliffe Parade, or follow the cobbled road round from the Ostrich pub; or come through the gate on Redcliffe Way.



We'll probably be upstairs, along with the tea and bacon butties.Very good, very cheap. Good books. And cards of my pictures. Come along! It's not all people in pirate hats going ARRRRRR. Honest.