Rainy Day

First day of rain after weeks of sun. Garden needs the water.

Wells

A cold blustery day before the rain came.

Gravesend Clock Tower

Three posts in a row featuring refurbished spaces. Today I had the chance to get pictures of the clock tower in Gravesend. It has this year had a restoration. New lighting put in and general tidy up.

Not Being an Anorak

I will start today by giving the following disclaimer.

'I AM NOT AN ANOARK! I may take an interest in slightly obscure subjects, but I am not obsessive about things.'

Everyday on my walk to the station I pass many different manhole covers set into the road and pavement. 

These cover all different types of services, Water mains, fire mains, optical fibre internet, electricity, gas and phones. It is the phones that are the most interesting as each is marked with whatever the current name and Logo is for the company running the service

I think the oldest cover is this one 

It is branded as Post Office telegraphed. 

These three are all branded as Post Office Telephones

Next in age looks to be this cover branded GPO and has the number 65 on it which I think may have been the year of manufacture.

Next is this one.

Branded PO and what may be a date of 1972

Next comes this

With the Telecom logo with the morse signal for T making up the bar of the 'T' in the logo. This could be dated to 1987

Finally these covers

Branded BT and possibly dated 2002 and 2017.

AsI said at the start I am not obsessive about this, its just I find it interesting to have all this history at my feet on a short walk to the station.

London before Christmas

We always try and have a day up in London in the week before Christmas. Mainly to visit Borough Market and to see the lights.

This year we managed to get up the day after the winter solstice. Walking all the way from London bridge almost to Marble Arch.

Further up the Kali Strata

As I said in the last post the Kali Strata is the main 'street' between the harbour and the old town at the top off the hill in Symi. It is lined by the houses built by rich merchants in the 19th century. During the war the island was occupied and damaged by bombs and departing German army.
Many of the houses are still ruined, awaiting someone with a large amount of money to rebuild.
Because of the amount of classical houses on Symi any building built must be built in the local style, and as there is no vehicle access to the street the cost can be astronomic.

 But when the houses are restored the results are beautiful.

Up the Kali Strata

I am going to be blogging some of the images I took on our summer holiday in Greece.
We booked at the last moment without doing any research, not like me at all. Well I say no research, but as the girl in the travel agent was pulling up destinations I was frantically searching on my phone.
Our original plan was a hotel with a pool, near a beach, either half board or B&B and near an airport. We ended up on the beautiful island of Symi.
Never heard of it?
Neither had I!
Well it turns out its a small island about an hour and a half from Rhodes by ferry. Sitting about 5 miles off the Turkish coast.  The island has no natural water so no swimming pools, all the water either comes in by boat or from the local desalination plant. Traditionally each house had a cistern to store water from the winter rain, but this is not enough for a tourist trade. Also I would add that all the beaches are a boat trip or long walk away and we were in self catering!
So almost exactly what we had wanted originally!
Anyway we arrived safely and the island was everything we wanted for a holiday. The town of Symi is split into Yialos which is the area around the harbour and Chorio which is the older part of town up on the top of the hill. The two parts of town are linked by the Kali Strata a stone stepped street lined with old buildings.

I will put a few more images of the street up as I get them processed.

Instagram

It's been awhile since I posted to my blog but I have not been completely away from photography.
To 'keep my hand in' I have restarted posting to Instagram.
Not many images but these images are linked by a theme or style, also so as I don't get bored I have decided to change style/theme every 24 images. The first 24 images are reposted here.