Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Sunnymeads - in the sunshine!

Sunnymeads Station is the least used station in Berkshire according to the latest release of the Office of Rail and Road estimates of station usage 2023 to 2024. 
 
The station saw 24,560 passenger entries or exits which also means it ranks 2,199th across the UK. It’s not far from home so I thought I’d go and add 1 to the statistics for 2024-2025 πŸ˜€
 
 Sunnymeads Station
 
It’s no surprise that this isn’t a busy station. Located between Datchet and Wraysbury on the line from Staines to Windsor & Eton Riverside it sits in a private residential estate and lacks a car park for commuters. There’s a ticket machine but  not a ticket office. No ticket gates, no loos, no waiting room. There’s somewhere to park your bike though and (apparently) Wi-Fi. It’s very much not step free since access to the island platform is via a footbridge. There is a Customer Help Point and electronic displays showing the times.of the next departures. Two trains per hour are provided by South Western Railway in each direction, to London Waterloo, (via Richmond) and to Windsor & Eton Riverside.
 
 Sunnymeads Station, departures.
 
 It’s quiet here, at least if you can ignore the jets taking off from nearby Heathrow Airport. It was a midweek lunchtime when I visited and I saw two passengers get on the train towards London and one who got on the same train to Windsor that I caught. There really isn’t a lot to do while waiting for a train. The best view of the station is from the Welley Road over bridge on the up side of Sunnnymeads, accessed via a footpath and a few steps alongside the line.
 
 450024 departing Sunnymeads Station bound for London Waterloo via Richmond
 
 Back on the platform waiting for the next train to Windsor I was glad that it was actually sunny at Sunnymeads unlike when Geoff Marshall made his video.
While waiting I was able to speculate about the mystery object in the field next to Platform 1. A submarine? A space capsule? Or just an old septic tank πŸ˜€
 
 Sunnymeads Station mystery object. Is it a space capsule? A submarine? A septic tank?
 
 Right on time my 1249 train to Windsor & Eton Riverside arrived and it was 71017, one of SWR’s recently introduced Arterio trains, so a first for me visiting Sunnymeads and a first ride on an Arterio. These 10 coach units certainly don’t fit on Sunnymeads’ platforms so it you’re planning on coming make sure you are in the front 7 coaches. I took a ride to Windsor & Eton Riverside - I think that might be a first too - and had a mooch around Windsor in the sunshine.
 
 SWR Arterio 701017 arrives Sunnymeads Station bound for Windsor & Eton Riverside
 
 I walked to the station from Datchet village but if you’re coming by train to Sunnymeads it’s around three quarters of an hour from waterloo or six minutes from Windsor & Eton Riverside.
 
With little else to do I took a few photos which are in this Flickr Album
 
 Sunnymeads Station
 
 
 
Come to Sunnymeads and see if we can lift it off the bottom rung of Berkshire’s stations next year πŸ˜‰
 

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

My 2024 in numbers.

 Here are some not necessarily accurate stats from 2024.

This Blog

Received 52900 "views", although I have no way of knowing how many of the viewers are human. 

Most of you are using the Chrome browser:

Chrome     46.8K
Firefox     1.19K
Safari     625
MSIE     131
HeadlessChrome     90
CriOS     13
SamsungBrowser     4
GSA     3
Silk     1
Other     4.11K
 
You use a range of Operating Systems:
 
Macintosh     31.5K
Windows     15.5K
iPhone     516
Android     454
Linux     358
Unix     284
iPad     112
Android 14    15
Android 10    7
Other    4.21K

And you are located all over the world:

Singapore    28.2K
Hong Kong    12.6K
Germany    3.34K
United States    1.39K
Israel    596
United Kingdom    572
Brazil    391
China    293
Iran    242
Canada    204
India    78
South Korea    64
Finland    53
France    27
Russia    17
TΓΌrkiye    15
Belgium    14
Mexico    12
South Africa    12
Other    4.83K
 
Hmm. I have no idea why this blog is so popular in Singapore and Hong Kong. Perhaps you can see why I doubt that all of "you" are humans ☺
 
My Flickr Photos
 
I uploaded 3,255 photos which received 64,333 views and 944 favourites. Of those 3,255 photos this was the most favourited:

Locomotion, Shildon. Prototypes.

Thanks to the three people with an odd taste in trains ☺

Rail Travel

According to Trainsplit I made 37 journeys costing £740.45 and saved £23.55 by using split tickets. Apparently I saved 493.92kg CO2e which is the equivalent of  running 3,315 washing machine loads and I spent a total of 42 hours and 42 minutes travelling.

These figures are well below the actual ones since I don't only purchase rail tickets from Trainsplit, sometimes I use the station ticket machines. Nor does it include the £120 I put on my Oyster Card over the year, much of which went on Underground or rail journeys.

Road Travel

I've driven 5302 miles using 123.16 gallons (559.87 litres) of petrol at a cost of £788.77. I've also spent £28 on bus fares (not including TfL buses which come under the Oyster Card spend). The bus fare spend will probably increase in 2025, I wish it was because we'd get a better local bus service rather than that the fare cap is increasing.

Air Travel 

Nope. I've successfully avoided the horror show that is passing through airports since March 2007. I did take the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight and back in June if you want to count that.

Sea Travel

Also nope.

London LOOP

Sections completed: 2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, and 15. Approx 72 miles (116 km) done out of ~150 miles (241 km) total.

Map showing London LOOP with completed sections highlighted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Dead Pool 2025

Deadpool 2025


My guesses for celebrities who won’t see 2026


  • Neil Percival Young (Canadian Musician)
  • Michael Caine (English Actor)
  • Melvyn Hayes (English actor & voiceover artist)
  • Sir Thomas Hicks "Tommy Steele" (English singer & actor)
  • June Lockhart (American TV & Movie actress)
  • Elizabeth Lois Shields, nΓ©e Teare (UK politician, former MP for Rydale)
  • Vanessa Redgrave (English Actress)
  • Billy Connolly (Scottish actor, comedian, artist, writer, musician, and television presenter)
  • Iain David Thomas Vallance, Baron Vallance of Tummel (retired businessman)
  • Wendy Craig, (English actress)

The last two are replacements for Kenneth Cope and Jimmy Carter who left in 2024

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Urban West London Ramble

16th December
 
December is dull. Grey overcast skies under which the huddled multitudes scurry spending money on presents for people they probably don’t much like. A shortage of daylight limits travel opportunities and everywhere is doing xmas tackiness. You might think that I dislike this time of year. You’d be right. Anyway I made an effort to get out of the house and immediate surroundings and took a train to Richmond without much of a plan of what to do once I got there. Inevitably it turned into an urban ramble passing through Isleworth, Syon Park, and Brentford eventually getting to Kew Bridge at dusk and catching a number 65 bus back to Richmond. I was even home in time for tea.
 
Who’s afraid of...
 
I walked through Richmond town centre down to the riverside near Richmond Bridge where I bumped into the controversial and troubled writer Virginia Woolf. Well not the real one obviously since she died in 1941 but a statue seated on a bench beside the river. The Richmond connection being that the town was her home during the Great War, after moving out of London and before the move to Sussex where she ultimately ended her life by walking into the River Ouse near Rodmell. You could sit next to her on the bench but she doesn’t look like you’d be welcome to do so.
 
 Virginia Woolf
 
 I sat on a nearby bench instead and then decided to walk along the river towards Kew.
 
Crossing the Thames
 
At Richmond Lock the riverside path was closed so I crossed over the Thames on the ornate Grade II* listed Richmond Lock Footbridge to St. Margarets on the west bank (north bank?) and turned right towards Isleworth.
 
 Richmond Lock Footbridge
 
 It was an hour or so before high tide but already the water was beginning to spill across the edge of the riverside footpath by The Boathouse so i was glad to reach the slightly raised grassed area of Isleworth Promenade. No I didn’t know Isleworth had a prom either. It’s entirely devoid of amusement arcades, candy floss stalls or Punch and Judy however, just a broad grassy strip alongside the river leading towards Thisleworth Marina (not a spelling error) where there’s no access to the riverside and you have to bear away to cross the River Crane at the Richmond Road bridge, about a hundred yards from its confluence with the Thames. 
 
I returned to the river’s side at Lion Wharf with a blue crane and a stack of pallets and other materials showed that this is still a working river, as does the number of barges moored nearby and the commercial buildings on the edge of Isleworth Ait.
 
 Crane, Lion Wharf, Isleworth
 
I turned left and walked past the boats to Town Wharf where the Thames Path and Capital Ring Section 7 pass through the Town Wharf pub, or at least the outside terrace area that they’ve built across the riverside footpath and carried on until I reached The Duke of Norhumberland’s River.
 
Old Isleworth
 
The Duke of Northumberland’s River is named after Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland although he didn’t build it, he inherited it from his wife Dorothy Devereaux upon marriage. It is an artificial watercourse which distributes water from an old acquaintance of this blog, the River Crane, at Whitton and by a roundabout route brings it to Isleworth where it used to power a mill and by way of a system of sluices fills the ornamental ponds in the Duke’s nearby estate Syon Park. To cross it’s outflow into the Thames by Isleworth Ait there’s an old stone bridge at Mill Plat on Church Street which leads into Isleworth’s old riverside. Although the bridge is almost surrounded by modern flats now.
 
 Mill Bridge, The Duke of Northumberland's River, Isleworth
 
 Church Street is blocked to through traffic save for pedestrians and cyclists though I can remember when it wasn’t. It now forms a long cut-de-sac with the open end at the river by the London Apprentice pub. I might have stopped for a swift one but wanted to carry on while there was still plenty of daylight left.
 
 Church Street, Isleworth
 
Although I did pause for a while along with everyone else by Isleworth Drawdock where a crane was unloading a container from a barge and depositing it at the roadside. There seemed a good chance they’d drop it on themselves, the dog, or the adjacent parked van but eventually they wrangled it into place. It was a bit like a scene from an earlier time since they eschewed PPE and any kind of guarding to keep the public out of harm’s way. A HSE inspector would have had a fit.
 
 Crane operation, Isleworth Drawdock
 
 Syon Park
 
I passed The Isleworth Parish Church All Saints, which is an uncomfortable mix of 14th century tower and late 1960s modern because on the night of 27th May 1943 the church was gutted by fire; arson at the hands of two local schoolboys. Only the tower and outside walls survived. Rebuilding commenced in 1968 and was completed in 1970.
Skirting the churchyard on the raised walkway - the road often floods, along with the cars of anyone unfortunate enough to be using the riverside car park - I entered Syon Park  through the gate in Park Road and followed the path towards Syon House. As I did so it occurred to me that the last time I’d walked this way was with my maternal Grandad. So I’d have been at most 8 years old. Grandad used to take me and sometimes my little brother for long walks from Myrtle Road, Hounslow, sometimes to Osterley Park but I clearly recall going to Isleworth one day and through Syon Park to Brentford. I expect Gran wanted him (and probably us) out from under her feet else he’d be in his armchair smoking Guards fags and we’d be being told off for playing with the mangle in the scullery πŸ˜€
 
Anyway back to 2024. Here’s Syon House, the west London residence of the Duke of Northumberland. A Grade I listed building, it lies within the 200-acre (80 hectare) Syon Park. These days it shares the park with a big garden centre and its car park and a Hilton hotel. It’s still not a bad pad for a Duke’s not-quite-country-any-more-etreat though it’s a shame they built it under the Heathrow flight path...
 
 Syon House
 
 One day I must pay a visit to the inside but it’s shut in the winter. I left the park onto the London Road and made a short diversion to look at the rude lion.
 
 The Lion Gate, Syon House
 
 Syon House's 'Lion' Gate is widely recognised. The row of arches, topped off with a lion which originally stood on top of Northumberland House on Strand, the Dukes of Northumberland's town house. The popular story goes, which was also told to me by Grandad Kimbell, is that its arse pointed towards Clarence House as an insult after the Duke of Northumberland fell out with the then Prince of Wales. The Lion Gate was designed by Robert Adam c.1769, oddly in Adam's original drawings the tail hung down naturally rather than being raised and pointing straight. 
 
Brentford, battles and boats
 
I retraced my steps and continued in the direction in which the lion’s head is looking, towards Brentford town centre. One of the joys of walking around the streets is that you learn things in passing that you never knew. This time it was finding a plaque on the old brick boundary wall of Syon Park commemorating the fact that in 1616 – 1617 Pocahontas, a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, resided in Brentford with her husband, John Rolfe and son Thomas. You might know her from a Disney film. Or if you’re like me you’ll be reminded of Julian Clary’s “what’s a Hontas?” quip πŸ˜‰
 
 Memorial to Princess Pocahontas, london Rd. Brentford
 
 In November 1642 a Royalist army advancing on London overcame a much smaller Parliamentarian force in battle at Brentford. The town was ransacked in the immediate aftermath of the engagement. Now cynical types might suggest that parts of it haven't been repaired since but that's just the current round of regeneration. Having driven the Parliamentary forces out of Brentford the Royalists advanced to Turnham Green where there was a stand off between them and a large Parliamentary force. But the Parliamentary commanders didn’t think that their troops were trained well enough to risk an attack and and the King decided not to press his advance on London by giving battle against a greater force. He decided, as it was near the end of the campaigning season, to retreat to Oxford where his army could be billeted over the winter. Had the King pressed on the course of history might have been very different. Here’s a view downstream from Brentford Bridge under which the River Brent flows and over an earlier version of which Prince Rupert’s troops advanced. According to Grandad somewhere along that left bank stood the street and the house where Gran was born.
 
 Grand Union Canal, Brentford
 
 I stopped for a coffee in Brentford High Street before pressing on back to the riverside at Ferry Wharf where the River Brent/Grand union Canal make their confluence with the Thames having passed through Brentford Docks. In the back channel around Lot’s Ait are many houseboats and a boat building yard. Apparently some scenes in The African Queen were filmed at Lot’s Ait. I’ve no idea if that's true though some of the film was shot in Isleworth Studios which gives rise to the persistent urban legend that Isleworth is the origin of London’s parakeet population. Almost certainly not true.
 
 Dahlia Bridge, Lot's Ait, Brentford.
 
 I walked through Waterman’s Park, formerly part of Brentford Gas Works, noting that all but one of the wrecks has now been removed from the river pending redevelopment of the moorings. That can’t go ahead until they work out how to remove the last vessel which is so structurally unsound it can’t be re-floated. Everything is now tied up in red tape waiting permission and environmental mitigation plans. Oops.
 
 Wreck, Waterman's Park, Brentford
 
 As daylight faded I passed the tall tower of the London Museum of Water and Steam (aka Kew Bridge Steam Museum) and arrived at Kew Bridge just in time to hop on a 65 back to Richmond station.
 
 
 An Urban Ramble, Richmond to Brentford.
 

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

My Flickr Year 2024

 People like Pacers ☺


MyFlickrYear24 Photo

Thursday, 14 November 2024

Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works

4th November
 
Back on 21st September I paid a visit to Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works as part of Open House London. I decided at the time that coming back for the full tour which includes running the Universal Testing Machine was a thing I really should do. They run full tours twice a month so I booked for Sunday 4th November. The testing works tours are  run by an all volunteer crew and the whole set up is friendly, slightly nerdy (it’s engineering after all) and informative. It runs like a well oiled machine. Which is to say that things don’t necessarily go to plan but they know what to do to coerce the machines into behaving themselves  πŸ˜€
 
After a brief introduction and a safety briefing (everything you might lean on is dirty, the floor is uneven, don’t put your fingers into anything unless invited to do so) we all went down to the basement (mind your head) for an introductory video followed by a demonstration of a Hounsfield Tensometer testing a piece of steel wire (coat hanger) under tension until it became two pieces of steel wire. In a clever combination of old and new tech the Hounsfield machine was connected to a Raspberry Pi  to record the test results live and display them on a big screen.
 
 Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works, old meets new, Hounsfield Tensometer and Raspberry Pi.
 
 Visitors were then divided into two groups for logistical reasons (there’s limited physical space in parts of this old building) for demos of various other testing machines in the collection, breaking more bits of metal and other materials along the way. Then everyone gathered back in the main room for the highlight of the two and a half hour tour, a test run of Kirkaldy’s huge Universal Testing Machine which occupies most of the ground floor. How the machine works was explained, a thick steel test piece fitted into the machine and hydraulic pressure applied. After a couple of false starts caused by the test piece slipping in the wedges that gripped it in the machine a successful run was completed with a bang. See the video below for the moment that the test piece gave up at a bit over 18 tonnes tensile force.
 
 
 
I had an enjoyable afternoon and I’d recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in engineering, history, or breaking things. Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works is easy to get to being in Bankside, a short walk from Blackfriars station and close to Tate Modern. For more information and to book tickets check out their website here.
 
 
 

Wednesday, 16 October 2024

New Boots

As the season turned to Autumn it became apparent that the soles of my walking boots and particularly the heels were wearing to the point of “wouldn’t pass an MOT”. Not so bad in the dry but a couple of slippery moments on recent walks got me thinking that if I didn’t do something about it soon I was going to end up sitting on my arse in the mud at least and possibly worse now I’m of an age when falling over isn’t funny. 

Ideally I wanted to replace them with a new pair the same as the existing. So I checked the Decathlon web site. Couldn’t find them in the current range. By chance I found them in the “offers” section as last chance, end of line and it showed 1 pair available in my size in the nearest branch. No time to waste then and since there was something else I wanted as well that was supposed to be in stock off I went.

And up and down the walking footwear aisle I went, several times to no avail. Oh well. I spent 20 minutes or so trying on the other offerings of full-height waterproof* walking boots before settling on a comfortable pair in boring all-black. Then as I headed for the till I found an “on sale” rack of footwear several aisles away from the other footwear and right there was the pair I’d come for. Quick swap, happy days. Never did find the other thing I went for though.



Just been up across country to the village for milk and bread and to “christen” them. Very comfortable, no breaking in required. Feet and arse dry πŸ‘

Ready for the next trek.


*As an aside how can you describe boots as waterproof when they don’t have a bellows tongue? There was one pair on offer which though comfortable would have resulted in soggy socks if you stepped in any puddle deeper than 2”.