The light was on my side

pauldaviescartoons

Jun 15

A trip out late on Sunday to Gloucester. I needed to get out and take some pictures and the docks never disappoint. Later in the day on a Sunday seemed like a good opportunity and so it proved. Here are the best of the bunch:

This is down in the docks, the ship behind waiting I assume to be refurbished. Rather reminded me of this Ben Nicholson abstracts from the 1950s. You see what I mean about the evening light?

This is the dry dock, dry. I expect the ship will end up in here to have it's bottom scraped. There's no better place to get one's bottom scraped than Gloucester Dry Dock.

When we first moved to Gloucester many years ago, the docks were full of buildings in the same state as this place. That's a lot of rusty corrugated over there by the canal. Much of the area now redeveloped. There are questions on how they have gone about it and to my mind the new shopping experience called the Quays, is not to my taste. It's sucked the life out of the City Centre but has regenerated this docks area.

The huge old warehouses now converted to 'City Living', the docks are a pleasant place to stroll around. I like the old ruins so it was a joy to me to see these.

Some with the scaffolding are like modern works of public art. Shame they can't preserve them.

*The green area is not grass, it's a sort of special stagnant water pool*

*Fine collection of planting on the roof of the old building*

It was a good trip out and I followed it the next evening with a walk with my good friend Robin over in Great Witcombe. There's a good walk past the reservoir and up onto the Cotswold Way from there. The light was with us again and after getting past a field of wheat we climbed up to the top and then shared a local bottled beer at the top, looking down on acres of green and pleasant land.

I'd like to show you an image of the view from the bottled ale, but I was defeated by the vagaries of my camera, but take my word on it, there were views toward the Malverns on our left right along to the Midlands and the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. Lovely, so was the beer, also local.

So, with this spell of the good weather, just one more photo to show. My first early spuds. Dug a couple of days ago and clean as a whistle. May the light be with you.