If one walks along the Belgian Promenade towards the town from Church Island, one rounds a corner and there is Thomas Telford’s great suspension bridge, first mooted in 1785, authorised by parliament in 1819, and opened to traffic in January 1826:-
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Church Island
We had a picnic lunch down on the Belgian Promenade overlooking St. Tysilio and, in the distance down the Straits, the long distance lorries crossing Britannia Bridge. The church is charming, small, dating mostly from the thirteenth century:-
It is approached through a churchyard with a handsome and presumably elderly yew tree:-
Crûg Farm
We spent the afternoon at Crûg Farm, in the gardens of an early nineteenth-century villa just north of Caernarvon, where the Wynne-Joneses have collected plants on expeditions throughout the world, including the Himalayas and South America.
This is where one buys plants:-
Caernarvon
The revival of Caernarvon, which last year felt under way, has been still born. This year even the main street felt down-at-heel, even in spite of the roundabout in the Market Square, whilst the rest of the town was full of good quality houses for sale.
The Working Men’s Conservative Club is for sale:-
Plas Cadnant (1)
Plas Cadnant is a new addition to the pleasures of Anglesey. Last year we came in the rain. This year, it is spectacularly lush and well cared for, including prize-winning vegetables planted by Medwyn’s, making full use of the old walls and dell.
You approach up a long drive with moss-covered banks which open up to fields:-
The Menai Straits
It was high tide down on the Straits as I picked my way along Llandwyn Beach amongst the pebbles, foam and beached plastic bottles and crossed over the sand dunes of Newborough Warren. There’s now a wind farm beyond Caernarvon and more redundant signs on the road down to the beach:-
Anglesey
The sun was shining on the fields on the other side of the river looking out to Snowdonia as we arrived for our holiday:-
Paddington Station (2)
Before checking out on holiday, I am posting an unexpected view of Paddington Station which I took yesterday morning en route for breakfast at the headquarters of Marks and Spencer. My eye was caught by the bold lettering in the distance on the 1930s office block – the so-called ‘Arrivals Side Offices’, now called Tournament House – which were added behind the Great Western Hotel by P.E. Culverhouse in 1933:-
Temple Chambers
I am gradually getting to know the neighbourhood round Unilever House. It’s like a foreign country, the business and commercial district sandwiched between the Temple and the City. Down Temple Avenue I was interested by the sculpture supporting the door on a building of the late 1880s:-
Edna Read
I was asked to speak at the unveiling of a sculpture by Ronald Rae in Campbell Park in Milton Keynes. It was moved from Bletchley Park in memory of Edna Read, a formidable advocate of public sculpture in Milton Keynes. In the 1960s, she founded a City Gallery which operated out of a white van and persuaded the Milton Keynes Development Corporation to put money aside for art. What I hadn’t known, and would never have guessed, was that she was half-Japanese, with a Japanese father, Takayuki Eguchi, who had been a student at the LSE, interned in the war, and sent back to Japan.
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