Tag: Northam log pond

On the cusp

Chessel Bay

On 14 September 2020, I set off for an early morning walk along the river. It was one of those mornings that felt like the cusp between summer and autumn. A slight haze of mist hung over the water but the sun was trying to burn it off. When I reached the bay there were swans and ship’s masts, plus the merest hint of pink clinging on from the dawn. We’d made it to mid September. Schools were open again, the furlough scheme was coming to an end and the Chancellor was making promises that there would be no ‘horror show’ of tax rises to cover the financial impact of COVID19.

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Mixed blessings

Northam Road, Southampton early 20th century

Those of us born in England after the middle of the last century have been privileged to live in relatively prosperous and peaceful times. We may have had our trials and tribulations and seen many changes but, until COVID19 arrived, our lives had not been touched by famines, plagues, or world wars. For most of us it came as a shock to realise that we were not immune to such events, our science and technology was not invincible. Each of us had to cope as best we could. For me, the writing project I’d begun in 2019 helped keep my mind occupied but, in some ways, it was a mixed blessing.

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Surviving the pandemic

It seems like a lifetime ago that I last sat here writing a blog post. Now I’m here I hardly know what to say. So much has happened since I told you about my wet walk around the medieval walls with Kim, and our desperate search for coffee. That day seems like a world away and a lifetime ago now. If we’d known what was ahead would we have appreciated the rain a little more, or the freedom to walk in and out of shops with never a thought of masks or social distancing? We could never have imagined what lay ahead, or believed that a Saturday morning at parkrun, followed by a chat over coffee in The Bellemoor would become a distant memory. Neither could we have known that one of us would catch a deadly virus and survive it. Perhaps it was better that we didn’t know. We wouldn’t have enjoyed our walk at all if we had.

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Changes afoot

26 October 2017

Once upon a time the Boardwalk and the river path were part of my daily walk to work. Often I’d look through the wire fence into the old television studio site and wonder when someone would build something there, what it would be and how it would impact on the path. Now the new houses and apartments are finally being built. As I go back and forth across the bridge I often look over and remark on the progress but I still wonder what will become of the path. As it’s a public footpath the builders shouldn’t, in theory, encroach upon it but you never can tell. Continue reading Changes afoot

Close encounters of the swan kind

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30 November 2015

The final day of November was cloudy and cold but, as it wasn’t actually raining, I thought I’d try to fit one more walk in to bolster my woefully inadequate November miles. The forecast was for rain later and I didn’t want to stray too far from home so a quick circuit of the river seemed like a good idea. Of course I might just bump into some black swans but I tried to put that thought from my mind. So far this year cygnet hunts seem to have been doomed to failure. If I didn’t think about them they might appear. Continue reading Close encounters of the swan kind

Singing in the rain and an Airshow disaster

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19 to 22 August

When I left the house on Wednesday morning it seemed darker than it had on Saturday at the same time. Funny how the nights and mornings suddenly seem to draw in although the days have been slowly getting shorter for some time. It was damp and drizzly, which may have added to the dark feeling but there was a touch of blue sky and the clouds were lit by the rising sun. As I walked under the bridge to the footpath that runs bedside the demolished TV studios I thought about a post I’d seen on the Southampton Heritage Facebook page about a log pond along the water there. Continue reading Singing in the rain and an Airshow disaster