Still in Blaker's Park

Brighton is blessed with an extraordinary number of clock towers. There is one (commonly known as "the" clock tower) in the centre of the city, one in Preston Park, one in Queen's Park, one in Blaker's Park and another one at Patcham. This, as the title says, the Blaker's Park clock tower.

(I should have straightened the picture with Photoshop! The tower is not really leaning.)

War damage

You will see from yesterday's picture that Blaker's Park has no sort of fence around it. There were at one time iron railings sunk into that low concrete wall but back in 1940/41 the country was suffering a desperate shortage or raw materials to build guns, tanks, ships and planes to replace those left at Dunkirk, sunk by U-boats or shot down in the Battle of Britain. Housewives gave their aluminium saucepans to make into Spitfires while park and other ornamental railings were cut down to make ships and tanks. Look closely and you will see where there are stubs of the old railings sunk into the wall.

Blaker's Park

The houses in yesterday's picture look out across this park.

Cleveland Road

I don't know but would guess that these houses were built in the latter years of the 19th century when Brighton was expanding fast up onto the Downs. They would certainly not have been for the working classes - possibly for senior clerks or people running their own businesses perhaps. There are plenty of similar streets of buildings in the town.

Church Hill cottages

I might describe these cottages as "typical" of the area given the flint. But every house is different on Church Hill, Patcham. These are at the bottom opposite the bus stop.

Meet the Tin family

I'm told there used to be a whole Tin family by the horse trough down in Patcham village centre but when the road layout was altered the rest ran away. No-one knows (or is admitting to knowing) how the family arrived or who changes the clothes according to the season.

Green travellers?

I am quite accustomed to seeing satellite dishes - large ones - outside the caravans of travellers, but solar panels? This is a first.

(I think these are the travellers who were at Waterhall, now moved to beside 39 Acres.)

Woolly thoughts

The sheep that have been grazing the rough parts of the Waterhall valley have been moved now but they have left behind a few mementos.

Looking south

Brighton as seen from the Roman Camp.

Beech avenue

This picture was actually taken a few weeks ago but there are still some leaves clinging stubbornly to this avenue of beech trees in the part of Stanmer woods know as the Pudding Bag.

Bond Street

Brightly painted shops and the Theatre Royal stage door.

Looking up

There must be thousands of people walking past this scene in North Street, Brighton, every day, but how many actually look up and see it?

Expanding

Looks like a west wing is being added to Stanmer House, and the building works must have been well under way even before the place was put on the market.

A foggy day

There was very little of the Downs to be seen from the bedroom window this morning even after it got light.

Jack and Jill

From the ramparts of the Roman Camp we get a glimpse of Jack and Jill, the Clayton windmills, some four miles or more away across the Downs.

Frosty start

A bit chilly walking the dog in Withdean Park after breakfast but that frost is preferable to the snow we had last January!

Meet the locals

These are a common sight in Stanmer woods and Withdean Park - and, indeed, in our garden. This cheeky chap sat on the wall just outside the kitchen window to watch my wife and I do the washing up. He even waited while I went to fetch the camera.

Blurry runners

Sometimes when we go into Stanmer woods we find that large parts have been taken over without warning. Last Sunday, for example, we found the Sussex cross-country championships were being held.

Sign of spring

Bluebells are starting to show through the dead leaves in Stanmer Great Wood.

Grave with a view

That mound is, or was, a disc barrow, a burial mound dating from about 1,500BC. We are up on the Roman Camp (Hollingbury Hill Fort as it is officially known) looking over Brighton and the English Channel.

Wrecked

Perhaps not so much wrecked as abandoned and unloved. Not really what I would want to look out at from my houseboat, but this is the view for some.

More houseboats

More of the Shoreham houseboats. Most of these don't look as smart as the one we saw a couple of days ago.

The footbridge

There is a footbridge spanning the River Adur and connecting Shoreham Beach to the High Street in Shoreham. At the High Street end it is right beside the Sussex Yacth Club boat yard.

Do they board two by two?

I've had occasion to visit Shoreham quite a lot over the last few weeks, hence all the pictures. This houseboat is on the River Adur on the Shoreham Beach bank. It puts me in mind of Noah's ark.

After the rain 2

The fields look a more brilliant green, almost emerald, and there is still a little surface water in the dip.

After the rain

On Tuesday afternoon, after a morning of teeming rain and howling winds, I took Fern to the Clayton windmills and we walked up towards Ditchling Beacon. There was a stream I had never seen before running down one field.

A better view to the east

Go a bit further north from the bench we saw a couple of days ago and the view to the east is improved enormously. As before, we are looking across the Stanmer valley and Mill Wood to a distant view of Firle Beacon but now Castle Hill is in view as well.

Look behind you

This is the view for which the bench in yesterday's photograph was sited. We are looking west across the road to Ditchling Beacon, over Tegdown Hill, the Chattri and on to Holt Hill. That copse on the horizon (right) is Pangdean Holt. To the left of Holt Hill the seemingly wooded area is by Devil's Dyke and further left you might just make out the radio masts on Truleigh Hill.

A bench with a view

It was originally put here just north of Stanmer woods because of the view in the opposite direction but now the hedge is no more people can admire the view in either direction. This is looking across Mill Wood to a distant view of Firle Beacon

On Balmer Down

This picture was actually taken a couple of years ago. The bush has been grubbed up since then and the barbed wire fence removed. The ploughed field is now sheep pasture.

Travelling folk

Travellers have taken over the car park at the Waterhall playing fields. According to our Council, they have come to visit relatives who live in the city. it doesn't help that our Council, on which the Green Party has a majority, seems to welcome these people despite the mess they always leave behind.