Bridges and other landmarks

[lawrence_dunbar]

Bewick:

Lawrence Dunbar:

kevmac47:
Long before the “Angel of the North” was built, the main landmark in the North East of England was Penshaw Monument. Returning home on Friday or Saturday morning it was always the sight that made me think ah yes!! I’m home. It sits above the south bank of the River Wear alongside th A19 but can be seen from the A1M at the A690 Durham turn.

The “Angel” can’t be seen travelling northbound until after the A194M split so I couldn’t see that when heading home. My little grandaugher who lives near Reading, has a landmark of her own when she comes to visit. As she passes Dishforth in north Yorkshire she always calls that, " the Carrot of the North" Regards Kev. Ps. Sorry!! she’s talking about the airfield windsock.

Is that yee Larry peeping out of that Scammell ? Cheers Dennis.

It might be me as my Old Grandad Smiles was driving it, , Regards Larry.

[john_west]

mushroomman:
Hi John, could the lorry park that was south of the river be on Tooley Street or there was one next to Blackfriars Bridge which I can’t find now so it’s probably long gone.
I preferred to park on Valence Road just off Whitechapel Road but I think that I know what you mean about the atmosphere of the big city, the bright lights and the pubs not closing until 11 p.m.
I have just been looking on Google Earth after Dave Docwra’s mention of Fort Dunlop to see if it’s still there and straight away I could sense the smell of rubber on a dark night with the whole place lit up as you passed it. Can anybody tell me what all those new cars are parked up next to it, surely they are not the last of the Sherpa vans.

Regards Steve.

Steve, As soon as I saw Blackfriars Bridge I thought that that must have been the one. I certainly walked to the tube station, which one I can’t remember. Surely any land there would be far too expensive to still be a truck park!

Eddie, was Parkside the huge mass of colliery buildings on the St Helens side of the M6, south of the A580? I seem to remember tall slab sided buildings and winding wheels. I mentioned this to Julie, my wife, as we were driving past on the way to see our daughter in Oxford. The reply was something like ‘why do you always live in the past?’

Long silence from me! I don’t know why, but I still find it of interest, whereas she doesn’t!

I also remember a spray painting on a wall near that junction which said something like ‘Yanks out of Vietnam!’

John.

[lawrence_dunbar]

[lawrence_dunbar]

[lawrence_dunbar]

[stanfield]

This is the one i like best it tells me i am nearly home when i see this.
SCAMMONDEN BRIDGE M62
This one was when it was just completed.

And this one now.

[eddie_heaton]

That’s the one John. My father was on the team that sank the shafts in the late 50’s. They set a world record at the time, but it ruined his health. It started producing coal in about 1960 or thereabouts. Michael Heseltine and his team closed it down, I’m not sure of the year, it was sometime in the late 80’s I think, could have been early 90’s.

I worked carting pit dirt out of there for Gaskells for 10 months during the recession in about 1980.What a crap job that was, 15 or 16 loads a day. Working for peanuts FFS. Tote that barge, lift that effin’ bale, but at the time , as you know, you couldn’t buy a job around that area, and many other areas as well. Still, we survived.

I’d almost forgotten about the graffiti. It was on the southbound side, daubed along the stone wall next to the footbridge over the M6 that marks the boundary between Greater Manchester and Merseyside, a mile or so south of junction 24. I think it read, YANKS QUIT VIETNAM, LABOUR SAYS SAME, SO DOES POPE. it was there for years, millions of people must have seen it. I don’t think it’s there now though.

Regards. Eddie.

[mushroomman]

m.a.n rules:
all those cars parked up are brand new jag’s awaiting export most of them.

Thanks for that m.a.n. rules.

Eddie, I must admit that any graffiti makes my blood boil and there used to be loads of it along The East Lanc’s Road in the eighties. If you remember as you went along the M62 towards Liverpool on one of the bridges just before the Widnes turn off somebody had scrawled in bright red letters Munich 58. This was visible for many years until somebody scrawled Hillsborough 89 and within two weeks the roads department steam cleaned it all off.
Can anybody still remember all that pointless graffiti along the M1 near the Sheffield area on nearly every bridge in the early eighties that went on for about three years. It allegedly cost the roads department and the police millions of pounds to catch the (z.b.) which they finally did and when he went to court I think that he got three months inside. I can remember his mother in the paper saying he didn’t deserve to go to jail and they should of given him a sponge and a bucket to clean it off.

[eddie_heaton]

I actually don’t mind a bit of Banksy type graffiti mushroomman, if it’s tastefully done, and some of these kids display a real talent, even if that talent is misdirected, but I’ve seen the Munich 58 one in several places, usually around the Liverpool area and that one is just sick. Hillsborough of course, as we all know, was an entirely different matter, as no one from Manchester was involved, as far as I’m aware.

You can buy little graffiti transfers from these model shops nowadays mushroomman. You stick them on the rolling stock of your model railway to create a more realistic effect. That’s how widespread the problem is and how accepted it’s become.

The graffiti along the M1, was perpetrated by a kid from the Sheffield area who called himself FISTO. As you say, it cost quite a few bob to put right and the offender was quite rightly sent to bed without supper that night. I read somewhere that sometime after he’d done his stretch, he was sent on some kind of art course, at the taxpayers expense, as a further inducement for him to learn to mend his wicked ways.

While we’re on the subject of graffiti, ( sorry John, these threads seem to have a habit of growing tentacles don’t they ? ), there can hardly be a driver in the country that doesn’t remember the GEORGE DAVIS IS INNOCENT one. That seemed to be nationwide. It seemed to be a matter of civic pride to have that one scrawled somewhere on a bridge or a wall in your town or village.

If I remember correctly, the courts finally saw the error of their ways, caved in and set him free. To show his gratitude, our George immediately went off on a robbing spree and within a matter of months was back inside. I never saw any graffiti that read GEORGE DAVIS IS GUILTY though.

The one that used to make me smile though was on the M57 approaching Switch Island. It read THE PIES THE PIES. I can’t imagine what that one was all about. It may still be there for all I know. Can you picture some nutter from Kirkby, risking his life, shinning up an overhead gantry over a busy motorway just to write something as vacuous as that?. The mind boggles.

Cheers. Eddie.

[windrush]

Eddie, The Pies, The Pies is the name of a band from Mersyside who have been around for 20+ years but only recently produced their first album. They were on BBC Breakfast a week or two ago when the ‘graffiti’ topic was raised again! liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on … ay-7457397

Pete.

[kevmac47]

windrush:
Eddie, The Pies, The Pies is the name of a band from Mersyside who have been around for 20+ years but only recently produced their first album. They were on BBC Breakfast a week or two ago when the ‘graffiti’ topic was raised again! liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on … ay-7457397

Pete.

A landmark I watched deteriorate over many years was,the Lightning jet fighter in the field alongside the A1 in the Newark area. A very great icon of British engineering and technology slowly going to waste over many years. Regards Kev.

[mushroomman]

Somebody once told me that all the bakers vans in Wigan have a sign on the back saying “NO PIES ARE KEEP IN THIS VEHICLE OVERNIGHT”. I am sure that’s not true.

Getting back to bridges, the old London Bridge is still looking good and despite what I was told years ago (and believed) the American guy who bought it never thought that he was buying Tower Bridge.
I wonder if any of the older fellows on here drove over it before 1967.

[rigsby]

My favourite was the winking witch rock or nowadays mostly called the winking man after some idiots decided to climb up it and broke part of it off altering the shape . After crawling up upper hulme the sight of that told me half an hour to home . dave

[mushroomman]

Hi Dave, I used to enjoy driving past The Winking Man although he was known by a similar name by all the other drivers. I hope that he has still got his trilby.

[kmills]

One landmark that I remember is the farmhouse in the middle of the M62, just east of J22. I used to to drive past that and wonder why anyone would want to live there?, I understand the sentiment of staying put, but being practical, I wouldn’t want to live in the central reservation of a motorway myself - but each to their own. Unlike other landmarks that reminded other people on this thread that they were only half hour from home or whatever - looking back, the farmhouse told me that I probably wouldn’t be home that night as I lived in Kent.

[lawrence_dunbar]

[lawrence_dunbar]

[lawrence_dunbar]

Heres a one for for Harry,Regards Larry.

[gingerfold]

When heading back from south up the M6, Knutsford Services was 40 minutes from home. Nowadays it a rarity to be able to do Knutsford Services to Bolton in 40 minutes no matter what I’m driving, such is traffic congestion and delays.

[chrisarbon]

Prisons are distinctive buildings that crop up occasionally. The old ones with high walls, small windows and big drive- through door appear in urban areas. I always try and see if it is a famous one. Like Strangeways, Wormwood Scrubs or Holloway. My favourite drive-by prison was Bedford but probably because of the building next door.