Douglas Head (mostly).
25 Mar 2014 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatI've got a whole week off! This is just to use up my annual leave before the end of March, which is the cut-off point for our work 'year'. So a week to do things like spending an hour in the dentist's chair, this morning, and having my hair cut on Thursday. I didn't do the weekend shopping as usual, as I knew I'd be able to do it when the supermarket was quieter on Monday.
As it was a lovely morning yesterday I decided to go for a walk up Douglas Head before going to Tesco (very close by). And I remembered to take the camera so I have a few pictures
Here is Sir William Hillary, founder of the Royal Lifeboat Institution, gazing down on the bay where he was, himself, one of the lifeboat crew;
These days he looks out at the new breakwater (well, new to him, anyway - it was built about 35 years ago.)
As you can see the sea had a few white horses, but the wind was dying down, so it was nice to walk around up there.
Just behind Sir William you can see a small building. Here is a slightly better picture of it...
It is, as it says, a Camera Obscura. Here is a little more about it.
And yes, below it is the top of the lighthouse - it is at the bottom of the head. Here is a nice photo taken by someone from the air.
Up near the Camera Obscura there is a memorial to Lord Nelson and the Manxmen who served with him at Trafalgar -
Why? You might ask. Let's do a slight detour. Here are a couple of pictures I took in Castletown a couple of years ago; firstly a rather nice door -
What's that got to do with Nelson and Trafalgar? Well here is a close-up of the plaque;
So that Manxman took quite a major part in the battle. And there were quite a few Manxmen serving as ordinary seamen in both Victory and other ships of the line. So not quite as odd as it seems that we have a memorial to Nelson, and the Manxmen in his crews, after all.
Now - back to Douglas Head and that picture of the memorial. Can you see that there is something reflected in it? Here is what you see if you turn around -
Yes - I have the reflection of a ship on the memorial stone; I was quite pleased with that! The ship in question is Manannan - that she is in the harbour is a sign of spring as she is our fast-craft and spends the winter in dock as the seas get too rough for her.
A last couple of pictures. This is Douglas' Millennium Stone -
All the towns and parishes have one; they are from the millennium in 2000. You might think that anything fairly modern that commemorates a millennium will be from 2000, but we celebrated a different millennium in 1979 which was the millennium year of Tynwald - so a lot of 'Millennium' things here, like the Millennium Way are 21 years older than people expect them to be!
And finally - this is a view of Douglas from the head -
It is, as you can see, a fairly ordinary small town with a mixture of old and new buildings and a working harbour - nothing terribly noteworthy.
After that, I went, as planned, to Tesco!
As it was a lovely morning yesterday I decided to go for a walk up Douglas Head before going to Tesco (very close by). And I remembered to take the camera so I have a few pictures
Here is Sir William Hillary, founder of the Royal Lifeboat Institution, gazing down on the bay where he was, himself, one of the lifeboat crew;
These days he looks out at the new breakwater (well, new to him, anyway - it was built about 35 years ago.)
As you can see the sea had a few white horses, but the wind was dying down, so it was nice to walk around up there.
Just behind Sir William you can see a small building. Here is a slightly better picture of it...
It is, as it says, a Camera Obscura. Here is a little more about it.
And yes, below it is the top of the lighthouse - it is at the bottom of the head. Here is a nice photo taken by someone from the air.
Up near the Camera Obscura there is a memorial to Lord Nelson and the Manxmen who served with him at Trafalgar -
Why? You might ask. Let's do a slight detour. Here are a couple of pictures I took in Castletown a couple of years ago; firstly a rather nice door -
What's that got to do with Nelson and Trafalgar? Well here is a close-up of the plaque;
So that Manxman took quite a major part in the battle. And there were quite a few Manxmen serving as ordinary seamen in both Victory and other ships of the line. So not quite as odd as it seems that we have a memorial to Nelson, and the Manxmen in his crews, after all.
Now - back to Douglas Head and that picture of the memorial. Can you see that there is something reflected in it? Here is what you see if you turn around -
Yes - I have the reflection of a ship on the memorial stone; I was quite pleased with that! The ship in question is Manannan - that she is in the harbour is a sign of spring as she is our fast-craft and spends the winter in dock as the seas get too rough for her.
A last couple of pictures. This is Douglas' Millennium Stone -
All the towns and parishes have one; they are from the millennium in 2000. You might think that anything fairly modern that commemorates a millennium will be from 2000, but we celebrated a different millennium in 1979 which was the millennium year of Tynwald - so a lot of 'Millennium' things here, like the Millennium Way are 21 years older than people expect them to be!
And finally - this is a view of Douglas from the head -
It is, as you can see, a fairly ordinary small town with a mixture of old and new buildings and a working harbour - nothing terribly noteworthy.
After that, I went, as planned, to Tesco!
