Sometimes, Nicktor is like a dog with a bone: He won’t let go until he’s had his fill. So, it was no surprise when, this morning, he was determined to get a photograph of the Grimsby Dock Tower. Of course, he didn’t reckon on the fact that it’s almost impossible to find a spot to photograph it from. But, unperturbed, he drove through a number of roundabouts numerous times until he found a spot between a derelict building and a very large timber yard. He then blipped it.
My effort was out of the window of the car as we drove around in ever increasing circles. I actually took about 3,000 but this one was the best and, to be fair, the only one with the tower actually in it.
You can read about it yourself either on Nicktor’s informative Blip or the Wikipedia page (links above). My interest is in the story that Bob told us at the Rutland Arms yesterday. He’s a Rotarian and, therefore, had special access to the tower. He climbed the spiral staircase to the top and enjoyed a spectacular view.
He then told us that the tower was built to power lots of machinery on the dock including the lock gates. It was an amazing bit of invention. A load of water rising to great height then powering various bits and pieces of gears and cables, gates and cranes. I can just see the designer standing before it on the first day of operation and feeling rightly proud of his achievement.
I’m not so sure about his feelings a year later when, as technology raced ahead, the tower was replaced by a much smaller, compact version which cost a fraction of the original tower. Now that’s harsh, but, as we all should know, technological advance is exponential, aided by the technology itself.
Still, spare a thought for poor James William Wild.
Funnily enough, Nicktor showed me a photograph on his phone of a tower. I looked at it, pondered for a bit, then said “That looks like Siena!” He smiled and said it was. James William based his design on the tower in Siena. I recalled the day that I couldn’t climb the tower because the weather was deemed too awful. Here’s my photo.
I’m not sure about James William’s design intentions but I think they may have been right about the weather. You can read my entry here.
While the Tower Story was great, I think I prefer the Pigs Head Roundabout which we circled more than a few times. I should have taken a much better photograph but, given the general standard in this post, I think this is in keeping.
It’s actually the Westgate Roundabout and I can’t find anything about the pigs. I’m thinking it’s either a way to discourage people or wild boar, from entering Grimsby. I could be wrong. Maybe local debutantes dance around the poles once a year at the annual Pig Head Ball. Who knows? Maybe someone will comment with some enlightenment.
While we’re at it, I’d also like a bit of enlightenment as to why a perfectly good baby carrier was left by the side of a motorway. We passed it on the way home. Apart from the lack of a baby, it appeared to have been put down in preparation for attaching the stroller section to go for a bit of a walk. Except there was no-one for miles around, it was on the side of a motorway and, as I said, there was no baby.
Of course, the baby could have been carried off by owls, I suppose. Or wild boar, maybe. I didn’t see any pigs heads on stakes, so they could be roaming around.
Whatever the reason, I doubt I’ll ever know. Nicktor thinks it was a guy in a two-seater sports car who dumped the baby carrier when the opportunity to pick up a young, nubile, hitch-hiker presented itself. I think that’s more an indication of what Nicktor would do.
Needless to say, I didn’t get a photograph.
I did, however, manage to get photographs of the amazing underpass art opposite the St James Hotel. There was the famous people of Grimsby bit, featuring a few people I’d never heard of.
The only one I knew was John Hurt and I thought it was Ian McKellan. Mind you, we had recently read about the woman to the extreme left of the photograph above. She was Brenda Fisher and she set the world record for swimming the English Channel in 1951. Nicktor reckons she had to swim because she forgot to clip the vouchers out of the Sun in order to get a cheap ferry crossing.
As well as the famous folk wall, there’s also this rather colourful explosion of unfathomable meaning.
I rather like the dog DJ.
And so, that was Grimsby. Our trip home was a bit melancholic, given how much we enjoyed visiting the town (I’m ignoring the awful football) and this was amplified by the awful weather which grew worse the further south we went.
Still, we had a reasonably good run and arrived safe and sound at our respective houses.
An excellent two day visit.
