Reculver walk
Jul. 23rd, 2012 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fingertroubleHmm a while since I've done a public post...it's been rather odd for various reasons but mostly because of my health (I picked up 2 lovely blokes over Pride but also picked up an infection - no not of that sort which would be fairly unlikely since we were safe, more of the nasty flu/sore throat that won't go away...so on antibiotics.
I then picked up food poisoning which the pennicilin seems to have kicked the shit out of (hoho) also. Not good.
Friday was a bit in a daze but did the Tanks at the Tate Modern with John...how much has been spent on making something look so post-industrial? Seemed a waste of space to me, liked the Crystal Quilt but the other Korean piece had nice music but otherwise pushed the 'pretensions bullshit artist' button...not sure my artist-dar is upto scratch but if I can't work out what it's trying to say and it's full of surreal blank expression and non-sequiturs I usually assume it's someone just playing grant/commission games. You know - it IS possible to be a credible artist AND connect with your audience AND say something you know? Like it is possible to smile in band photos and it is possible to be pop and original or indie and direct and not obscure. It's harder - easier to hide things under rocks of veiled meaning and frowns and a fuckload of black clothing - but if an artist isn't revealing the essential nature of something, life, nature, emotions, and pushing some button other than 'boring' and 'obscure' then I despair.
I felt a lot better on Sat so went for a 12 mile walk from Margate to Herne Bay via Reculver - which I was planning to do even if I had to go dash into the bushes, as the weather has suddenly become less winter and more summer. Probably good I didn't need to go alfresco since there were large stretches of foreshore without bushes....until you got to Reculver:
(these are unedited JPGs btw - not my usual release-standard but literally it will take months before I get round to editing and posting these - more likely winter - don't like using good weather time indoors editing photos if I can avoid it! Who knows maybe Olympic enforced hermitdom or the probable return to crap summer after this week will mean I get loads done?...Probably not because although I love Lightroom I really hate photoediting...see it as a major chore. Work.)
At Reculver it seemed there were loads of people and photographers waiting - it was a hour or two to sunset and I expect they and the firedancers you can see practicing in front of the church were waiting for Sunset....no luxury for me since the last train from Herne Bay was 9:33 - well there was a later 10:33 but as it's 3 miles didn't want to risk missing it.
Reculver is an old monastery, originally a Roman fort, half of which is now at the bottom of the bay - that's the edge of the cliff you can see. Not the original spires, they fell down and were repaired in 1810 but the rest of the building was moved or demolished and the spires left for navigation aids. An interesting place, but oddly very touristy and not the quiet lonely romantic/gothic ruin I was hoping for. Hence why I took a few pics then hightailed it out of there...the walk from Margate was quiet, mostly bikers, no walkers. I loved the odd area around Birchington, loads of strange graffiti and odd tunnels in the chalk cliff - if you go up them you end up in the middle of a housing estate. Very strange and very 'Through the Rabbit Hole' - you'd not guess the cliff or the sea was even there. Very beautiful too, looking out to the windfarms at sea.
Herne Bay was scarily chavvy. Margate and seemingly Weston & Birchington aren't exactly lovely seaside towns, and the towerblocks in this area are horrible - but Margate via Tracey Emin (brief pause for puking - and that's not the food poisoning) is trying to do a 'Folkestone' and go via arty via the new Tate/Turner museum there...which is nice, but oddly placed near the blight that is Margate. Herne Bay was like this, but without the edifying and highbrow culture...I arrived at Saturday 8pm and had kids shouting stuff at me or making stupid comments about the beard, usually currently in the progress of trashing a bus stop. Nice.
I dared to have some pie and chips and ate it on the shore looking out at the sunset then hightailed it out of there before I became a youth violence statistic. It was like Guildford or Reading-sur-mer. Full of bored local boys looking for someone to bully or attack to impress bored girls. Not nice. The train back was odd too, full of gaudily clad and totally trashed weed smoking girls and boys in odd 'stag night' attire...they disappeared when I changed at Faversham, but I wonder what disgusted looks and eyerolls of the locals when they tumbled off the train at Victoria.
If there was an analogy to New Yorker's disdain to the bridge and tunnel crowd this was it.
I then picked up food poisoning which the pennicilin seems to have kicked the shit out of (hoho) also. Not good.
Friday was a bit in a daze but did the Tanks at the Tate Modern with John...how much has been spent on making something look so post-industrial? Seemed a waste of space to me, liked the Crystal Quilt but the other Korean piece had nice music but otherwise pushed the 'pretensions bullshit artist' button...not sure my artist-dar is upto scratch but if I can't work out what it's trying to say and it's full of surreal blank expression and non-sequiturs I usually assume it's someone just playing grant/commission games. You know - it IS possible to be a credible artist AND connect with your audience AND say something you know? Like it is possible to smile in band photos and it is possible to be pop and original or indie and direct and not obscure. It's harder - easier to hide things under rocks of veiled meaning and frowns and a fuckload of black clothing - but if an artist isn't revealing the essential nature of something, life, nature, emotions, and pushing some button other than 'boring' and 'obscure' then I despair.
I felt a lot better on Sat so went for a 12 mile walk from Margate to Herne Bay via Reculver - which I was planning to do even if I had to go dash into the bushes, as the weather has suddenly become less winter and more summer. Probably good I didn't need to go alfresco since there were large stretches of foreshore without bushes....until you got to Reculver:
(these are unedited JPGs btw - not my usual release-standard but literally it will take months before I get round to editing and posting these - more likely winter - don't like using good weather time indoors editing photos if I can avoid it! Who knows maybe Olympic enforced hermitdom or the probable return to crap summer after this week will mean I get loads done?...Probably not because although I love Lightroom I really hate photoediting...see it as a major chore. Work.)
At Reculver it seemed there were loads of people and photographers waiting - it was a hour or two to sunset and I expect they and the firedancers you can see practicing in front of the church were waiting for Sunset....no luxury for me since the last train from Herne Bay was 9:33 - well there was a later 10:33 but as it's 3 miles didn't want to risk missing it.
Reculver is an old monastery, originally a Roman fort, half of which is now at the bottom of the bay - that's the edge of the cliff you can see. Not the original spires, they fell down and were repaired in 1810 but the rest of the building was moved or demolished and the spires left for navigation aids. An interesting place, but oddly very touristy and not the quiet lonely romantic/gothic ruin I was hoping for. Hence why I took a few pics then hightailed it out of there...the walk from Margate was quiet, mostly bikers, no walkers. I loved the odd area around Birchington, loads of strange graffiti and odd tunnels in the chalk cliff - if you go up them you end up in the middle of a housing estate. Very strange and very 'Through the Rabbit Hole' - you'd not guess the cliff or the sea was even there. Very beautiful too, looking out to the windfarms at sea.
Herne Bay was scarily chavvy. Margate and seemingly Weston & Birchington aren't exactly lovely seaside towns, and the towerblocks in this area are horrible - but Margate via Tracey Emin (brief pause for puking - and that's not the food poisoning) is trying to do a 'Folkestone' and go via arty via the new Tate/Turner museum there...which is nice, but oddly placed near the blight that is Margate. Herne Bay was like this, but without the edifying and highbrow culture...I arrived at Saturday 8pm and had kids shouting stuff at me or making stupid comments about the beard, usually currently in the progress of trashing a bus stop. Nice.
I dared to have some pie and chips and ate it on the shore looking out at the sunset then hightailed it out of there before I became a youth violence statistic. It was like Guildford or Reading-sur-mer. Full of bored local boys looking for someone to bully or attack to impress bored girls. Not nice. The train back was odd too, full of gaudily clad and totally trashed weed smoking girls and boys in odd 'stag night' attire...they disappeared when I changed at Faversham, but I wonder what disgusted looks and eyerolls of the locals when they tumbled off the train at Victoria.
If there was an analogy to New Yorker's disdain to the bridge and tunnel crowd this was it.