Beautiful Britain – Southwick

It’s been over 7 years since we last visited the UK as a family and I thought our recent visit would be a great opportunity to write something about good old Blighty for a few posts. It will motivate me to process my photographs and also is relevant to promoting the art group I run at Quintessentially British, which now contains over 11,000 images of “Britishness” by more than 700 artists. Ironically, I haven’t posted that many images of my own to the group since I set it up 5 years ago, so this trip was an opportunity to get some more images to post!

So, I’ll start with our first port of call – literally – Southwick, in West Sussex.

Southwick is a small coastal town situated on the River Adur on the south coast of England. There have been settlements here from at least the Roman times and the town is first recorded in the Domesday Book (1085 AD). Like many nearby towns, it was the extension of the railway lines in the 19th century which really caused the town to expand becoming a popular place for tourists to visit and take the sea air.

Although largely eclipsed by Shoreham-by-Sea to the west and Brighton & Hove to the east, Southwick still has a thriving commercial port (called Shoreham Port, even though it’s really in Southwick and Fishersgate), serving both commercial and navy vessels in docks on the River Adur.

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There is a nice village green with traditional pub on the edge, railway station and a couple of new windmills placed adjacent to the pebble beach, almost as an advance guard to the huge wind farm that is being developed off the coast in the distance.

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A bit of something for everyone, perhaps? Certainly a nice place to sit in the sun and enjoy a “99” (soft ice-cream cone with a chocolate flake).

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How Quintessentially British!

~Richard

So nice to go traveling

Wow, it has been over a month since I posted a blog! I am appalled with this failure of what started out as a rebooted daily discipline, back in Jan 2016, but there’s been a good reason for this.

In mid-June I was fortunate enough to have taken an extended family vacation back to England and include a brief 2-night sojourn to Paris too. I had grand plans of writing blog entries and posting images as we traveled but, to be honest, I was too busy enjoying myself “in the moment,” as they say these days.

And that’s how it should be.

I will play a bit of catch up over the next few weeks and months as I process the hundreds of photographs I did take that will jog my memory. And I’ll start off with the first three that I worked on yesterday evening, from Brighton, Paris and Amesbury.

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The time went very quickly and we saw family, several friends, and many of our old stomping grounds and tourist attractions. We were even fortunate with the notoriously unpredictable British weather.

It would have been nice to have stayed longer and spend more time with even more friends and family but, alas, time caught up with us and it was with mixed emotions that we returned to our home in Pennsylvania. After a day or so I admit that it’s good to be home and to appreciate the life that we have here.

That’s the philosophical part of traveling, perhaps!

~Richard

 

Philadelphia – Love Wins

I was strolling round the area of Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia the other morning whilst waiting for Easter State Penitentiary to open when I saw the following in one of the row homes in the area. An excellent message from the City of Brotherly Love.

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~Richard

 

Yellow Line

It’s odd what suddenly catches your eye. I was in one parking lot looking through my car window into the parking lot opposite and this is what I saw. A serendipitous angle, I guess…

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~Richard

New York Bocce Volo

Last month we visited New York City and were lucky enough to have unseasonably warm weather and no snow. At lunchtime we were sitting in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and I watched there three older gentlemen also outside enjoying the weather with a game of bocce volo. These guys were good, clearly having played for years.

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~Richard

A Commerce Drive

We are at a junction. Which path should we take to drive commerce and make us all as rich as Croesus, left or right?

Better make the decision soon as those lights don’t stay red forever…

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~Richard

The Mermaid

Those that say mermaids don’t exist are simply not looking in the right places. Next time you are at the shore take some time to look…

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~Richard

It’s Wicked Good Fun

We were walking through Boston’s Chinatown district this afternoon and saw this happy group of locals playing a very animated card game near the paifang (gate). As it says on the back of one of the player’s shirts – it’s wicked good fun!

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~Richard

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