Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: sevenlayermuddle on December 31, 2019, 12:43:07 AM
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I’ve just finished watching a program I recorded on Channel 5 yesterday, “World’s most scenic rail journey”, from Fort William to Mallaig. Supposedly “minute by minute” which I took to mean ‘Real Time’ and indeed it seemed to be real time, albeit stretched by the multiple long advert breaks, which I could skip as I’d recorded it.
As well as train-mounted cameras they used aerial photography sometimes, presumably a helicopter rather than a drone as it stayed airborne the whole journey. That, imho, was cheating a bit, and not very eco-friendly, but I’ll forgive them as worth it for the views.
And unlike so much modern TV & film it doesn’t matter if you doze off for a bit, as you can still pick up the plot when you awaken. Recommended. Best TV I’ve seen this Christmas. :)
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I watched the last ten minutes, had been watching a recording of location location, which was local to us. A couple were looking at buying in Herne Bay and wanted a see view. They got all excited about one house on the sea front that had a see view, no idea why it was so special as it was just sea meets horizon - boring and nothing really to see in my mind. Then for some reason the recording ended, so we switched to whatching the railway. Now there was some amazing views worth paying for in there, some where you had sea and islands together, spectacular views.
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I can’t see Mallaig from my house as the moors of the Sléibhte peninsula of Skye are just in the way, but I can see the hills of Cnoideart immediately next door (to the north) as their height makes them visible given my great height. I’ve done that train journey a few times, when going to Glasgow airport to fly to Ireland. Usually though I have driven that route (a lot) when coming up from the south and as the road is parallel to the train line you are effectively following the same route in the car as in the train for the most part. I have lost count how many times I have driven it over the last 25 years. I used to enjoy the ferry crossing but in recent years they have changed to put a tiny crappy boat in service which means no proper lounge to sit in and enjoy the views comfortably and no coffee and CalMac although you do still get “Tha an sgiobair agus an sgioba a’ cur fàilte oirbh air bòrd … xxx” - at least that is intact. In view of the nastiness of the current boat now and the choppy crossing I strongly recommend switching to the bridge. It may have improved since I last went, which was to hospital in Fort William. The Mallaig-Glasgow run is 5 hours. There’s a mid day train from Glasgow and a boat at around 6 pm.
The northern train line is very beautiful, from Inbhir Nis to Caol Loch Aillse (anglicised as ‘Kyle of Lochalsh’), in my view no less so, and I have done that journey on the train a dozen times or more. I definitely recommend doing both in time but for now stick to the northern journey.
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In view of the nastiness of the current boat now and the choppy crossing I strongly recommend switching to the bridge.
the boat from Oban to Barra is equally (if not more) nasty. unfortunately there is no bridge option (yet).
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I watched the last ten minutes, had been watching a recording of location location, which was local to us. A couple were looking at buying in Herne Bay and wanted a see view. They got all excited about one house on the sea front that had a see view, no idea why it was so special as it was just sea meets horizon - boring and nothing really to see in my mind. Then for some reason the recording ended, so we switched to whatching the railway. Now there was some amazing views worth paying for in there, some where you had sea and islands together, spectacular views.
We lived in Herne Bay for 22 years prior to moving here. Yes the sea in quiet times is very boring, my favourite time especially at Herne Bay was when we had a good NE gale blowing in winter then the sea is at its best visually. I do understand why people love the sea - I do - and would always want to live close to it. It's difficult to explain though it's just a good feeling.
Stuart
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I have the sea on both sides of the house, to the east between Skye and the mainland mountains Looking into Loch Shubhairne (from my bedroom window) and out to the Atlantic to the south west towards the Island of Rùm (from the guest bedroom window). I’m glad to be roughly a mile away from it though and 118 m above it. It gets ridiculously wild here sometimes and I spent five months in the house on the shore at very roughly 10 ft elevation. It’s not good being too close to the sea and especially being too low down; the great height and and a comfortable distance are both extremely reassuring. Can see the sea but it stays where it ought to be rather than coming into the house. In Jan 2005 we had a 120+ mph hurricane here with people being killed. So that’s the reason I’m pleased about the height away from the worst action. Actually I would not mind a house on the shore at all as long as I had an alternate dwelling to go to if the forecast was at all dodgy; so the answer would have to be two house, a zero feet one and a high one.
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Yes the sea can be immensely powerful in storms, even down here, in the storms in the eighties it almost destroyed a concrete/brick shop at Dumpton Gap, the beach huts consigned to driftwood.
Weaver, if you want a house by the sea, take a look at pictures 1 & 2 at the top of the page (number 5 in the list) here (https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home-garden/interiors/design-news/grand-designs-house-of-the-year-2019-kevin-mccloud-visits-riba-award-contenders-including-modernist-a134461.html#gallery), it's on the coast on the Isle of Sky, not quite sure where but staggering views and if I remember correctly the window is very strong to withstand the gales and sea. It's actually in Amadale- Black House (https://www.dualchas.com/our-projects/residential/the-black-house), Isle of Skye
This is the house they we're looking at buying in Location Location (https://goo.gl/maps/NZRCAdHcyhGKHEb47), it was a revisited episode from 2017/18 I think, and the house was up for £700,000 - in my opinion well over priced, no rear garden, no off street parking , and a rather dull see view (maybe that's tarnished because I've lived close to the see in Thanet all my life) in my opinion. There are also much better houses, with see views for the same money around our way.
On the other hand, a view like this has is so much better (https://goo.gl/maps/XbHM7q5bJDGGbKLHA), so much more to see.
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Out of interest I've just been looking at how house prices have changed over the years in Herne Bay, using our old house as an example. It has gone up by a factor of just over 24x since 1975 when we moved there and if I look at the increase from 1975 to 1998 when we left it only went up by just over 6 times. Now our house was not on the sea front. In real terms our old house has gone up by £249000 in the past 20 years! Prices here in Broadstairs have actually gone up more than in Herne Bay over the past 20 years, an estimate on the place we now live in which was purchased for slightly less than we sold our old one for shows an increase of around £350000! No wonder the likes of our grandkids will struggle to get on the property ladder in years to come!
Stuart
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Thats incredible Stuart, just been looking on Zoopla, our friends which live in the same road as you paid £51k back in 99, Zoopla now thinks it's worth £291k - £356k, incredible really, it's not what I'd call a big house.
I think first time buyers will need to be aiming for terrace houses or flats to get on the ladder these days (which is actually what most people did when I bought my first house), whilst prices have increased a lot, so have wages - my first job in 86 paid £50 a week, my daughters first full time job will pay over seven times that when she starts next year, although it's a totally different job to mine that I could never do. Actually a better comparison would be our apprentice we had in 2014, allowing for wages rise for the last five years his wages would have been almost 6 times what I was earning when I started. People just need to learn to save a deposit.
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I know it's frightening when you start to look at wages, when I started work in late 1966 my pay was about £15.00 per week which was quite a lot then, when we bought our first house in Tonbridge I was earning around £1100 per year (in 1970), when we moved to Herne Bay in 1975 I had £20-£30 per month left from my monthly salary to spend on extras after we paid the mortgage and all other outgoings like travel to work, housekeeping etc, that had to cover clothes for all 4 of us (by then) and any extras which were not many. Point was it was manageable if we were careful and budgeted which is something I think folks do not always do these days. I'm quite pleased to say that in all my working life I've never had an overdraft, if we wanted something it had to be saved for.
Getting a tad off topic now ;)
Stuart
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On the web somewhere?
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If you're referring to the video, then search "Jacobite Steam Train" on you tube
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The programme is on channel 5 catchup tv
https://www.channel5.com/show/britains-most-scenic-railway-journey-minute-by-minute/
next airing on Saturday 5.10
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Zoopla
Still off topic.
Not used that site before, OMG just looked at our village and there is one on the outskirts of our village for £1.1 M :silly:
That's only a 4 Bed, we have 8 in the main house and 2/3 Beds in the Flat. ;D :dance:
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I take you've owned the house for some years, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise if you ever down size.
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There’s this thing. Something to do with Harry Potter. A view of Gleann Fhionnáin was used as source in making a CGI-constructed scene; so fans of the films can go and see something familiar, so that attracts yet more visitors and travellers.
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Yes the TV prog shows off the ‘Harry Potter’ viaduct. I bow to Weaver’s linguistic skills but worth mentioning that it is also more commonly known simply as ’Glenfinnan’.
I’ve never made that journey myself but one tip I picked from somebody who has... if the viaduct is key to your enjoyment, try hard to get a seat on the side that looks into the radius of curvature, else you may not see much of it.
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Iirc that means a seat on the south side; that is the left hand side when going to Mallaig and rhs when coming away from Mallaig.
The English reflects an older simpler form of the words. Some confusing changes have happened in some dialects, some greater some less and I’m quoting Skye Gaelic (or Skye-Harris-Uibhist Gaelic [not Lewis Gaelic, which is radically different, very weird and hard to understand, and more like Welsh in some respects, indeed has been mistaken for Welsh on the radio])
The last syllable should be pronounced like ’Anne’ in a Northern accent not like the last syllable of ‘onion’, ‘Alan’ or ‘baron’/‘barren’ (the vowel called schwa in linguistics), so a clear [a] vowel not an unstressed English/Welsh/Gaelic vowel (again, a schwa). I put an acute accent on the a to mark this not-schwa distinction; -án from an earlier < *-ān (< *-agn- # eg *-agnos or maybe from *-akn-#, in a word ending) which is a former long vowel now shortened in Scottish Gaelic but still distinct from the former short a vowel which has indeed now been reduced to a schwa in this situation.
Just to confuse everyone, the start of the word Fhionn is (now) pronounced like English ‘you’ followed by a dental n (one where your tongue tip touches the tip of your upper teeth). That’s what Wikipedia claims for some unknown dialect, and people do actually say that but I’m not sure about this particular mainland dialect. There are or were some native speakers living at the southern end of Loch Seile some distance to the south. The written form <fh> is silent or /j/ as in German J (y) or very rarely /h/, and amazingly never like f. This h in fh means that it would be pronounced as an /f/ normally but for change imposed by environment and grammatically rules. All h markers following consonants indicate changes in the consonant sound but the h’s are not pronounced; like escape sequence markers. I don’t pronounce it as it says in Wikipedia but then what do I know.
BTW The great poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair came from around here, again a few miles to the south.