Great Yarmouth - Winter Gardens and Disappointing Sunrise

Great Yarmouth Borough Council plans to breathe new life into the town’s Winter Gardens, which has stood forlornly on the front for many years, waiting for the necessary cash injection. Around 170ft long and 83ft high, the greenhouses were bought it from its rival resort of Torquay in 1905 for the princely sum of £1,300. It cost £1,115 and ten shillings to transport the Winter Gardens 350 miles by boat and then reassemble it in Yarmouth. A business plan is now looking for external grant funders, including the Heritage Lottery Fund. The total amount of cash required is thought to be £4million - £3 million for structural repairs and £1million for fit-out.

We were hopeful of a good sunrise but a bank of cloud proved a bit too heavy to give good colours. However this started to clear soon afterwards giving beautiful morning light. Our hotel room is marked on the last image. 

Great Yarmouth - Tony Ray-jones Exhibition and Evening Lights

We started our weekend in Great Yarmouth with a visit to the Time and Tide Museum and an Exhibition of Tony Ray-Jones photographs. Photographer Tony Ray-Jones, who died in 1972 at the early age of 31, exerted an enormous influence on the development of British documentary art photography. He is characterised by images in which the subjects are not interested in the photographer and are often looking out of the frame. In the evening, I looked for such images when photographing the bright lights on Marine Parade and came up with the first image here.

The last two images are taken on the beach looking c. north and south towards the two piers

Paxton Pits: Birds in the Sunshine

Beautiful sunny day at Paxton Pits yesterday showed off the colours of the birds and was very welcome to all after so many cloudy days, The water level was very high so the Shovellers were unable to dabble on the edges for food and used the feeding method of rotating fast in a group to create a vortex and bring up edible material from the bottom of the lake.

Paxton Pits: Grebe Versus Fish

We watched a Great Crested Grebe catch a fish (carp apparently from the long dorsal fin and barb above mouth) and was having great difficulty swallowing it when a Common Gull swooped down to pirate the fish. But it was too late as the grebe had dived and, when it surfaced, had lost or swallowed the fish

Cambridge Snow: Umbrellas

A few more from my walk round Cambridge Backs on Sunday - wonderful variety of umbrellas on display.

Cambridge Punting in the Snow

As I had missed both the previous snowstorms in Cambridge, I took a trip into town with my camera on Sunday, having decided a walk with the dog was not on the cards for those who don't like bad weather (no names!!). Amazed at how resilient the tourists are, often climbing into already wet punts and also the variety of snow falling even in the hour that I was there.