Joe D » photography

Cotch: Flashride for Blackfriars

Joe — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:56:32 +0000

In 2000, London’s previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, began the process of fixing forty years of mistakes that had been made in the pursuit of the impossible — the comfortable accommodation of mass motor vehicle use in a dense city centre. He recognised that cities are supposed to be places for people and returned key locations like Trafalgar Square to use as more than mere traffic gyratories.

Continue reading at cotch dot net…

AWWTM: Friday photo: social transport

Joe — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:24:19 +0000

It is wrong to think in terms of “private” versus “public” transport. That is important only to the bureaucrats who have to manage transport problems and fund transport solutions.

What matters is social versus anti-social transport.

Originally posted at At War With The Motorist.

AWWTM: Three* stone circles that are way better than Stonehenge

Joe — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:23:12 +0000

And now for some light diversion. David Hembrow describes the travels and travails of a Dutch family trying to get to Stonehenge by bicycle, faced with south east England’s network of motorways and motorways-in-all-but-name. I think I have solution to the Stonehenge cycle tour problem: don’t go to Stonehenge. It’s a bit crap. Stonehenge fell apart over the millennia, but the stones were stuck back upright at various times in the early 20th century. They were still concreting it back together right up into the 1960s. Stonehenge just looks weird, neither ruin nor full restoration. If you go there you’ll be behind a rope on a concrete footpath, next to thousands of vehicles each hour squeezing through the bottleneck on the A303.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

AWWTM: Friday photo: bloody motorists…

Joe — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:58:59 +0000

You can hardly walk anywhere in the countryside ’round here without your way being blocked by some anti-social motorist who has left a vehicle on a footpath…

Even after all this time, I still find it so bizarre that in any mainstream media discussion of cycling and related policy, somebody inevitably tries to de-rail the discussion by shouting about how cyclists are all selfish lawless hooligans who cycle on the pavement.

As a pedestrian, I’m obviously no fan of other road users invading our space.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

Cotch: The Moine House

Joe — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:57:31 +0000

The geology and landscape of the Scottish Highlands are famously divided by the Great Glen fault. Less famous is the Moine Thrust Belt, running almost parallel to the Great Glen a hundred miles north. Here the rocks and landscape of the northern Highlands are pushed over those of the Hebrides and far north west, forming a belt of steep hills and cliffs from the north coast at Eriboll down to the west coast at Skye. It’s named for The Moine — the moss — the vast peat moor that sits at the top of the hill on the northern Highland rocks above Eriboll on the northern coast of Sutherland.

Continue reading at cotch dot net…

Cotch: The Hutong

Joe — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:55:47 +0000

At the start of the 15th century, when the Ming Dynasty was young, Beijing was established as the new Chinese capital — a heavily planned city, a rectangle laid out on a north-south axis around the great imperial palace, the Forbidden City.

Continue reading at cotch dot net…

Cotch: Brean Down

Joe — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:54:08 +0000

A great limestone scarp runs the breadth of Somerset, the Mendip Hills, famous for their karst landscape — the gorge at Cheddar and the caves at Wookey Hole.

Continue reading at cotch dot net…

Cotch: Helmsdale Harbour

Joe — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:55:42 +0000

In the winter, while I neglected to post on the blog, I spent some time out of the way to concentrate on work. Helmsdale in Sutherland was about as out of the way as I could find.

Continue reading at cotch dot net…

Cotch: Night Bus

Joe — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:51:46 +0000

A young smartly dressed woman gets on, concentrating on her phone call. The bus pulls out before she has time to mount the stairs, and the motion throws her to the side, her bag swinging and bashing the passenger behind her. Fifty. Nine. To. Streatham Hill. She climbs slowly, letting everybody know about the important things she has done today. Then drops into the nearest seat as the bus brakes at the first set of lights. “Did you remember to tape Eastenders?” Puts a laptop on one knee, opens Microsoft Excel, a page full of graphs. Continues call, continues describing her brilliant sucess with the Weight Watchers account. More passengers board, one indicates to the empty window seat beside her. She turns to let him through. Drops the computer. “Fucksake”. People chuckle.

Continue reading at Cotch dot net…

Cotch: White Christmas

Joe — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:47:35 +0000

At Christmas it snowed in Dorset. It’s rare that it snows in Dorset, and I’ve not previously photographed the area in the snow. So here’s a quick photo essay of the Blackmore Vale at Christmas.