Last week I was on vacation from work. I didn’t go far, in fact I stayed in a holiday home about a half hour drive up the road! It meant that it was easy to get away, without fuss. I didn’t need to plan much. At the same time it was a change of scene and routine, and just far enough away that I did a few things that I perhaps may have not done from home. One of those was a long time plan to visit the small town of Hythe, on Southampton Water (not the one in Kent), visit it’s pier, railway and ferry.
There has been a ferry service from the town, across to Southampton since the middle ages. There is one marked on a map dating from 1575. The current ferry departs from the end of the pier. This pier opened on January 1st 1881, it now has grade 2 listed status and at 640 meters is the 7th longest in the UK apparently.
The pier frankly is in need of a good restoration, it’s been repaired over the years but it does look rather sad, especially on a damp dull day, as when I visited. Work is going on as you can see from the right hand of the photo above. You can also see the third rail, (RH side) that powers the train. The locomotives used to be battery powered, they once ran in a WW1 mustard gas factory in Avonmouth. After the war they were transferred here, had their batteries removed, converted to take power from the third rail, and over 100 years later are still going up and down the pier taking passengers to the ferry. At the end of the pier, one transfers from the train to the ferry under mostly covered walkway.
At one point I was going to take my medium format camera, two backs, and have colour in one and B/W in the other. I decided in the end, that as this was to be a “chill” week away, I couldn’t be bothered to lug all that gear about to be frank. Instead I took the Leica M4-P with 35mm and 50mm lenses, although in the end I didn’t use the 50mm at all! The weather has continued it’s dull, damp, spell so I used a roll of HP5 here, the 400 iso coming in useful. I developed it at the kitchen sink in Ilford Ilfosol 1+9 for 8.5 mins, in the usual way. I had one of those moments of “ohh they look all right!” (meaning slightly better than normal in some un-determined way) when hanging the negs up to dry. They laid nice and flat in the scanner and needed very little correction. I think I’m getting back into the swing and my photographic mojo back!
S.H.O.U.T. 