@yashima Fingers crossed! @IssiNoho77 the tattoo is great (if very military for those so bothered). Last time I went the massed band played the very unmilitary theme from How to train your dragon. It was awesome! The Castle Esplanade also holds a few concerts per year - mostly middle of the road stuff but we did get to see Arcade Fire there a few years ago, which was, again, awesome!
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One of my favourite cities in the world, been three weekends, each time I liked it more (even with the bad weather). Although I have never been there in summer, that because the Festival makes it impossible if you haven’t booked like three months in advance.
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That’s not the first time someone on these forums expressed a similar sentiment.
Here’s a Google Street view image of our house that should further reinforce the reality of the archetype.
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My prime was 38 shows in 5 days. Never again.
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Lawrence had a significant tech boom back in the dotcom bubble and lead to over-development and a lot of the “nice family” types fled to nearby Desoto, which at the time was barely on the map.
By the time I lived there around 2000, the tech boom had busted and the city was feeling the economic shrinkage and overall I never felt a friendly community vibe.
Certainly over the last 20 years things have changed… Hopefully for the better.
I live in Havelock North, in Hawke’s Bay, North Island, New Zealand. A town of roughly 14.000, it has been traditionally called The Village by the locals. A long 5 minutes drive away from Hastings, on the skirts of Te Mata Peak, one of the most iconic landmarks in the bay.
On the top right of this picture you can see the “sleeping giant” Te Mata. The legend goes that he was a giant maori warrior from the coastal Waimarama (about 10-15 kms away) that requested the hand of the princess from Heretaunga (present day Hastings). He was given a list of tasks, and the last one was to eat Te Mata Peak. The chunk missing by his head is supposed to be where he started eating it, and after a while, he felt heavy and sleepy, laid down and instead of waking up, he became part of the Peak.
This is the view of the Peak from the other side, on the Valley of river Tuki Tuki. No sleeping giant shape there…
A couple of years ago the town proudly won the “Best NZ suburb” prize, and not that I have travelled the whole country or far from it, but I can see why. The streets are full of trees, and autumn makes it look gorgeous, it is a pleasure to go for a walk or a ride on the bike. There are several Reserves within town where you can go for a stroll or a streamwalk, and there are loads of bike lanes to cycle around (if a bit steep in places).
If anything, it is missing a good game shop. But a 30 mins trip to Napier can fix that (if Hastings has a decent one that is not a VideoGame shop full of Monopoly boxes under different franchises, I have missed it).
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Lovely to hear from someone who has enjoyed the area. I’ve only been here about 6 years but seen it grow more in stature since being here. Wolfie’s in Eagle’s Nest is still open yes although being in the plaza I don’t get around many of the other urbanizations socially except to certain on darts nights.
The city centre of Alicante itself is gorgeous and has one of the most picturesque seafront promenades in Spain. Before moving to Villamartin I lived for two years near to the Teatro Principal in the heart of the city and could see the top of the castle on Mount Benacantil from my living room window. I would regularly take an hour long walk to the top of it (about 15 minutes from front door to summit) then down along the seafront and back through the city main shopping district. Wonderful times indeed.
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Yes, I’m rather fortunate to have plenty of good areas to walk/cycle.
I do like living in Neston, I do worry that it’s a little isolated (by public transport) for the kids as they grow older. My favourite weird thing about the town is it has the last Female Society in the UK. Set up to help widows in the Napoleonic wars, they still provide money to members on births, marriages and deaths.
https://www.neston.org.uk/neston-female-society/
We shut the town to traffic in once year so they can parade through town. With bagpipers.
Scotland is a good three hours drive away.
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Wow, everyone posted loads about their hometown’s, I love it. It makes my original post look a bit lacking! So here are three things a bit more interesting about where I’m from.
Camborne School of Mines - I’m from a small town a few miles from where I now live, called Camborne. Cornwall, the county, has a world-famous mining history. Our tin mining meant that our miners were routinely shipped-out around the world to mine. Mexico, the US, Australia - pretty much anywhere people dug holes in the ground. A mining and geology school was started (CSM) which still runs and still attracts students from the world over.
Trevithick Day - Camborne’s most famous son is Richard Trevithick, inventor of the steam locomotive. Every year the town hosts a special day to celebrate his life, where steam engines, traction engines, steam organs and the like travel from all over the UK. There are stalls all through the town, local schools have children perform a traditional dance through the streets, and the place comes to a standstill. I still really enjoy going, the atmosphere is great.
The pasty - now we’re talking! Pasties were originally a way for miners to take their lunch down with them. Tons of varieties are baked now, but the original (and best!) is the original.
It’s pastry wrapped around pieces of beef, potato, onion and turnip/swede (depending where you’re from). Some butter and seasoning inside, and that’s it.
The Cornish are fiercely proud and defensive of pasties, so much so that when Gregg’s (a nationwide bakery chain for non-brits) tried to open their first shop down here, they were basically run out of town.
I urge anyone who’s never tried a proper one to do so, and especially to have a go at making their own. Here’s a decent recipe.
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When I worked in Cambridge, there was a guy who moved to Cambourne from Camborne.
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I’m in London, UK.
I’ve lived in the centre, and now in the South East of it.
London is pretty weird. It has more variety than anywhere else I’ve seen. It looks like this:
But also has big parks like this (Richmond Park) :
And as you can see, every building is different to the one next to it, because we basically built this place on top of whatever was there previously with no plan and no straight lines:
This is my best action shot:
This is my best romantic shot (Trafalgar Square) :
And here’s the famous London Shard:
I live on the South Bank of the Thames (way out East, because rent is out of control everywhere closer). If I look out of my window towards the city, it looks like this:
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Who landed a Star Destroyer in the middle of London?
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Probably the Doctor… who else would be destroying London or fight the aliens who do so?
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Yeah! It’s not actually gold, that was sunset, but it’s made in the shape of the train tracks at London Bridge station so the top is spiky and irregular.
(But @yashima is right, it’s usually The Doctor)
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The only thing I knew about Camborne before your post was that it has an automated radiosonde launch station:
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I’ll give you one guess at where I live, based on this lovely piece of art I found down by the canal:
Leeds is the biggest city in Yorkshire, and allegedly the 4th largest city in the UK by population (if you consider Bradford to be part of Leeds…). It was mostly built on the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution, but is now a big financial and legal centre.
Expand for way too many pictures...
One thing I like about Leeds is the variety of interesting buildings:
Clockwise from top left: the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange, some buildings by the docks, standard Northern terrace, Victoria Arcade, a Middle Eastern cafe.
My favourite building is the central library:
There’s a wide array of public art. Some of it is pretty weird:
(Yes, that signpost does say “Go throw yourself in the sea”)
One of the big cultural events is Light Night, which is a collection of art installations and events primarily based around the use of light (I’ve also snuck in a picture of the big bonfire from last Bonfire Night:
Some nice places to go outside Leeds are Harrogate Turkish Baths (owned by the local council), Brimham rocks, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park:
And to bring it back to board games…
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Don’t forget the Royal Aurmories in Leeds, pure gold in there. One of my favourite museums in the whole world.
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Can I tell a non-sequitur here? More like a really hard tangent…
My father is a physicist. He studied physics in Argentina (where he grew up after his mother fled there post WW2), and promptly got a job at the Instituto de Investigaciones Aeronáuticas y Espaciales (IIAE), sort of the NASA-of-its-day-in-Argentina. The Argentines had gobbled up a bunch of German engineers and Italian scientists in the wake of WW2, and were now putting them to work building rockets (ostensibly to fire at the British during the Falkland/Malvinas war, but the scientists were mostly interested in getting satellites into space).
Right. This tangent has led us to one of my favourite stories my father tells (please note: authenticity of this story is not, in any way, verified, other than my father tends to be a very honest man).
Weather Balloons!
Your post reminded me that the Argentine government used to launch low-orbit satellites through helium balloons. Not the dinky little helium balloons you see now-a-days, but massive, MASSIVE balloon bags that required multiple-stage-trucks to launch. The balloon canopy would be stretched over three or four trucks that would start driving in the same direct and same speed as the wind such that as the balloon inflated it wouldn’t tear or pull. You would then release the balloon from each truck in sequential order (starting with the truck that’s closest to the top of the balloon and ending with the truck that’s carrying the payload).
A neat idea… except one time the truck with the payload had a mechanical failure and went up with the balloon. The driver jumped out when it became clear that the payload wasn’t releasing, but the truck went up and then came down prematurely in the middle of nowhere, dragging the payload along the ground and digging a deep, deep trench. My father was given a Jeep and told to find where the monitoring equipment and truck ended up, and so he got to go driving through deepest, darkest Argentina in a land with no roads whatsoever until he came upon… a tiny German town founded by the crew of a U-boat that arrived in Buenos Aires after the war and the crew hid in the wilderness and recreated a little bit of Europe that remained “completely undiscovered” (authenticity questionable) until my dad stumbled across them.
He drove the truck home, but the payload was total scrap.
There’s also the story about “Guided Missiles” they made for the government…
Guided Missiles!
As mentioned, the Argentine scientists were interested in building multistage rockets for launching satellites, but the military wanted weapons they could fire at the British. In order to secure funding, every month the heads of R&D (two men, one German and one Italian) would need to make a presentation to the generals and admirals and what-have-you.
So, what they would do is the night before, set up their multistage rocket and fire it up. They would then watch where it came crashing down to the earth… and set up a tank there. The next day, they would invite the generals and admirals to come watch the launch… launch the rocket, which would unerringly smash down on the target tank! Success! What a flawless guidance system!
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