Flat View

Looking SE at 19:20 on 3/5/19

(the red is the reflected glow of sunset in the west)

A few years ago my partner got a new job in Bristol University. As our Southampton house was not in a sellable state – and also, if I'm honest, because I wasn't quite ready to uproot myself from 30 years of residence, even to a considerably more attractive city – she found a flat in which to spend the working week, while I stayed in Southampton, on the assumption I would be attempting to clear, repair, and decorate the house, in anticipation of a relocation in a year or two. But, as it turned out, she didn't enjoy the new post, and moved on after a couple of years.

Looking S at 17:58 on 3/5/19

However, we'd become attached to the flat, and have kept it as a useful weekend bolt-hole. Not least because it has a truly spectacular view over the Avon Gorge. You can spend entire mornings just watching the light change on the wooded slopes and the tidal ebb and flow of the river, and the window over the kitchen sink has a westward view onto some preposterously gaudy sunsets as you do the washing up. Naturally, whenever I'm there I end up leaning out of the window and photographing the view. These three pictures, taken over a couple of days earlier this month, give you some sense of the full panorama as you look from left (south-east) to right (south-west).

Looking SW at 09:50 on 5/3/19

Perhaps because I spent my adolescent years in a fourth floor flat, I have a liking for this kind of elevated view. In fact, it's sufficiently high up that, when someone living lower down the Gorge celebrated some event by letting off fireworks, the rockets were exploding outside our living-room window which, while pretty, was also rather too like being under attack by anti-aircraft fire.