I doubt that Twyford Down is any longer a name that invokes much by way of association, but in the 1990s it was the scene of prolonged protests and their violent suppression by the police and private "security". The cause was the proposal to excavate an enormous passage through the ancient chalk landscape adjacent to Winchester, in order to accommodate the M3 motorway. My protesting days were over by then, having transmuted into an all-consuming combination of nappy-changing and long days at the office, but it was a big deal at the time, all over the news, and saw the beginnings of an environmental movement in Britain committed to direct action. It also saw a curious alliance between the local landed gentry and camped-out nomadic "crusties".
Ancient history now: the digging got dug, regardless, and the motorway has been bypassing Winchester for decades. If there's some kind of traffic jam at the Winchester turn-off, what most people see as they gaze out of the car window is this:
More often, though, it will be some variation on this, as they speed through:
But above the cutting Twyford Down survives, permanently separated from St. Catherine's Hill by this uncrossable river of traffic where there once was a shoulder of chalky downland, although still linked by a single footbridge (you can just about make it out in that driver's eye view). For us, it became a place to take weekend walks, and I have recently begun to collate and edit the many photographs I have taken there. A wide format seems to match the expansive, rolling feel of the place.
It's still a magical place, an elevated plateau bearing a patchwork of flinty ploughed fields, chalk downland grazed by cattle and sheep, and at its southern end a golf course, where the presence of the motorway and nearby Winchester fade away into insignificance, and you can hear the songs of rival larks rising ever higher above you.
Winchester from Twyford Down
St. Catherine's Hill, the M3 cutting, and Twyford Down from the south
Twyford Down as seen from the Itchen Navigation water-meadows
7 comments:
Lovely views. I've been making widescreen "Panavision" crops for a while too. I find it curious that you didn't use the same aspect ratio for each. They look to be a consistent width, but not height. Is there really info in some that couldn't be included in a 2.39:1 crop?
What are the grassy plateaus in the first pano? The golf course? The debris piles from the highway cut? An odd landscape, for certain.
Thanks, Kent. The explanation of the differing aspects is twofold.
First, I have two sizes of paper based on an A2 sheet, custom made by Marrutt Paper (recommended to UK readers). That is, a half sheet lengthways (59.4 cm x 21 cm), a quite long and narrow format, and some sheets cut 59.5 cm x 30 cm, effectively a broader sheet of two 30-ish squares.
Second, TBH these are simply the compositions that seemed most effective to me, whether or not they fitted the ration of either sheet perfectly. These photos go back quite some years, and were taken with a number of cameras of varying resolution and aspect (micro 4/3 and Fuji X cameras mainly, but also Olympus and Ricoh for example). In a few cases I've taken quite small files (and even small extracts) and enlarged them using the Gigapixel software, which is very effective.
I'm also making some square pictures from the same bunch of about 300 selected files: watch this space...
Mike
Oh, and yes, that's the golf course, which mainly occupies a dry valley at the south end of Twyford Down.
Mike
I'm guessing you were standing about here for the golf course photo?
https://w3w.co/soccer.backup.befitting
Yes, around there -- there's a path that goes along the edge of the golf course before descending a very steep hill into a valley. The whole thing is a very compact and walkable area. It was the drift of smoke that got my attention that time, obviously.
Mike
I feel like I may be belaboring this, but really am simply a Nosey Parker. You mention a footbridge across the M3. Such structures are always interesting to me. No pix of that? Is this the bridge you're referring to?
https://w3w.co/rapport.reverted.burying
Yes, there is only the one. Plenty of photos from it, but none of it AFAIR! If you really want to see it, do a Google Street View drive north up the M3 from just south of St. Catherine's Hill.
Mike
Post a Comment