One Sketch #175) Newport Transporter Bridge

Each crossing
Feels like time travel
My car becomes
A Tardis.

Newport Transporter Bridge. Newport is South Wales' newest city, having been granted city status in 2002 for the Queen's Golden Jubilee. It is actually the third largest city in Wales after nearby Cardiff, and Swansea. The transporter bridge is it's most instantly recognisable structure, and is one of only two working transporter bridges in Britain. Cars drive and passengers walk onto a gondola which is suspended by cables from the main gantry crossing the river. the gondola then crosses the river, and passengers and cars disembark from the other time. It's a wonderful piece of Edwardiana, dating back to 1906. Bridges are one of many things that I love, and this is one of my favourites.

One Sketch #174) Manchester Metrolink Tram

I'm sorry, but it's just the guy I am
Gimme the choice, I'll choose
To sketch a tram.

This week I've been formulating a plan. I've read a rather lovely little book called "Pier Review", about two  guys, Danny Smith and Jon Bounds, and how they carried out a sudden plan to visit every seaside pier listed by the Pier Society in England and Wales. They didn't even like piers that much. So what I was thinking was - how about making a trip, the purpose of which would be to ride on every town/city tram system in Great Britain? I reckoned that there's only six of them, so even though they are spread as far apart as London and Edinburgh, you should do it quite comfortably in five days. In fact, so easy would it be, I thought, that you could even up the ante a little bit by including rides on each of Great Britain's 3 underground railways, and 2 light railways as well as the 6 tram systems. So why have I plumped to include a picture of a Manchester tram? Well, I may be wrong, but I believe that Manchester was the first city to bring  trams back - although Blackpool, to be fair, had the great good sense never to get rid of them in the first place. As for the trip - well, probably it will never happen, but you never know. Watch this space.

One Sketch #173) Moise Kisling

He's been reading this book

Since 1910

He must be wondering

Where will it end.

Prompt from Sketching Every Day today - something inspired by artist Moise Kisling. So I copied this from his 1910 work, Young Boy Reading. Not brilliant, is it? Sorry Moise. 

One Sketch #172) Briton Ferry Library.

A treasure house
Beyond all value
Tresor dyn y ddawn

L is for. . . Llansawel. This is a rather personal one. Llansawel is the Welsh name for Briton Ferry, which is a part of the town of Neath, in the County Borough of Neath and Port Talbot in South Wales. And it’s a place which is a bit special to me, since I worked in Briton Ferry for 29 years, as a teacher in the local school for 11 – 16 year olds. It was my first ever teaching post, and for the most part a very happy time in my life. I’d come to the stage where I was teaching children, whose parents I had taught many years before, and it wouldn’t have been long before I was teaching grandchildren as well. The school was amalgamated with two others , and I teach in the amalgamated school a couple of miles away now. This building, probably the finest left in Briton Ferry, is the library. I don’t know for certain if it is one of the libraries built by Scottish American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie – my own local library is - but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s run by dedicated local volunteers, which tells you all you need to know about the Briton Ferry community.

One Sketch #171) Swansea Grand Hotel

I wonder if it does that well
To call itself such a grand hotel?

This is right next to the railway station in Swansea, and it's art deco appearance suggests it was probably built at around the same time as well. I did use another sketch today for sketching every day, but it's nice to keep my eye and hand in with the urban sketching every now and again.

One Sketch #170) Sir Tom (Tuesday 11th September)

In the land of song
You gotta be something special
For other people to call you
The Voice.

Stuck for ideas I followed the prompt from Sketching Every Day. In September 6 days are consecutive letters of the alphabet with every seventh day being a specific artist. I decided at the start that each of my letters was going to pay some kind of tribute to South Wales, where I've made my home for the last 3 decades. So, J is for Jones, Sir Tom of that ilk, sixties survivor, and The Voice's The Voice. Now come on, you might not be a big fan, but admit, 'It's Not Unusual' must bring a smile to your face when you hear it.

One Sketch #169) Trevithick's Locomotive

And so the modern world began
To settle a bet
Between industrialists.

On 21^st February 1804, Cornishman Richard Trevithick demonstrated the world’s first working steam locomotive, and he did it on the tramway at the Penydaren Iron Works near Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. The purpose was to settle a bet between the iron works’ owner, Samuel Homfray, and his fellow iron master from nearby Cyfartha, Richard Crawshay. Trevithick’s locomotive worked, and Homfray won the bet, even though the locomotive’s weight broke many of the cast iron rails. To put this into perspective, this was 21 years before George Stephenson’s Locomotion worked the world’s first ever steam railway, the Stockton and Darlington, and 25 years before the Rocket inaugurated the first ever passenger railway between major cities, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.