some quick notes on Belfast
Jan. 17th, 2019 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett- There's a panoramic viewing platform at the top of the Victoria Square shopping centre, The Dome, which we finally made it up day-before-yesterday. It's nice to be closer to the hills and it's lovely to be closer to the sky, but the thing that amused me most was just how many of the Important Sights That Dominate The Skyline had... utterly vanished behind tall newbuild. Some planning permission decisions definitely happened there.
- There are stone gutters everywhere. They run cross the pavement in the city centre every ten metres or so. I was initially baffled and a bit cross -- they're open, without grating or grilles, so they're a nuisance to navigate with a wheelchair, especially given the camber on most of the pavements -- but then it spent at least some of pretty much every day of the first fortnight I was here raining and I, er, rapidly came to understand the point.
- Kinda-sorta-relatedly, Belfast really is bafflingly bad at dropped kerbs. I don't get it, but... it really, really is. There's at least one route to and from the hospital I am Never Taking Again because the utter absence of dropped kerbs means that the step-free route involves being on the tarmac for a non-trivial portion of dual-carriage A-road. Similarly, our flat's right on the river, and there's a gate between the pedestrianised tow path and our block that is open 7am to 7pm. Outside those hours, I need to take a 5-10 minute detour via a route that, again, has no dropped kerbs. It is genuinely impossible for me to access my flat without spending time on roads in the dark after 7pm.
- There is A Lot of excellent ironwork and colourful architecture and I'm enjoying it greatly.
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Date: 2019-01-17 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-17 09:41 pm (UTC)Alas no, we are firmly expecting to be heading back permanently at the end of Feb/very beginning of March!
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Date: 2019-01-17 10:27 pm (UTC)"paranormic viewing platform"
I wonder what that would be...
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Date: 2019-01-18 10:58 am (UTC)I remember my dad all but chortling in delight one year. There was a local builder who apparently always played fast and loose with planning decisions, much to the annoyance of the planners in Dad's Technical Department. They had been given permission to build a row of houses in front of a local church, but with strict height limitations to avoid obscuring it. So he built the houses, but did his usual thing, and brought them in 3" too high. I somehow doubt he was expecting Dad's planners to seek, and get, a demolition order on them ;)
Chatham's pedestrianised town centre is like this, though in brick, and they are an utter pain.
And Rochester is similarly bad on dropped curbs. St Mary's, the road that runs down to the high street between cathedral and castle, has a dropped kerb at the top, where a side road runs across the top end of the castle. The matching dropped kerb is 100m down that side-road, and because it's the top of a hill the road is steeply sloped sideways rather than being properly cambered, so hell to wheel along. So I've taken to just ignoring the second dropped kerb, and wheeling down St Mary's on the road until I get to the dropped kerb opposite the cathedral. Fortunately St Mary's isn't too busy, but it's laid in brick, not tarmac:- rumble-judder, rumble-judder all the way down....
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Date: 2019-01-18 06:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-19 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-30 06:29 pm (UTC)My partner got seconded to his company's Belfast office for three months -- or at least, his company asked for volunteers to work out of the Belfast office for three months, and were willing to pay for both a ridiculously fancy flat and regular trips back to the mainland for both of us. :) So we're on a short-term adventure that involves a ridiculous four-bed penthouse overlooking the Lagan!
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Date: 2019-01-30 07:41 pm (UTC)