Amelia's photos

A refreshing walk after the excesses of Christmas Day.

Sunday challenge SC179 post 11 January 2026 My hopes for this year are that I can still keep walking (my knees are giving up) and appreciating Nature in all its forms; and also that I can continue to love my garden, which always gives me joy and anticipation for the future. The snowdrops and winter flowering cyclamen were covered in snow on the 10th and visible after a thaw on the 11th January.

Dundee, a city renowned for Jute, Jam and Journalism. In the 18th century the city was already an established centre of textile production, mainly in linen, and made huge quantities of sail cloth for Europe. By the 1830s, jute was produced to supplement linen production and gradually took over until the city became known as ‘Juteopolis’. Janet Keillor, discovered marmalade in the late 1700s. She came upon the recipe through trying to find a use for bitter Seville oranges. Her recipe was developed by her son, James Keillor, who opened Keillor’s factory, famous the world over for producing jams and marmalades. DC Thomson, publishers of The Beano, The Dandy, The Sunday Post and the People’s Friend, was established in 1905 and still employs around 2000 people to this day. It is the home of Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids 'Verdant' seems a strange word to use for a jute factory in the middle of a city, but in 1833, when the jute mill was just starting up, there was an abundance of greenery and nature surrounding the mill. The ready availability of water (the Scouring Burn) made it a perfect location for a mill. In 1864 the Works ran three steam engines driving 70 power looms and 2,800 spindles. 500 people were employed, making Verdant the 16th biggest employer in the Dundee jute industry of the time. Working conditions in mills across Scotland were unimaginable in this day and age. Long hours amongst dangerous machines with little to no health and safety precautions were endured by thousands of people, working for minimum wage and living in poverty and battling ‘mill fever’, which often lead to respiratory diseases like bronchitis. Women outnumbered men three to one in the mills, earning our city of Discovery the nickname of ‘she town’. Unfortunately Verdant Works ceased production and later fell off the register of mills in Dundee in 1889, but then, during the 1900s, under ownership of Alexander Thomson & Sons, Verdant Works was used as a site for recycling jute waste built up as a result of the city’s thriving factories; to cure rabbit skins; and to deal in scrap metal. Dundee Heritage Trust purchased (the then derelict) Verdant Works in 1991 and began a sympathetic refurbishment of this courtyard type mill, and in 1996, Verdant Works was officially opened to the public as Scotland’s jute museum. In the third PiP is a volunteer, who worked at the mill in the mid 20th century. She is is chage of the weaving machine, and when she switched it on it was deafening. Hard to imagine the noise that would have been made with all the machinery in this large room once upon a time.

This young photographer was part of a group of students who were clearly taking photos of the town as part of an assignment. He was the most focused of them all, and very serious. He was taking a photo of the tops of some building at this point.

SC178 Post 21 December - Nursery rhyme Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory dickory dock. www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/articles/znpj47h Singalong with the BBC

On December 12th the River Severn burst its banks in town, but by the 14th, after 2 days of dry and windy weather, the levels had gone down cosiderably, and it would be possible to walk to this bench and have a seat. Today we are having continuous rain, so I expect the river levels will rise again tomorrow.

n 1902, an open air swimming pool was built, located by the cliffs at Step Rock in the bay. A two-storey, concrete building stood above the rear of the pool with changing rooms and a balcony. The pool was divided into two sections by a wide platform and submerged at high tide, flushed out and replenished twice daily. This safe enclosure prevented people from being able to drift too far out into the sea and allowed children to swim under supervision. Tiered seating was added in the late 1930s, and it was used as a swimming pool until 1978. The walls of the open air pool are still visible today, but sadly the site now forms part of St Andrews Aquarium, but it doesn't look that much different now. The Aquarium is undergoing restoration at the moment. I thought maybe it might have been restored as public bathing pool, but no such luck. There would be no money in that. This PIP photo, taken about 1949 - 1950, is of my Mum, Dad and me, and was taken by a street photographer, a common thing in the 40s and 50s. One was given a ticket and collected the photo a couple of days later. We are marching along to the bathing pool, on what seems to be a chilly day, but I was going for a dook. When I had had a swim, it was cold when I got out the water, but mum had made me what we called a 'chittery bite', a sandwich, which stopped one from shivering - supposedly. It brings back such happy memories of my childhood. I was a late baby, and my father died when I was just 30 and my mother eight years later, so I didn't have a lot of time with them. But the time I did have was so very happy, and with a great sense of freedom. The long beach in the background, the West Sands, is where I learned to swim, and incidentally features in the opening of the film 'Chariots of Fire'. We go to Scotland at least once every year, and I rarely miss a visit to St.Andrews, my childhood home

SC176 post Sunday 7 December - Mood in photography

In memory of Frank Gehry. Born in Canada in 1929, and died on December 5th 2025 aged 96. I'd love to visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. There was a woman photographer on Panoramio, I have forgotten her name, but I think she was American, who had some amazing photos of the musem.

An Ordinanace Survey Benchmark on the wall of the church. Benchmarks were fixed points which were used in the past to calculate a height above the mean sea level. Today, access to the national height reference is through the OS Net permanent GPS stations, The advantage of using this method is that anyone with accurate GPS can access the height system anywhere. Also with old bench marks, particularly in mining areas where subsidence occurs, the readings can be wildly inaccurate.

'Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! The longest of the present day That has ever crossed o’er a tidal river stream, Most gigantic to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.' A verse of the poem,The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, by William McGonagall , Scotland's worst poet maybe. The poem is etched along the espalnade between Dundee 'Discovery Point' and the rail bridge. The Tay Bridge Centenary was in June 1987. I should perhaps first point out that this was the anniversary of the opening of the second Tay Bridge, which still survives today and not its predecessor, which dramatically collapsed some eight years earlier.