View from Werneth Low

At 915 feet above sea level Werneth Low offers views over Greater Manchester and, on a clear day, over a much wider area. On a really clear day it's possible to see Jodrell Bank radio telescope and the mountains of Snowdonia. Today's photograph shows central Manchester from about halfway up Werneth Low.

Friday's Ferrari

At the Silverstone Historic meetings I went to in the 1990s and early 2000s David Piper was usually present with a few of his stable of Ferraris. The photographs below show the cars he took along to the Historic Festival meeting of 2001.

1967 Ferrari 330P4, serial number 0822

1964 Ferrari 330P2, serial number 0836

1964 Ferrari 365P, serial number 0824

1967 Ferrari Dino 246S

1964 Ferrari 275LM, serial number 8165

The photograph below, which I took at the 1965 Tourist Trophy race at Oulton Park, is presumably of the same car, although at that time it was labelled a 250LM. The Wikipedia entry for Ferrari says:

'Only the very early LM's were true 250 models, with all the rest made as 3300cc models and as such should have been named 275 LM (the early cars were also converted to the 3300cc engine).'

Correction: The car in the 1965 Tourist Trophy race in 1965 was 5897, now owned by Englebert Stieger.

Things in the garden

When I first started using digital photography I bought a small Olympus camera which I could carry around in my pocket. To get used to the camera I tried it out in the garden at home and one of the first things I tried was the macro facility. The photograph below was one of the first I took and it's of (I think) a common green bottle fly, or Lucilia sericata.

I was pleased with this photograph as flies tend to buzz about a lot and it's difficult to get them to stay still long enough to get a decent photograph. It's much easier with slugs and snails and the like which are much more sedentary. I think the slug shown below is simply known as a black slug, or Arion ater.

Or, for a closer look:

Friday's Ferrari

The Coys International Historic Festival of 1997 at Silverstone featured a tribute to Ferrari and there was an impressive display of cars on show. Today's car is the 1955 Ferrari 555 Super Squalo, serial number FL/9001, an improved version of the 553 Squalo of 1954, but the performance and handling of the car couldn't match that of the Mercedes-Benz W196 and Maserati 250F.

I never saw the Super Squalo in action in 1955. By the time of the British Grand Prix the team had apparently given up on the car and turned up with the old 625 model which was essentially the 1952/53 500 model with an engine enlarged to 2.5 litres.

Juan Manuel Fangio

The Coys International Historic Festival meeting of July 1994 at Silverstone featured a tribute to Juan Manuel Fangio and had a display of some of the cars with which he was associated. The photograph below shows three of the cars which are associated with his World Championship victories.

His first World Championship was won in 1951 in an Alfa Romeo and the car on the left is an Alfa Romeo 158 of 1950. Although he started 1954 driving a Maserati 250F, Mercedes Benz introduced their new car at the French Grand Prix and he won the Championship in that year and 1955 driving the W196 model, an example of which is on the right-hand side of the photograph. The car in the middle is a Maserati 250F which Fangio used in winning the 1957 Championship. He also won in 1956 driving a Lancia-Ferrari and at the time of this tribute there were none left in existence, although since then several of the earlier Lancia D50s and the Lancia-Ferrari have been recreated (or 'faked' as Denis Jenkinson would have said).

Also on display was this 1948 1.5 litre Ferrari 166, serial number 011F, thought to have been raced by Fangio in Argentina.

I was fortunate enough to have seen Fangio drive in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree and the 1957 British Grand Prix, also at Aintree.

Friday's Ferrari

This is a photograph of a Ferrari taken at the Coys International Historic Festival at Silverstone in 1995. As the numberplate says, it's a 250GTO and this one belongs to Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. Some people say that the Ferrari 250GTO is the most beautiful car ever made and I've got to admit they've got a point. The serial number of the car is 3757GT.

In fact they're so nice I'm going to show you a photograph of another 250GTO taken at the Coys Silverstone meeting three years later.

The serial number of this car is 3589GT.

Hyde, Cheshire

I said last week that I lived in Hyde, Cheshire, and today's photos show a few views of the town and surrounding area. To the south of the town lies Werneth Low Country Park on top of which is located the Hyde War Memorial. This can be seen in the photo below which was taken from Mottram Old Road.

The next photo was taken from the top of Werneth Low close to the War Memorial and is a view looking over the centre of the town. The Town Hall can be seen in the centre of the picture and behind that the M67 bypass road leading to the M60 Manchester ring road at Denton.

The photograph below is of Nelson Street with the terraced houses which most people would associate with a Northern mill town. Much of the centre of Hyde consists of streets such as this, some with the doors opening directly onto the street and some with a small garden or paved area a few feet deep.

But you don't need to go far to find much more rural scenes. The photograph below was taken in Apple Street which runs to the east from the top of Werneth Low and joins Mottram Old Road just before that road crosses the Hattersley boundary and becomes Stockport Road.