This first appeared in the Bath Chronicle of August 4
As you may have seen in these pages in recent weeks, a new DVD about Bath's history has been released.
Using the words from the Chronicle's archives as its soundtrack, it features some fascinating photos and remarkable cine film to provide an interesting whistle-stop tour through many of Bath's modern historical events.
I was intrigued watching many of the stories unfold and I was particularly absorbed by the stunning and moving footage of what happened to the city during Hitler's aerial bombardment here. The full colour footage of the wrecked streets of Bath really brought the stories I've read about in our pages to life and I truly felt some of the pain that the city still feels to this day about those tumultuous days of 1942.
I was similarly absorbed by some of the other excellent film footage of a far more peaceful time - the 1960s.
The DVD includes some lovely film around the city in those early days of the supposedly swinging '60s when life actually seemed far less hurried and chaotic than it appears today.
The camera takes us all around some of the streets and areas that we love but what genuinely amazed me was not only how few cars were on the road but also the places where people were allowed to park.
You can practically play a game of 'spot the place where you wouldn't get a ticket today' and, trust me, there aren't many.
What this footage showed was why the subject of transport in and around Bath has been such a hot topic ever since the first automobile hit the Bath streets - and yes, that is featured in the DVD too.
I have no doubt that in those days when the 1960s film was being made, there were letters to this paper about the terrible state of the traffic and yet the roads then seemed about as busy as they would be at 3am in the middle of the week now. The frightening thing is if we've gone from that to what we now see in less than a generation, just how much more clogged up could our roads become in years to come? So if you ever want to understand why people get so het up about transport and transport schemes in this city, then this DVD gives you a real clue.
What is also nice about this new addition to Bath's historical archive is that although it clearly shows that much has changed in Bath over the years, we should be very proud that a lot of things remain untouched and unsullied.
Yes, we had the Sack of Bath but this film shows the city still looks and feels much as it did in years gone by and although there will be times when you will watch the DVD and wish that some things hadn't changed at all I suspect, like me, the number of things that look reassuringly familiar will also gladden your heart.
The film is called Bath The Way We Were.
Showing posts with label Bath traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bath traffic. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Who really rushes in the rush hour?
As regular readers of this column may have noticed, I get very irritated about phrases that mean nothing. And I realised at around 8.15 on Wednesday morning in the centre of Bath that there is another annoying cliche I should add to my ‘don’t say that’ hitlist.
The two phrases that irritate me the most at the moment are ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’ (if so, why bother having the cake in the first place?) and ‘I will give you a taste of your own medicine’ (well, that’s fine because it’s my medicine and why wouldn’t I want to taste it)?
Anyway, to these and many other silly phrase irritants, I would like to add another – ‘rush hour’.
This week, as we know, the vast majority of our school pupils and college students returned to their places of academia. This, inevitably, increased the volume of traffic on our roads but when it is also combined with the gas works taking place on one of the main roads into the city (the A4 from the Wiltshire side of town) it all combined to make the so-called ‘rush hour’ more like ‘might-as-well- be-sitting-in-a-car-park-hour’.
The truth is that over the past six weeks or so all of us who commute either short or longer journeys have been somewhat spoilt. I have long said that Bath doesn’t really have a traffic problem – it just has a school traffic problem. If I’m like many of you, my journey to work in the, ahem, summer ‘rush hour’ has been exactly half what it normally is in the winter. Yes, I know the city traffic is busy at other times but in that crucial hour between say 7.45am and 8.45am the difference between the way the roads move in term time and non-term time is as different as the chaos of say Wayne Rooney’s life to that of, well, anybody’s else's.
The Bath traffic, however, continues to dominate the local agenda. I attended a meeting in the city last Wednesday morning (and yes, I arrived well in time because most of the schools hadn’t yet reopened!) about future transport plans for the region and I was left once more totally convinced that not only does nobody have all the answers to our future transport needs but most people don’t even understand the questions.
The reality of the situation is clear – most of us accept that there are just too many cars on the road and we should all use more public transport but we do so in a totally theoretical way because having complained about the situation, we then jump into the sanctuary of our own private car and lustily switch on the engine.
As I said at my transport meeting (to the odd withering glance) I really want to see traffic in Bath and North East Somerset move quicker and with less stress for all but I can’t help wanting to ensure that it is YOUR car that gives up your space on the road rather than mine. And therein, I’m afraid lies the nub of the issue – many of us want to be part of the solution as long as that solution does not involve us having to give up our car keys.
So, as a dedicated motorist I can’t really complain can I? I guess I will just have to accept life as an A4 car park dweller and do my best to crawl along in the ‘rush hour’.
The two phrases that irritate me the most at the moment are ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’ (if so, why bother having the cake in the first place?) and ‘I will give you a taste of your own medicine’ (well, that’s fine because it’s my medicine and why wouldn’t I want to taste it)?
Anyway, to these and many other silly phrase irritants, I would like to add another – ‘rush hour’.
This week, as we know, the vast majority of our school pupils and college students returned to their places of academia. This, inevitably, increased the volume of traffic on our roads but when it is also combined with the gas works taking place on one of the main roads into the city (the A4 from the Wiltshire side of town) it all combined to make the so-called ‘rush hour’ more like ‘might-as-well- be-sitting-in-a-car-park-hour’.
The truth is that over the past six weeks or so all of us who commute either short or longer journeys have been somewhat spoilt. I have long said that Bath doesn’t really have a traffic problem – it just has a school traffic problem. If I’m like many of you, my journey to work in the, ahem, summer ‘rush hour’ has been exactly half what it normally is in the winter. Yes, I know the city traffic is busy at other times but in that crucial hour between say 7.45am and 8.45am the difference between the way the roads move in term time and non-term time is as different as the chaos of say Wayne Rooney’s life to that of, well, anybody’s else's.
The Bath traffic, however, continues to dominate the local agenda. I attended a meeting in the city last Wednesday morning (and yes, I arrived well in time because most of the schools hadn’t yet reopened!) about future transport plans for the region and I was left once more totally convinced that not only does nobody have all the answers to our future transport needs but most people don’t even understand the questions.
The reality of the situation is clear – most of us accept that there are just too many cars on the road and we should all use more public transport but we do so in a totally theoretical way because having complained about the situation, we then jump into the sanctuary of our own private car and lustily switch on the engine.
As I said at my transport meeting (to the odd withering glance) I really want to see traffic in Bath and North East Somerset move quicker and with less stress for all but I can’t help wanting to ensure that it is YOUR car that gives up your space on the road rather than mine. And therein, I’m afraid lies the nub of the issue – many of us want to be part of the solution as long as that solution does not involve us having to give up our car keys.
So, as a dedicated motorist I can’t really complain can I? I guess I will just have to accept life as an A4 car park dweller and do my best to crawl along in the ‘rush hour’.
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