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Unusually engaging semi-industrial vistas.

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    #26
    The Mighty Redcar on the BBC iplayer has lots of very good shots of the steel works juxtaposed with the beach and countryside. It's a pretty good programme too.

    My mum lives on Canvey Island. There's always been a rumour that, if the oil refinery should ever blow, there's a secret road off the island that will be disclosed - instantaneously, miraculously - so that everybody can go that way as well as via the one 'known' road.

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      #27
      Visitors flying along the beautiful New South Wales coast to Sydney are unlikely to miss Port Botany on final approach:



      Or Kurnell oil refinery on the other side of Botany Bay:

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        #28
        And put me on the Dungeness list.

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          #29
          Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
          Frodsham and Helsby?
          I regularly go for a ramble around there, there is a long distance path that starts in Frodsham (Sandstone Way) and the first part of the walk is on the small cliffs above Frodsham. Nothing wild or remote but enjoyable stuff and there is indeed that contrast of being in a peaceful, wooded place and looking at sea to all kind of industrial stuff. Helsby station has a great little bar serving all sorts of craft beers and ales, well worth arriving 1 min too late for your train so you can spend a hour waiting there (just don't do like me and lose your card/cash during the walk, only noticing after ordering and having to call for help an accointance living nearby...)

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            #30
            It's funny that people like the view of Port Talbot heading west, because I think Eastwards is the better view. You come up the hill from the Neath turn off and then sweep round the bend and there's the blast furnaces. Maybe it's because I usually do the Eastward journey in the dark.

            Slackster mentioned Cleddau. I had a meal in the pub that's practically under the Cleddau bridge, looking across the water to the refineries softened like an impressionist painting in the haze. As the sun went down and more and more lights came on they began to sparkle.

            Dungeness is another good call. Very weird landscape and then this gigantic power station next to a narrow gauge railway. Dounreay is another nuclear power station in an out of the way location, hulking on a cliff top above a beautiful (radioactive) beach.

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              #31
              When we lived in the Pfalz, the final hour or so of the journey back from England often involved a dusk or nighttime view of the huge BASF refinery and chemical works in Ludwigshafen:



              Once you pass Kaiserslautern, and if the traffic isn't too bad, the run through the northern edge of the Palatine Forest is great, almost a like a 6-lane woodland rollercoaster. You drop down to the Rhine plain with the ruins of Neuleiningen castle looming over the motorway on your right, pass Grünstadt and then turn south onto the A61. Look right and you see the eastern edge of the forest, dotted with villages and the lights of Neustadt at the foot of the hills further south. Look left and you see the glowing mass of the refinery throbbing away on the banks of the Rhine. And then you realise that everyone else is ripping past you at 200km/h and you'd better concentrate on the bloody road...

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                #32
                Driving on Dutch motorways is dull enough, so the view of the flaring chemical works at Geleen, just north of Maastricht at 5 in the morning was always a welcome sight. Not so much now as 15 years ago as it's been phased down/ greened up.

                The best thing was the illuminated sign, announcing the plants name - Chemelot. Dutch humour.

                I also spent lot of time in the mining area around Longwy and Thionville in the early 80s. At that time the last mines were closing or had already closed, and the area was a weird mix of rebellion and depression. But the countryside around it, woody hills and valleys, was beautiful. It felt a lot like the Welsh valleys.

                The best thing about the area was the ugly town names. They all ended in - ange. Illange Uckange, Hovelange etc.

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                  #33
                  I've been thinking about this, and power stations are generally a great example because they're often set some distance away from cities, so you have a great industrial hulk in a nice setting.

                  Wind and solar farms doubly so. It's hardly new to say this, but the windfarms of the San Gorgonio pass on I-10, as you head out from the LA sprawl and into the desert, are always a delight. 3000 turbines on the desert floor, up against these huge 10,000 foot mountains either side (which is what drives the wind and makes it such a fantastic location for a windfarm).

                  I almost think it's cheating, given that wind turbines always look great.



                  The Ivanpah solar plant that you see on I-15, right on the border between California and Nevada, is also stunning. It's a technology that is already basically obsolete because the price of photovoltaics has become so cheap - which means it's probably the only one of these you'll ever see. It's a load of mirrors focusing sunlight on boiler towers that are full of water. From the highway you often see the weirdest glows and clouds around the towers.

                  Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 11-09-2018, 14:56.

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                    #34
                    Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                    I've been thinking about this, and power stations are generally a great example because they're often set some distance away from cities, so you have a great industrial hulk in a nice setting.

                    Wind and solar farms doubly so.
                    This. I never mind wind turbines and don't generally get the NIMBY factor they provoke at all, and I'm yet another vote in favour of Dungeness – it was the first place I thought of when I saw this thread. I find the juxtaposition of the (superficially harsh) man-made structures with the basically unspoilt surrounding nature infinitely more lovely than many, many places that are theoretically nowhere near as unattractive yet are entirely insulated from the natural world.

                    I find this thread really fascinating, as these kind of vistas are actually somewhere that's key to describing my very specific sense of aesthetics: I seem to need 'nature' to be a part of a place in order to see beauty in it (which I know sounds hopelessly new-agey and drippy), yet its presence doesn't have to be the dominant element. In its lack though I find huge numbers of (say) churches and chapels, palaces and civic halls and all sorts of otherwise unremarkable modern buildings quite unbearably ugly – in a way that's almost physically oppressive – if once inside there's no hint at all of the sky or sun or air or earth or growing things.

                    To be fair Anglican churches, certainly ones dating back to medieval times or so, are largely exempt here because of the quantities of natural light, ancient wood and unadorned stone and the palpable sense of timeworn history within. More modern ones, e.g. Georgian or Victorian, lack these qualities so I find them horribly ugly, and likewise most Baptist or Presbyterian places I've seen as they're too plain and 'Protestant' – and at the same time I can't stand most Catholic churches or many temples of other religions for the opposite reason that they come with every square inch smothered in rococo decoration.

                    So, to pick on one place I've been, St Chad's church in Shrewsbury (Georgian), I find something like this almost intolerable to look at or spend time in despite it being designed in a way that many would regard as pleasant:


                    yet something like this view of Dungeness, though, I can genuinely find beauty in despite its more... obvious drawbacks:


                    Odd, innit.
                    Last edited by Various Artist; 11-09-2018, 16:24.

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                      #35
                      That is a beautiful picture (the second). I hate the tendency to automatically associate Georgian architecture with being any good. Not everything from the 1700s is worth keeping, there’s a damnable load of dross among the Robert Adam stuff.

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                        #36
                        wasn't djibril Cisse the Baron of Frodsham?

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                          #37
                          Cisse was Lord of the Manor of Frodsham

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                            #38
                            Wind turbines are not very popular on outdoors forum...One of the most absurd comments i once read was someone complaining of the Southern Uplands hills being desecrated by windfarms, whilst in a car on the M74, that 6 lanes motorway cutting across said hills...

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                              #39
                              Driving back through Wales a couple of months ago, I really was struck by this place. Trawsfynydd nuclear power station.

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                                #40
                                Hey, St Chad's church. I've been in there.

                                I get what you're saying, VA. I don't mind church buildings and stuff but they can feel oppressive once inside. The juxtaposition of architecture and sky is much better. I drove down the gorge under Clifton Suspension Bridge on Friday night. That's a beautiful bridge. Driving under the M5 Avonmouth bridge wasn't quite as good.

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                                  #41
                                  Jeez....blends right in there, doesn't it?

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                                    #42
                                    Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                                    So, to pick on one place I've been, St Chad's church in Shrewsbury (Georgian), I find something like this almost intolerable to look at or spend time in despite it being designed in a way that many would regard as pleasant:

                                    Odd, innit.
                                    The Temppeliaukio Kirkko in Helsinki could be one for you, VA.

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                                      #43
                                      https://goo.gl/images/zt1jie. Radio Kootwijk. Built in the early 20s to provide long wave communication bethe Netherlands and Indonesia. As big as a football field. By the time they finished building it it was obselete as the technology required could be squeezed into a garage.

                                      Now it stands alone on one of the highest (sic), most remote places in Holland. It's an art deco heaven.

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                                        #44
                                        That looks great, LM. I can easily imagine a downsized version of the silhouette sitting on the mantelpiece as a clock too.

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                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                                          Frodsham and Helsby?
                                          That's it!

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                                            #46
                                            Fer BoE and Paw. Longannet power station is now closed and awaiting demolition.






                                            Culross is also the first place where deep sea coal mining took place, back in the 16th century. That it looks so quaint and twee now is I guess due to the initial seam being mined out/flooding.

                                            https://www.google.com/amp/s/wandere...ross-fife/amp/
                                            Last edited by Lang Spoon; 12-09-2018, 00:07.

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                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by Logan Mountstuart View Post
                                              https://goo.gl/images/zt1jie. Radio Kootwijk. Built in the early 20s to provide long wave communication bethe Netherlands and Indonesia. As big as a football field. By the time they finished building it it was obselete as the technology required could be squeezed into a garage.

                                              Now it stands alone on one of the highest (sic), most remote places in Holland. It's an art deco heaven.
                                              That’s an amazing building. Like a cross between Broadcasting House and this:



                                              s

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                                                #48
                                                Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                                                Driving back through Wales a couple of months ago, I really was struck by this place. Trawsfynydd nuclear power station.

                                                Ah, North Wales - this thread wouldn't be complete without some hydro power. Ffestiniog Power Station:

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by JVL View Post
                                                  When we lived in the Pfalz, the final hour or so of the journey back from England often involved a dusk or nighttime view of the huge BASF refinery and chemical works in Ludwigshafen:
                                                  I've noticed that, in the Ludwigshafen-based Tatort, they only show the city at night.

                                                  I once saw Ludwigshafen during the day. I understand why they only show the city at night.

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                                                    #50
                                                    A couple of years back, my wife worked in Ludwigshafen for 3 months. She didn't enjoy it.

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