Sunday 26 August 2012

Ramsgate August Bank Holiday 2012 Pictures Steam, Boats and Art

If you are wondering what to do this weekend, you could do worse than go down to Ramsgate Harbour and enjoy the event on there.
If you take some old rope with you, you can like in Aladdin exchange it for new rope, the old rope will form rope sculptures that will replace Rodin’s The Kiss in the foyer of The Turner Contemporary.

While on the subject of rope, you can learn to make rope, courtesy of Chatham Dockyard, while you are there.
There is a rather unusual beam engine running there there, which I think is called a steamboat doctor pump and was used on these vessels in America to pump water, from the river to the boilers until the 1850s. 
 As someone who once owned a Reliant Regal, I never aspired to the more advanced and expensive Robin, I was rather taken by this 1919 AC trike, AC went on to produce the faster Cobra series.
It is possible to go on some of the vessels there, which particularly amused my children so is a consideration if you have children about you this weekend.

Ramsgate events are often difficult to describe, it is a case of we all enjoyed ourselves, perhaps the pictures on my camera card will help, here are the links:


http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id9.htm


Talking to various volunteers there, I gather the event was restricted to only two days by the council who wouldn’t allow it to run for the whole three days of the bank holiday. Presumably they are wary of people in Ramsgate enjoying themselves too much.

There was also some concern as one of the café owners has threatened to sue because of smuts on their upholstery caused by the coal fires powering the various steamboats there.

This was an aspect of the compensation culture we now live in that I had never considered, perhaps we should all be careful about lighting a coal fire this Christmas.    

I may ramble on here some more. 


3 comments:

  1. Is your bookshop open Bank Holiday Monday?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry anon the bookshop is closed on all bank holidays Thursdays and Sundays.

      Delete
  2. Smuts indeed how comical, I wonder who I can sue because our curtains get dirty when we leave thhe windows open? TDC appear to be killjoys I must admit I knew nothing of the event We dont recieve free papers and never buy a local so if it ainnt advertised on the net I donnt see what is on.When we lived in Ramsgate we always went. Michael your website is open 24/7 even on Bank Holidays

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.