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It’s been a year since I retired.

A year that flew by, despite maintaining a daily diary in a futile attempt to pin the time down. But time won’t be pinned, will it? Time at last to start the task I intended as a retirement project, documenting the stories of my photo shoots and providing location guides for anyone interested.

The Creaky Gents Club (three of us from the same workplace who retired around the same time, plus a friend) meet up intermittently during the year, mostly at West End drinking establishments to swap retirement stories and catch up, but this May we decided to go full on retired old-fogeys and visit the Hornby model railway visitors centre in Margate, Kent. Hornby also have the Scalextric, Airfix and Corgi brands in their family, so it seemed an opportunity for some childhood nostalgia, what could be better!

Because I live on the south east side of London, it made more sense for me to drive to Margate than take a train into the centre of London, catch another to the coast, then bus it to the visitor centre. Driving also provided me the opportunity to go early, shoot some pictures, then stay on after to shoot the sunset. A full day of photography, interrupted by a trip to a toy museum, a pint on the sea front and a catch up with friends. What’s not to like.

The day arrived and I did a quick check of the Margate tide times. High tide at 10.35am. Perfect! I dropped my daughter at 6th form then set off for Margate. An hour and 45 minutes later I parked at the Cliftonville Lido car park ready to capture the glory of the long derelict lido and get some long exposure photography in as the high tide arrived. The camera for the day was my Fuji GFX50s medium format, the 35-70mm kit lens and an elderly adapted Nikon 28-200mm super-zoom lens. Other gear included my trusty Velbon Sherpa carbon fibre tripod and a set of Urth screw in neutral density filters.

Cliftonville Lido was built by John Henry Iles (who also built Dreamland) in the 1920s. It finally closed for good in the 1980s. The Lido was constructed on top of the earlier Clifton Baths built way back in the 1820s. Some of the older baths still survive underground. Shortly before Covid-19, a local group attempted to start works to bring the lido pool back into use, and some clearance was done. Covid seems to have stopped this and today the place is a sorry state. But an excellent photo opportunity!

This wrapped up my morning shoot and I packed up, went back to car, and set off for the Hornby visitor centre to meet up with my fellow Creakies.

Hornby Centre

The Hornby Visitor Centre is a museum set in Hornby’s former factory. It’s a celebration of Hornby toys featuring rare products from Hornby, Scalextric, Airfix and Corgi. including the history of Hornby’s iconic model trains.

We had a nice lunch in the cafe, then spent an enjoyable couple of nostalgic hours viewing train and track models, Corgi model cars and Airfix kits. Some of the rarer items were sealed in glass cases, while elaborate train set tableaux occupied dining table sized (or larger) layouts. There were opportunities to play Fat Controller with the train sets. One of my favourites was a giant Scalextric track layout. Unfortunately, only one of the cars was working so we had to be content with qualifying laps only.

As a child, I was given a basic electric train set and I managed to find an example of the shunter engine I had in a glass case (which was gratifying). I never owned a Scalextrics set, sadly. Amongst the Corgi exhibits I found a batmobile model car (from the 1960s campy show) which I desperately wanted, but never got. Next to it was a Yellow submarine (from the Beatles film) which I never wanted, but received instead of a batmobile (much to my child chagrin). That loss is something that has stayed with me my whole life. Childhood trauma…

Unfortunately, for some reason I seem to have taken very few images from inside the museum, although I thought I had. Here’s a couple:

There’s more about the history of Hornby and its museum here: https://uk.hornby.com/hornby-hobbies-visitor-centre

We left the museum and piled into my little car and drove back to the Cliftonville lido car park. We abandoned the car and walked along the seafront looking for a pub. We ended up in the Brewers Fayre, near Margate railway station. Our inbibing was quickly interrupted by a phone call from the police. Someone had found one of our wallets on the seafront and handed it in at the local police station. As my friends needed to catch their train home, we decided to call it the end of a thoroughly enjoyable meet up. The guys went off in search of the police station and their train back to London and I walked briskly back to the car park to stick some more money on the meter.

This was the start of part 3 of the day for me: evening light photography.

I first took a walk past the Turner Contemporary gallery.

I can’t say the contents of the Turner gallery are much to my taste, but like the Tate, it’s supposed to be controversial. And there is no denying that the gallery provides a focal point and a shot in the arm for a town trying to recover past glories.

Further along the seafront:

After the harbour, I climbed down the steps to the beach to check out the huge tidal pool (swimming pool, boating lake?).

Then as sunset approached, the walk back to the car…

Short diversion to photograph a couple of old town buildings:

Then the walk back to the car park…

And that wrapped up the day.

Thanks to the Gents for another great meet up, and to Margate for the photo opportunities.

Until the next one….

Where is Margate?

Margate is a coastal resort in the extreme south east of England.

Google maps aerial view of the Lido site: