Odds and Sods October 2025

This months catch up is a mix of autumnal Plymouth and St Ives and warm and sunny Greece and Albania. I have deliberately mixed up the images as I noticed an opportunity to compare and contrast images with visual or compositional similarities, as I put this selection together, giving the mix an added element to provoke thought, humour and contemplation.

This is a mural on the side of a café in Saranda, Albania.

Not exactly a mural but an original sign above a shop, now a café in Plymouth. Right by the harbour, when work was the order of the day rather than leisure.

13 The Barbican is a Grade 2 listed building. A town house with a later added shop. Late 18th century. The shop front is late 19th century.

On the harbour wall at St Ives are these lobster pots, making quite an incidental art installation.

.....while in the market in Corfu town are these very fresh looking fish.

Still in Corfu is this waiter's nightmare of a restaurant laid out on stone steps.

While in St Ives is this equally challenging entrance to a cottage front door.

In Corfu is the ancient interior of the synagogue. I am going to do a short post on this later.

Back in St Ives is the interior of the ancient church of St Ia. With the earliest parts dating from 1410, it has a wooden waggon roof seen here in its original carved glory. Too dark to photograph in any great detail, on a dark day, I will have to return some time.

On a mystery route through Plymouth, this was one of the clues. It was in the process of being restored as part of a major re design of Plymouth's main avenue, Armada Way. It is a giant sun dial fountain with curved steps.

I like the matching visual pun of these contrasting curved steps which act as seating in a Roman amphitheatre in the ancient city of Butrint in Albania.

Here are the ancient Greek walls of Butrint confusing the viewer into thinking we are in Machu Picchu. It seems that step-cutting stones like this was not unique to South America but was conceived here too as a solution to earthquakes.

Here is some Cornish granite holding back the stormy seas at St Ives. No earthquakes here.

A doorway in Corfu.

An older doorway in Plymouth.

A window with autumnal leaves in Plymouth.

A window with autumnal leaves in Corfu.

An ancient Greek statue in the museum of Butrint.

An Art Deco figure of a miner in Plymouth. This is another short post coming up, as there is a group of these figures.

A narrow street, looking up in Plymouth.

A narrow street, looking up in Corfu.

The British military barracks in Corfu castle. A large, two-story building constructed from yellow bricks, which is now used for archives and a library. It was built starting in 1843 and has a facade with heavy arches.

The British Marines barracks in the Plymouth Bastion. A 17th-century artillery fortress with a distinctive "bastion" shape, featuring multiple protruding points (bastions) for better defensive coverage.

A bronze group of figures in Corfu town which I will tell you more about in a later post.

A bronze group of figures in St Ives, which I will also tell you about in a later post.

The carved stone font of angels in St Ia's church in St Ives, possibly 14th century.

The carved stone lintel of a lion that has captured a bull, in Butrint. This was one of the heavily guarded stone doorways into the old city. The relief depicts a lion devouring the head of a bull. The imagery is widely interpreted as a symbol of strength, power, and protection, with the lion representing the city's inhabitants and the bull its enemies. The carving is estimated to date back to the 7th or 6th century BC.

I should logically be finishing with sunsets, but these are sunrises. This one in South Devon.

...... and this one looking at Albania from Corfu.