Thursday 5 April 2018

Development Opportunies

The first day that felt like Spring. Sunny, warmer but not too warm. Perfect day for a walk. I decided to head up Eastfield Road and keep going to see where it led.

Past the area containing the dilapidated looking pub 'The Sportsman', various shops and takeaways and the entrance to the graveyard, the houses start getting a bit bigger, first 1930s bay windowed semis, then bigger victoriana. One large house hosted a use car business and others old people's homes, a common use of larger houses in Peterborough. A petrol station with a Costcutter attached on on side and unusually a Chinese restaurant, including mock pagodas on the other. 

By this time I think I had entered the area known as ''Newark". The sign I'd seen yesterday had referred to this place, rather than the Newark near Nottingham. Now it made sense.

I passed a large house, currently in disuse but apparently acquired as a 'development opportunity'. I'd thought care homes were even bigger money-spinner a than residential developments. It seems even these establishments are not immune. The building had a slightly spooky air, somehow exacerbated by the abandoned cardboard box in the foreground. Maybe it had contained the belongings of a former resident, dropped in the struggle to leave by the eviction deadline. An absurd scene came into my mind. A struggle between the carers and elderly residents with bailiffs and representatives of the developers. Short-lived and one sided. 


I carried on. After passing the extensive low rise Regional College, I was drawn off Eastfield Road down a path alongside the college's playing fields. I could see a green space the other side and thought I could stop for lunch. It turned out to be a grass verge alongside a fairly recent housing development. The path eventually came to a sudden and unexpected dead end. I was diverted through the housing estate, and eventually onto a main road heading west (possibly).

The road was residential to begin with, possibly 1930s vintage. Further up a few shops and an MOT garage, including a large Fish and Chip shop. Noted for future reference. The road bent round into the direction of the City Centre (I hoped..I'd already extended my lunchtime and must have been a good 20 minutes from work).

I passed a pub, The Elm Tree. It seemed unsure as to whether it was open. A large function room had an advert for the Circus on the door. I couldn't tell if it was contemporary. 

Further along a flat roofed brown 30s(?) building, of the simple type used for community halls and scout headquarters. A building with potential as an excellent community facility. But currrently housing the Christadelphians, one of the many small, obsure and a bit sinister Christian sects that seem to find homes in these sorts of places. I hurried past, not wanting to risk being accosted by someone trying to talk to me about god, and headed back to work.



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