The index

Eight Watches, Each One a Place and a Mechanism

A watch is one place, one piece of machinery and one load. They are numbered in the order they were written. Nothing in them is ranked, and none of them requires passing a gate.

The index

• 05An hour on the outer wallThe walk out along an outer stone wall at the harbor mouth
• 02From the viaduct sidewalkA high road viaduct sidewalk, above the valley floor
• 04How a bascule leaf breaks freeThe fixed approach of a bascule span, on the shore side of the pit
• 07How a long hull gets around a bendA street end on the inside of the bend, and the span sidewalk above it
• 08One long, one shortAnywhere within earshot of the channel, which is further than you think
• 03Ore, stone and salt at three berthsTwo street ends on the valley floor, and one shore road
• 06Rail crossings worth a whole afternoonA grade crossing on a valley floor street, standing well back
• 01The ten minutes before a boatA span sidewalk, standing on the fixed approach

What is in each one

Every watch opens with two lines: where you stand, and what is uncomfortable about it. That order is deliberate. A vantage point described without its drawbacks is a recommendation, and a recommendation is a thing this publication is not qualified to make about a place with truck traffic behind it.

After that, the mechanism, then the load, then whatever the place turned out to be about. They are between nine hundred and fifteen hundred words, which is roughly one visit each.

If you only read two

Read number 01 and number 05. The first one explains why a nine minute closure contains ninety seconds of movement, which is the thing everybody gets wrong before their first visit. The fifth one is about waiting, which is the actual activity and the part nobody writes about honestly.

What is not in them

No named structure, dock, terminal, park or building. Places are given by type and by street, which is enough to find them and keeps other people's names out of our mouth. No vessel names and no company names, for the same reason. No prices, because nothing here is for sale. And no photograph is presented as documentation of a named object: the plates show the type of thing under discussion, and editorial standards says so in as many words.

Where to go next

• Where to standThe four kinds of vantage point, and the characteristic failure of each.
• A first visitThe same places in an order that works for somebody who has not done this.
• The mechanismWhat a movable span is, and where the minutes of an opening actually go.
• What movesThe four cargoes, and how to tell them apart from a sidewalk.