Post a random picture about your country

[Vasconcelos]

Porto Antigo, Cinfães.

[Georgian]

[askra]

A stereotyped view of Sardinia (sheeps, pastures and megalithic towers)

[Catrau]

Random pictures of last weekend Saint John Festival, Oporto's patron.













Rabelo boats regata is also a part of the festival. In the past, until the 60's of the 20th century, these boats would carry the wine from the Upper Douro (Alto Douro) to Gaia, on the other bank of the Douro in front of Oporto where the caves are, still today. Those caves are the face of the Wine companies and they are a touristic atracction.

[The Lawspeaker]

The Oude Gracht in Utrecht (with the town hall) around the year 1600. How the area looks today can be seen here.

What I notice is how much Utrecht in the year 1600 looked like Bruges, Ghent or Doornik still do today.

[Graham]

Ha! Thought that picture was real at first.

[The Lawspeaker]

Ha! Thought that picture was real at first.

It's a reconstruction of what the Oude Gracht looked like some 400 years ago.

[Graham]

Purple Heather



Glen Etive



Ring of brodgar

[Pallantides]

Panorama view from Tussheim looking down on Lesja, Oppland

[Albion]

Whilst production of civilian vessels has mainly gone east to Korea and China, there still remains a military ship building industry in Northern England and Western Scotland.

BAE is the largest UK defence company and amongst the largest such companies in the world and was formed from a merger of older companies including Vickers, it runs Barrow shipyard.
The Barrow shipyard has produced military and civilian vessels for many countries, including for many foreign navies as well as the Royal Navy.
Currently the next generation of UK nuclear submarines are being built there, the Astute class.

The first one, the Astute was launched a few years ago and became quite infamous when the incompetent captain ran it aground on a sand bank in Skye, Scotland. He was latter sacked but didn't face a court martial, the Astute was refloated at high tide but received slight damage when the tug boat knocked it.

In the past the Barrow shipyard has also produced other nuclear submarines for the UK, including the Vanguard class and Trafalgar class.

Barrow shipyard:

Barrow shipyard employs directly and indirectly many of the people of Barrow in Furness, Walney Island and much of Southern Cumbria. It is the main employer in the area.



HMS Astute:


At Barrow




Astute in Scotland somewhere


Astute run aground, but it's back at sea now. The captain was sacked.

HMS Vanguard:

HMS Vanguard is another nuclear submarine that was built at Barrow. Being a stealth submarine it and a French stealth sub collided around the Bay of Biscay a few years ago.
American, British and French nuclear submarines are thought to be the quietest and hardest to detect, but the American and Russian submarines are currently superior to the British and French in terms of overall capabilities. The Chinese are years behind as always.

Chinese and Russian submarines are thought to be noisier and easier to detect.
U.S. vessels are just as quiet as Britain's but the countries exchange information on where their submarines are patrolling. (Britain and France don't)

...

Both the British and French missile submarines are extraordinarily quiet, while their own sonar systems are designed to 'hear' the slightest sound from an enemy ship.
In this case both boats were on routine deterrent patrols, keeping their deadly missiles safe and ready to fire.
Both were listening hard for any other ships or objects to avoid, but each submarine was so quiet that the other was unable to hear it.
Only Britain, France and America are thought to operate such sophisticated and silent vessels. Russian boats are noisy by comparison.
But whereas British and American submariners routinely inform each other of roughly where their missile submarines are patrolling, to prevent just this kind of freak accident, it is understood there is no similar arrangement with the French.

As the French Navy generally has only one missile submarine on patrol at any one time, the British submarine had the remarkable misfortune to collide with the only vessel in the world which it is unable to detect, and knew nothing about.