Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.

Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.

Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!

Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.

Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/

It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.

Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.

C'est la vie as they say in Suffolk. A local enjoying the early-morning sunshine outside his Lowestoft beach hut.

11th August 2026 - a recent trip to Gloucester is recorded (in the usual, arbitrary fashion) in the images below.  I return, again (!), to the "See it, Say it, Sorted" nonsense which permeates train travel these days but when it comes to 'sorting' critical  matters, British Transport Police (BTP) fails miserably. My point is 'what is the point' (two points!) of this constant claptrap on the railway network? Why only the railway network? Why not on buses, in shopping centres (and shops) or airports - we could have almost constant drivel saturating our brains. When I become world dictator, I would command that this message is played ceaselessly in the offices of the agency that fashioned the campaign. The file below contains an abridged version of a Times article on the murderer Simon Levy.

Ref the last photo in the gallery above, all staircases at Swindon Station were infected, for many years, by another contagion (like the "See it" nonsense). Each time someone walked up or down the stairs, an automatic message "In the interest of safety, when on the stairs, use the handrail and refrain from using your mobile phone" (or something similar) was played. Finally (and I'm really surprised it took so long), station staff complained that it was driving them round the bend and so the messages have been stopped. Network Rail seems to have forgotten that staircases have been in use for many hundreds (thousands) of years without inane messages informing people how to use them. I guess that this was yet another element of the litigation mindset imported from the USA (i.e. in order to cover yourself for any future claims - like falling down the stairs - you must provide fatuous advice).

22nd January 2026 - a stroll around Marks & Spencer, Kinshasa finds the following images:

A December (2023) jaunt around the Tory area of Bradford-on-Avon is illustrated in the gallery below. The gallery is book-ended by two pictures, the first of a carbon capture sign in St Margaret's Street and the second of a green wall in Bridge Yard.

13th December 2023 - out and about in Bath... again. This excursion starts at the RUH where we find that, even here, American influences have penetrated. When did members of staff become 'colleagues'? All supermarkets (and other outlets) now refer to staff as 'colleagues' as in store notices "If you need help ask a colleague" or in "colleague announcement" over the public address system. So it was refreshing (actually, I despise that word but can't think of a better one) to find that in the Coffee #1 coffeehouse at the Riverside apartment block(s), 'staff' still prevails - see photos in the gallery below:

From the RUH, we move to a store in Weston Village where we find that Tesco is charging outrageous prices for those who have not been shanghaid (the definition of shanghai is 'to enroll or obtain for the crew of a ship by unscrupulous means, as by force or the use of liquor or drugs' or in the case of Tesco and others, 'the threat of outrageous prices') into the Clubcard ploy. See the photos in the gallery below... if Tesco can make a profit on its Costa smooth medium roast coffee at £3, why are charging 'regular' customers £6? Scandalous profiteering I say.

27th October 2023 - out and about, in and around Bath

20th September 2023 - this article recounts a short (ha - 5 hours in total), circular walk along the Kennet & Avon Canal in Bath on 16th September 2023. Respite came in the form of a light lunch at the Holburne Museum (just a short hop from the canal through Sydney Gardens). 

26th April 2023 - as the subject of this piece is just a small, spring diversion to Island Park in Chippenham, I will resist the temptation to create a separate webpage and simply add an article to the existing 'Further Beyond' title page.