Tag: Red Phone Boxes

Here’s another of Mum and Dad’s Scottish phone box finds!

(Coordinates 56°47’11.1″N, 3°40’89.9″W.)

This one has been kept very nicely and has now been turned into a library for the local residents!

Lovely to see this type of re-use. I wonder how the library is managed? Maybe people just put book donations on the shelves and borrowing is all done in good faith!

Here’s another rural Scottish phone box from Mum and Dad’s travels.

(Coordinates 57°03’99.3″N, 3°21’46.7″W.)

Stuff I learnt today: if you drop the wee Google Street View man onto the map around Crathie Kirk and Balmoral Castle, he turns into the Queen. Somehow I doubt she goes for walks along the A93!

(I wonder if it does the same for all of the Royal residences? I will resist checking, because I really don’t have that level of procrastination time available today.)

Anyway, this phone box is a lot better kept than most rural phone boxes in the UK. It’s super shiny and red, and there’s still an actual phone inside, which is unusual these days! Hopefully, this one is here to stay for some years yet.

Another phone box from Mum and Dad’s travels today.

(Coordinates 57°11’34.1″N, 2°64’71.1″W.)

This one should really be known as ‘The Leaning Phone Box of Torphins’ and I’d be surprised if it’s there for much longer… because in addition to it falling over, there’s no phone inside! Poor phone box – it would be nice if this one could be rescued, reutilised and straightened up again, but I’m not holding my breath.

Here’s another Scottish phone box found by Mum and Dad.

(Coordinates 57°07’74.5″N, 2°89’05.4″W.)

This one still had a phone in it, which is unusual these days! Sadly, it also had a notice inside informing the locals that it was being removed soon.

It’s fairly tatty and looks as though it has been in a state of disrepair for some time. Still, it’s sad to see that this one, like so many others, is due to be carted off to the phone box graveyard.

Here’s another phone box that Mum and Dad found in the depths of the Scottish countryside….

…but if you look at Google Street View…

(Coordinates 57°06’48.0″N, 3°00’97.4″W.)

…isn’t there something missing?

Dad emailed me the following with regards to this box last October:

‘It’s here […] but wasn’t when the Google street view was done – there’s a post office van there! They have made a bit of wall between the gatepost and the old wall, and added a phonebox from somewhere! So this one isn’t in its original location.’

Strange that a phone box would be moved to a new rural location! I wonder where it was originally.

Back to Scotland for this week’s phone box. Mum and Dad sent this one, which is on their regular route between Edinburgh and southwest Scotland.

Coordinates 55°56’26.4″N, 3°61’84.1″W.)

This one could do with a slight repaint around the top but on the whole is very well-kept, and very neatly positioned between that bin and bus shelter! (Although, thinking about it, the phone box was probably there first…)

This is the last phone box from Mum and Dad’s trip to Wales last year.

(Coordinates 52°10’94.5″N, 4°53’83.1″W.)

I absolutely love the refurbished paint scheme on this box! It was empty when Dad photographed it last September, but it looks as though it had been repainted ready to house a defibrillator. In the Street View image linked above, it was still red, so this is a recent development.

Moving on to Scotland next week!

We’re still on Mum and Dad’s Welsh trip, and this week sees a second/third (see update to last week’s post) phone box from near the village of Mynachlog-ddu!

(Coordinates 51°95’52.5″N, 4°68’77.0″W.)

This box was very tatty and weathered, and sadly, like many of the Welsh boxes that Mum and Dad found last year, it contained a notice informing the locals that the box would soon be going to the phone box graveyard. I’m sure it did valiant service while it could.

A very rural phone box from Mum and Dad’s Welsh trip for you today.

(Coordinates 51°94’14.7″N, 4°70’50.6″W.)

I am not at all sure that I have the right coordinates for this one – from the Google Street View image, I think it might be a different phone box. However, it was the only one I could find in Mynachlog-ddu (I couldn’t find St Dogmael’s Church, which this box is near)… so it’ll have to do for now!

Update 19th March 2020: Dad confirmed that it was a different box (but additionally that the one linked on Street View above was also still in situ when they visited – they just didn’t have chance to take a picture of it!). Here’s the correct box:

(Coordinates 51°92’15.2″N, 4°71’77.3″W.)

Anyway, this phone box had a notice inside saying that it had been offered to the community. I wonder if anyone’s taken BT up on the offer?