fabled poles Archives - The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society

11 Feb 2026

The Lost Pole

posted in: fabled poles, Vintage |

We are saddened to report that The Fabled lost pole of Bala Leisure Centre is no more. It is an ex pole, it has gone to meet it’s maker, bereft of life it rests in peace… (you know the rest) I was tipped off by somebody on Gweplyfr*¹ that some contractors had been and removed it quite recently. Probably under cover of darkness.

I confirmed this for myself last week with a drive by. The photo below shows what you can expect to see there now. (not the blue sky obviously) If only those contractors ever read these pages they’d realise the enormity of what they were doing and might have countermanded the order from their gang-master. They should have done: “I was only following orders” is never a defence when the day of reckoning comes.

Forgive them Lord (Spoon) for they know not what they do.

Luckily those who bought our 2025 calendar still have a smashing reminder of its fabled magnificence on the July page. And for those that didn’t, we still have posters and postcards of this incredible ex-relic and, of course, it adorns the cover of our wonderful book about telegraph poles. All of which available after this hard-sell via our shop page, Where you might also notice that we’re selling some hats on behalf of our neighbours from the Welsh Space Agency who haven’t got a shop.

*¹ aka facebook if you’re not in Wales.

A length of roadside hedge with a tree just visible at the left end with blue sky behind it. No telegraph pole

Art deco travel poster urging a visit to the fabled lost pole of bala leisure centre

A five armed telegraph pole with insulators and with spiky twigs of ivy and undergrowth sprouting from it along a verdant hedgeline with tree at leftmost end and blue sky behind.

27 Nov 2025

Pole Graveyard and…

posted in: Broken Poles, fabled poles, Insulators, Railway poles, Telegraph Poles, Vintage |

The last of the calendars

What is it about telegraph poles and Scotland? Many of the finest extant poles can be found north of the border. And some of our most ardent telegraph pole appreciators are also from up there. Recent member William Brown sent in the photo below of a pole graveyard at Keith railway station yard. The picture, I must add, was taken by fellow new member, Mike Cooper. Official secrets and all that precludes me from telling you their membership numbers. But they are adjacent.

Apart from Keith being the name of my dad, it is a town that sounds like it should be in Aberdeenshire but is actually in Moray and is the geographical location where the A95 meets the A96. It’s also got a football team, a St. Rufus church and a Tooty’s Takeaway. And this pole graveyard of course. I’ve google street-viewed myself hoarse but haven’t been able to spot them. Seeing these expired five armers in rigor mortis I find deeply disturbing. I shouldn’t be looking at this picture so close to bedtime. And I’ve just had cheese.

Every cloud, as they say. Now that I’ve given the location away I can imagine busloads of insulator collectors turning up at some station somewhere asking to be taken to Keith and the conductor saying “He’s not working today.”

While I’m on, just 20 calendars left now. I’m supposed to be moving house so they have to go. Pic below of June by way of temptation.

A pile of dead telegraph poles. They are mostly poles with five arms and insulators.

A mockup of the June 2026 calendar page showing a pole between two mountains behind a large metal road bridge at Ballachulish.

24 Apr 2023

Messing with my mind

posted in: Art, Country poles, fabled poles, Found Poles, Gorgeousness, New Poles, Nothing to do with Telegraph Poles, Oddities |

I’ve been playing with ChatGPT lately – the world-changing artificial intelligence that we, as a society, haven’t fully worked out what to do with yet. I won’t tell you how, but it is a real boon in one of my day jobs. I won’t be telling the people I work for either. Anyway, very recently, I was introduced to ChatGPT’s elder, more artistic sister. Her name is DALL-E. We’ve become very close. Close enough that Mrs TPAS is asking me what’s going on. I think up something and DALL-E draws it for me. Just like that. Here’s a couple of pictures she did for me of Godzilla in a wedding gown (Bridezilla). Mrs TPAS already knows about this side of me by the way.

Godzilla in a wedding dress as drawn by DALL-E Artificial Intelligence

Godzilla wearing a wedding veil as drawn by DALL-E Artificial Intelligence.

So, obviously, being the supreme commander of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society I wanted to know how DALL-E might draw a telegraph pole. So I asked her for “a photo realistic telegraph pole with 6 arms on a lonely road in Wales”. Below is what she came up with. It really flips my mind. I can almost feel the fuggy intelligence behind it all trying to please me. The landscapes and the poles are real enough, yet completely alien at the same time. Eerie even. I love them. What’s also clear is that DALL-E, like most people, doesn’t discern between a telephone pole and a power pole. Mwynhewch! as we say on lonely roads in Wales.
(click an image to enlarge)

22 May 2022

Newport has lots going for it.

posted in: fabled poles, Found Poles, Railway poles, Telegraph Poles, Vintage |

I’m sure…

Newport is in Wales. Just. It’s in Wales about as much as Berwick upon Tweed is in England. So close to “them” that “they” may as well have it. I am of the previously unshared opinion that the rest of wales is quietly ambivalent about ownership of this particular corner.

What do I know about Newport?

Well, I became intimate with the roundabout beneath junction 24 of the M4 during a stalled hitch-hike home back in my army days – specifically where the A449 branches north; the fans of Newport County football club could be friendlier (one savage purple-jumper wearing Newport fan has stayed long in the memory of my home town’s fans); AND nobody ever chose Newport as a holiday destination – except when confusing it with Newport, Pembs.

So, given the feeling in the rest of Cymru it was with some trepidation that long-term correspondent to these pages MartYn Fielder (a son of Abergavenny) had to visit the town with his mother for a medical appointment. He need not have worried. It was while waiting for the NHS to do its thing that MartYn followed his Indiana Jones urges and explored an old railway track bed in Malpas just to the north of the town. I’ll let his words describe his adventure:

“I came across the noble form of an old pole, forlorn in the splendour of its decaying grandeur. The pole is incredibly pock-marked, as though it’s been attacked by giant woodworm, and there are no identifying markers. It is also entirely alone – having walked all the way to the point where the old railway has been obliterated by the link road between the A4042 and the A4051 in one direction, and then followed it in the other direction where it has been transformed into a tarmac footpath wending its way through endless housing estates, I can confidently state that this is the only remaining telegraph pole on this stretch of the old Eastern Valley Line of the Monmouthshire Rail and Canal Company (1852) which closed in 1963. This splendid solitary specimen stands as a witness to a century of spectacular growth and slow decline in the industrial heartland of South Wales. A humbling thought.”

So there we have it. Newport, Gwent, still in Wales, has Big Mac’s Wholly Soul Band and a single old and isolated, redundant and woodpeckered multi-arm telegraph pole. The word “Yay!” comes to mind. Put Newport on my holiday list. Summer 2074 should do it.

Anyway, I looked it up recently, MartYn and I have been exchanging telegraph pole related missives for more than ten years now. He is this close ” to getting on my Christmas card list.

An old 6 armed pole with no wires and scant few insulators stands alone above a bush.

13 Nov 2021

Navigation The TElegraph Pole Way

posted in: fabled poles, History, Literature, Oddities |

Member #1030 John Causer wrote to let us know of:
(a) His complete suffusion with pride at having obtained entry into our most august of societies, and
(b) A genuine telegraph pole related anecdote which we reproduce below. It came from from “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman” the autobiography of Richard P Feynman (1918-1988), the American Nobel laureate theoretical physicist.

Oh, Feynman – quantum electrodynamics, superfluidity, path-integral-formulation – that Richard Feynman. Yes him.

Thank you John #1030, a small red star has been placed next to your name in the TPAS register of members, which I keep in a little box in the third drawer down in my desk. Keep up the good work.

PS. John also added: “The first sentence needs some parsing. Read as ‘I entered MIT and was accepted for the Pi Lambda Delta fraternity, which had various initiation tests’ “. What?

An extract of text from Richard P Feynman's autobiography pertaining to telegraph poles.

28 Jul 2021

Pharoahs Island – TW17 9LN

posted in: fabled poles, Maintenance, Oddities, Photos, Telegraph Poles |

Laurence Langley wrote to tell us of his new role – that of responding to Openreach’s hazardous equipment within 2 hours! And herewith one of his more interesting poles.

“This pole feeds the entire island and due to the river crossing & boats the pole is 15m to avoid collision. TW17 9LN – DP107 CP1 – 15m Medium. The only access to the island is by barge and will require a crane to transport the pole across, if the Water Authority do not require the current wire height then we would be looking at a 10m hollow pole, this would save us transporting and will be easier to install the pole.”

Apologies for the low-resolution of the images. WIGIWYG (What I get is what you get)

NB. The value of an outside loo from one of those properties would probably be five times what my house is worth. And I live in a castle. In Wales.

An aerial photo of Pharoahs Island - a small, populated tear drop shaped island in the middle of the river Thames.

A view of Pharoahs Island - houses on the bank - from across the opposite bank of the river thames. Yes, there's a telegraph pole.

21 Apr 2021

Another Fabled Lost Pole

posted in: fabled poles, Found Poles, Gorgeousness, Railway poles, Vintage |

We all know about the Fabled Lost Pole of Bala Leisure Centre. Well here’s another lost pole and I think I’m going to use my high office as member #0001 of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society to enfable it. Enfabling means that this becomes only the UK’s second ever Fabled Pole. This one is henceforth to be known as The Fabled Lost Pole of Norton Fitzwarren*¹. So fabled is it, that all I can tell you is that it’s in some woods, on a footpath next to the West Somerset Railway.

For a pole to become fabled is the telegraphic equivalent of beatification – which is something highly churchy and to do with the making of saints. And I don’t mean Southampton Football Club.

Special thanks, as always, to completely favoured TPAS correspondent, Agent #0469H John Brundsen. John is a climber of poles by day and walker with ‘er indoors by weekend. His emails always make me pause as they are 100% always newsworthy. And this one is, to quote the vernacular, a “stonker”. It was John, you will remember, who provided this society with this view of Cornwall through a hole in a telegraph pole.

*¹ There’s a rude joke here about Norton Fitzwarren, I’m sure, but we’re better than that.