Dog walk

'The path less travelled' (see Thursday), just like the path I more often take, can be walked 'out' along the canal and 'back' along the river. It isn't very pretty in either direction but it is quite interesting. The path back along the riverbank squeezes round the back of the Victoria Mills complex of redeveloped mill buildings and new-build flats.

It is the route of the Aire Sculpture Trail, so every now and again you come across a cartoonish animal, like this rather sad-looking dog. The sculptures enliven the walk, as does keeping an eye out for the kingfisher that lives along this stretch of water. I've only ever glimpsed it once. Unfortunately, the route is all a bit litter-strewn, which appears to be a consequence of the floods of a couple of years ago overlaid by rubbish dropped more recently, possibly by dog-walkers or by the school and college students who use it as a shortcut. I do wish folks would take their litter home with them!

Shadow variations

A brief spell of bright sunshine means shadows - and chance to play a little. This is one of the original Victorian fire escapes on the main mill building of the Victoria Mills complex, now converted into apartments.

I like it in mono but it also makes an interesting colour study, with the blue tones over-saturated.

Lucky strike

The top flat in the Victoria Mills apartment complex apparently won the lottery this day! A pot of gold anyway... We seem to be doing well for rainbows just lately. I spotted this one as I was walking home at dusk. I liked the way the sunset turned the windows into gold.

Red reprise

Here's another photo I took a few weeks ago and never got round to using. It's nice to look back at blue skies...we haven't had one lately. This little rowan tree, which I pass every day on my way to work, has since lost all its glorious red leaves but the yellow berries hung on a lot longer, happily for the birds who like to feast on them.

Oresome

There's something I love about cogs on old machinery - and when they're rusty... well, I love the patina and the pattern and the sense of venerable age. This was a pic I shot for my 'Rust' monthly photography theme but I decided it was an 'also-ran'.  My viewpoint was, I think, just a bit too high.

Retained as a sculptural reminder of the buildings' industrial and textile heritage, the weaving loom is slowly oxidising outside the Victoria Mills complex (see also here). I wonder how long it will last before it all falls to bits? (Longer than I will, I'll bet!)

A relic

Someone's leaving 'do' at work had me gracing the VM Lounge, a bar in the centre of the Victoria Mills complex. I've shown photos of the complex before (click the Victoria Mills label below). It was a huge Victorian textile mill, built almost next door to Salts Mill but some twenty years later. After it finally closed as a business, the buildings and land were bought by a property development company. The old buildings have been transformed into loft-style apartments, with some new-build apartment blocks on the site as well. Some elements remain to remind of the buildings' original use. This is a rusty piece of mill machinery but it has a certain charm and is at least as attractive in its context as some modern sculptures.

To distract the eye...

I suppose if you're going to build a hideous modern car-park next to an interesting old stone mill, then the best thing to do is to plant some trees in front that tone with it! This is the car-park belonging to the massive Victoria Mills complex in Shipley, which was converted into apartments a few years ago. See here also. Most of our trees are not yet showing their autumn colours but these ornamental types (maples?) tend to turn red much earlier than our native trees. (Another iPhone photo, somewhat messed with in Photoshop.)

Greening

Another fabulous tree that I pass most days on my walk to work.  It really does seem an unusually vibrant green this year - and again the colour comes mainly from its flowers/blossom rather than the emerging leaves.  I think it's a sycamore (though I may have that wrong).  You may recognise the mill in the background as I have shown it before on my blog.  It's the Victoria Mills complex, now converted into loft-style apartments.  Click the Victoria Mills label below for more info about it.

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A reminder too that this weekend 20-22 April is World Heritage Weekend and Saltaire is hosting a varied programme of events.  See the Saltaire Village website for full details and a programme.  I hope to be able to report on it later!

It's that time of year...

It's that time of year again, where the nights are drawing in and it's getting dark when I leave work around 5pm.  I can never decide if I like it or not.  I like the blue dusk sky and I like seeing lights twinkling.  It feels good when I finally reach the cosiness of home after a brisk and often chilly walk.  Right now it's light when I leave for work in the mornings but in a week or two it will be dark then as well and that's what I dislike - never being at home in the daylight, except for at the weekends.  Opportunities for photography become more limited too.  This year I must get out with my tripod and take some more night scenes...

What with dashing up and down to and from London several times recently, being a doting grandmother ;-)  I am a bit short on scenic pictures.  (I am of course building up quite a stock of baby photos!)  I actually took this photo earlier this year...  Now they are building an orthodontics factory on the wasteland where I stood to take the picture, so the whole terrain is changing.   The buildings you can see are the old Victoria Mills, now converted into apartments, and one of the new blocks they have also built on the complex. (Click label below for more photos of Victoria Mills).

BIG yellow crane

Just had to show you this enormous crane (no, not another bird photo!)  We were watching it from our office window and later, as I walked home, I saw it was still at work.  You may recall a week or so ago I posted a picture of a dredger dragging up mud and rubbish from the bottom of the canal and depositing it in a floating skip.  Well, the crane had come to lift the skips and the machinery out of the canal, setting them onto a series of low-loaders to be driven away.  It's interesting, I think, that hiring this huge crane must be more economical (in money and/or time) than sailing the machinery along the canal to wherever it is needed next.

The crane was sited beside Salts Wharf.  The town of Shipley is on the right. The old mill on the left is now apartments called Victoria Mills and the office block in the centre used to be part of HMRC (Tax Office) until it (the building, not HMRC!) was axed in the recent government cut-backs.  It's now more or less an empty block, waiting to be re-let.  The surfeit of empty office space round here has not stopped developers preparing a site across the road to build another new block!

VM from the riverside

This is the riverside view of the Victoria Mills apartment complex, showing the new-build blocks. There must be a fabulous panorama from those top penthouses - right up the Aire Valley, with a wonderful view over Saltaire and Salts Mill.

When I hanker after a compact, easy to maintain home (instead of a 110+ year old house with lots of steep stairs) I wonder what it would be like to live here. But if, like me, you don't have a car, these flats are actually in quite an isolated position and I wouldn't much fancy walking home in the dark from the railway station. Though it would be handy for work, being right next door!

Victoria Mills

Victoria Mills in Shipley has been imaginatively converted into a huge apartment complex, with some 'industrial loft-style' apartments in the old mill buildings and some new-build blocks. Altogether there are about 300 apartments, some of which are owner-occupied, some rented and some serviced apartments for business travellers. It is set among landscaped gardens with a gym, shop and bar-restaurant within the complex. It's like a small village in itself.

When the apartments first came on sale, my friend and I went to tour the show apartments (does anyone else like, doing that?). I'd no intention of buying, but I was curious to see what they were like inside. The fittings - kitchen, bathroom etc - are very stylish, but there wasn't much storage space in the bedrooms. I concluded they were really meant for young folks who haven't had time to accumulate much junk... not oldies like me with years-worth of precious clutter (not to mention the 'treasures' added by aged relatives who've downsized and offspring who've not yet upsized!)

Red tree

It's blowing an absolute gale here in Saltaire today (Saturday as I write this), which is a pity for two reasons - one, my friend's daughter is getting married and she'll have a job to keep her wedding veil from going stratospheric! And secondly it will blow down all the leaves, which are just beginning to look really stunning in their autumn colours. I pass this one every morning on my way to work. It's a rowan tree (mountain ash) and has blossom and then berries, and very pretty leaves - everything a good tree needs.

The building in the background is called Victoria Mills. It's about a quarter mile further down the valley from Salts Mill, and was built only about 20 years later. It too was a textile mill that had to close down a few years ago. A company called Newmason Properties have redeveloped the old mill buildings into apartments and also built several new apartment blocks, to make a housing complex of about 400 dwellings with gardens, sports facilities, a bar and restaurant.... and a very ugly multi-storey car park! I visited one of the show-flats and they are pretty stunning - high ceilings, open plan design and finished to a high standard, with some of the stone walls left unplastered and the original cast-iron columns still in place, to remind you of the building's origins. It's rather exciting to see the old buildings being used like that - though I have to say I'm glad that Salts Mill itself was not developed as flats. It seems much better as it is. (Part of the New Mill in Saltaire has been converted into apartments.)