North Norfolk Margins

The lure of the margins, in this case, other peoples' stuff in Brancaster Staithes. Crab pots, rope, a look out tower and machinery for doing unimaginable things, probably to crustaceans. A Barbara Jones subject.


Evidence of small commerce.


A place for washing nets, I think. Something Paul Nash about it.

Heading out of Brancaster Staithes through a significantly modest portal.


Holkham, tide out. Land, sea and sky are endlessly permeable here. The approach is via Lady Anne's Drive, a toll road which was once dissected by the Great Eastern Railway and Holkham station


A found sand castle. I have to guess focus distance on this camera and getting it wrong is part of the attraction, even the viewfinder is an approximation so the picture often runs away with itself. Young ladies with cut glass vowels on fine horses are common hereabouts, perhaps this is a love totem from one. I like the encircling ring to keep the passion from spilling out and enchanting the sea.


Stiffkey terminalia with reflectors. The posts are an attempt to separate the car park from the infinity of salt marsh. Reflectors have fascinated me since the pre-Warboys variety reminded me of wine gums as a child. These are more modest, but still twinkle back at the headlights of courting couples' cars.


A short diversion inland and a sign to the place I'm looking for. Stuffed tutelary guardian, always a thrill. Focus slightly out once again - the location infecting judgement already.


Stiffkey church tower, occluded by a tree. The one time rector was killed by a lion at Blackpool zoo. RIP Reverend Davidson.


On to Blakeney. An inviting passage guarded by hollyhocks.


Miro-like mooring. Smart phone crabbing.


Awaiting the tide. A suitable place to end our ramble on the salt line.

Saddleworth Pounds

Some things are lost forever. Others go to sleep and are only awoken with much effort. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal slumbered from the 1920s and was officially closed by the LMS railway in 1944. LTC Rolt, canal and rail enthusiast and sometime ghost story writer piloted, but often dragged a boat through in 1948, and a coal merchant was reputed to use a short section into the 1950's but by then it was broken down, dried out and largely filled in until re-opening for business - the leisure business that is - with the new millennium. Look it up, it's interesting stuff. We're heading westwards, towards the Standedge canal tunnel.

This is the new marina that backs onto Tesco at Greenfield, accessed by a lifting bridge from the canal. The fenced off area has "Deep Water" warnings, presumably from a former mill pond behind it, but it looks dry and ripe for development. Note strategically placed tree looking forlorn against the thriving feral saplings to the rear. "Pots and Pans" war memorial in the distance.


The Saddleworth villages are commuting hotspots to Manchester with prices to match, and Uppermill is no exception. The red plastic installation may be a bank repair or a textile artwork.


Railway, canal, river - the usual Pennine Valley business. Less common that each are intact.


Poo bin and Victorian industrial monumentalism. A moment's silence for all the viaducts that didn't survive Beeching's mischief and institutional myopia, please.


Disused mill seen through a line of chancer saplings. The Arthur Rackham tree on the left looks suitably disapproving of the upstarts. Canal bank to front.


Past trades arts feature under new bridge. Shame it's not an exhibition space, I bet lots of artists would like to work with those reflections.


W.H. Shaw, Diggle. A pallet works for 37 years, closed now. Ruritanian clock tower and hillside. Previously Dobcross Looms, now to be a school.


Pallets, extinct.


If these weren't railway sheds, they should have been.


Warth Mills (1919), now home to a variety of businesses including skip hire, a perennial of the post industrial landscape.


Also a café in there somewhere.


The ducks are standing on the entrance to the Standedge canal tunnel. The train enters a little further on.


Reverse view.

Slawit and Linfit

A temporary aspect, the mill gone and houses are to fill the gap. Rail, river and canal leapfrog up the valley. Slaithwaite viaduct with local stopper.


Weavers cottages and the mills that replaced them. The cottages survive, the mills are retail, leisure, artisan. Colne Valley was Luddite central, now Commuterland. Train to the fleshpots of Manchester, Leeds and beyond.


Canal between two compensating reservoirs at Sparth. The left is a Lido, both are fishing lakes. Marker stone in foreground.


Winding hole, canal, West Slaithwaite. Compost corner. The hillock more Devon than West Riding.


Coal drops, Slaithwaite. Quiet now except for birds.


A side entrance to the old station, or a goods office - I'm not sure. Nice bit of LNWR lamp work.


Viaduct east of Slaithwaite. The vertiginous lean is mine. Skip hire and whatnot beneath the vaulting arches.


The other side. Disused mill, wolf leading couple.


Heading towards Linthwaite along the canal. One doesn't like to ask.


Demolished cottage near Linthwaite coal drops. End of Colne Valley industrial excursions for the moment.

Re-alignment

Marsden. Dead platform on your left. Alight here for the past, mind the gap. The goods yard metals thwarted by birch trees, the impermanent way ends in the car park. 
Over the cut and into the tunnel. Vinyl advertisements taunt the souls of navigators, an abyss of 3 miles and 60 yards into Lancashire. Electrification is on the agenda.

The express gets a lick on. Two seas to gather and no time to wait. The shutter turns the timetable to Ogham.

An Insubstantial Thing

Not the Forth Bridge.
A bare necessity in Meccano, for the mills of fairy folk spinning cobwebs.
The unlikely spring, insinuated from the sheepy hill and across the railway line. An essay in the pleasures of the diminutive, LNWR style.

The Bridge

Here is a bridge undone by the light. A moment's inattention revealed the film and the express from Manchester, the horse feed buckets and the rusty rivets succumbed to a pocket sunset. A dandelion in the ruby shadow, the pink hill and the orange trees drowned in foolishness and the long walk along the canal and up the steps all redness and gilt.