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.