planet vegan scotland

we spent the weekend in west yorkshire. it’s one of the most lovely places. not as sublime as scotland, but perhaps lovelier. i have an abiding affection for industrial landscapes and an undeniable fascination with wilderness; west yorkshire is as close to reconciling the two as i’ve yet come:

yorkshire’s spinning and milling history is undeniable when faced with such vistas. the houses are perfect worker’s terraces: rows of 2-up-2-down shoeboxes, with outhouses and coal bunkers, some displaying cellar doors and attic windows, others stained with the coal sediment of lost industry. it’s a romance i long for, and in west yorkshire it’s so tangible.

we spent the weekend traversing the moors and wandering mills, both those forgotten and those elevated. the friends we visited live in burley-in-wharfedale, a village of 6,000 inhabitants perched on the river wharfe that divides west and north yorkshire:

it’s a really lovely place and i could imagine just whiling away my days on the banks of the river, watching the lambs in springtime and the trees shedding their leaves in the autumn. the environmental isolation is perfectly balanced with the industrial built environment. saltaire is something else altogther:

it’s basically the yorkshire new lanark, built single-handedly by an enterprising businessman named titus salt in 1853 to house his workforce under better conditions than those common in bradford, the then wool capital of the world. but more of mills tomorrow… tonight, we sleep!