The sun was shining and tunes were playing and we finally arrived at Andrea and Paul’s new house to be greeted with a sun lounger in the garden, bacon butty and a beer! I could see this was going to be a good weekend.
After brunch we headed off to the Old Tramshed in Saltaire, which – funnily enough – was in fact an old tram shed with tram lines on the floors and all. It also had a good beer garden and served nice cold Coronas.
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| The Old Tramshed |
Saltaire is a world heritage site so here is a brief history of the area as I was told by Andrea and Paul:
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| Even got its own 'World Heritage Site' sign |
In around 1850 Titus Salt built a large textile mill 3 miles from Bradford on the River Aire. He also built rows and rows of housing and other amenities for his mill workers, which eventually created the village of Saltaire. All the street names were named after his sons, daughters and family members such as Ada Street, William Henry Street and Fanny Street.
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| The Mill |
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| One of the streets named after Titus himself |
Apparently Titus was also teetotal and so there were no pubs or inns in the village and he banned beershops, however as we found out this is no longer the case and in tribute to Titus Salt the bar ‘Don’t tell Titus’ was opened in 2007!
There are also four lion statues; there was some vagueness over what relevance they had (we are a few beers down by now) but I’ve just done a little Wikipedia and Google research and it seems there is still some vagueness over their relevance. They are all different and it has been said that they guard Victoria Square – over what though no one is quite clear. Another theory is that they were made for Trafalgar Square but then there was some falling out, Titus Salt saw them and brought them to Saltaire. Oh hold on I’ve just read another one! This builds on the Trafalgar Square theory. According to legend the lions were very accurately carved to very last detail. These ‘detailed’ lions were a bit too much for the prudish Victorian Londoners so instead of chiseling off the ‘offending’ parts new lions were made (with not so much ‘detail’) and the old lions, parts and all, were brought to Saltaire!
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| One of the 'poses' the lions pull |
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| Can you see the 'detail'? |
During this story we’d made our way down to the ‘Don’t tell Titus’ bar and then had moved on towards the recently refurbished, Boathouse. This was a lovely pub by the river which served really nice food - there is definitely something about Yorkshire fish and chips!
The evening was spent trying to start a fire in the chimnea, albeit slightly unsuccessfully, mixed in with some good conversation and rum and cokes.
On Sunday we took a trip into Baildon and treated ourselves to a good old full English in one of the local cafés, bought some classic sweets in the old fashioned sweet shop/hut and then headed back to the garden to soak up some of the Yorkshire sun.
After an eventful start – being stuck behind the Nagar KirtanParade (of about 7000 people) and dodging the poor little pony running down the M62 – the journey back wasn’t too bad, however we arrived home to find we’d all ‘caught the sun’ and were looking a bit rosy!
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