Tag: GB – Saltaire

Take in all the fun of fairs and festivals, beaches, farms and museums with this pick of family events around the country…

Source: 20 of the UK’s best free half-term activities and attractions

Rural Yorkshire is full of scenic and historic villages.

Source: These are 16 of the most beautiful villages in Yorkshire

SALTAIRE has been named as one of the best places to live in the north of England by a national newspaper.

Source: Saltaire is one of the best place to live in the north

SALTAIRE is a fascinating place.

Source: Famous village’s historical collection goes online

Its status as one of only two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Yorkshire highlights its outstanding universal value.

Source: History of industrial village of Saltaire makes it a focus of many a photograph

Read more from source

In the 19th and 20th centuries many of the biggest social and political changes originated or gained unstoppable momentum in Yorkshire.

Source: 8 ways Yorkshire has changed the world

45,000 copies of the visitor guides to Bradford have been printed, in an effort to attract more holidaymakers to the area

THE popstar Zayn Malik has been banging the drum for his hometown of Bradford ever since he shot to fame on the X Factor – most recently writing about it in posh fashion magazine Vogue.

The city’s politicians must reckon he’s onto something too – because they’ve printed a 44-page tourist guide to the area to attract holidaymakers.

45,000 copies of the Visitor and Discover Guides have been printed by the tourism board Visit Bradford.

The guides, which tell tourists how to get the most out of the local attractions, are being distributed through Visitor Information Centres and holiday websites in order to attract visitors to the district.

Bradford was a big player in the textile industry in the 19th century, but from the mid-20th century it started to fall into decline.

Since then, it has relaunched itself as a tourist destination – helped by its post as the first UNESCO City Of Film – but it still gets some bad press.

Source: UK’S least-known holiday spot? Bradford launches 44-page tourist guide to city

Apparently ‘there is nothing – absolutely nothing, half so worth doing as – simply messing around in boats’, according to Ratty in that much-loved children’s book The Wind in the Willows. And to test out this theory I decided to spend a few days meandering along the Leeds-Liverpool canal. Now, being a rather spoiled freelance journalist, I normally spend holidays travelling to exotic destinations. Last year’s jaunts included a luxurious stay at an Indian palace followed by a trek around the Amalfi coast. So I was rather apprehensive about exchanging my customary decadent voyages for a few days in West Yorkshire where weather conditions are rather unpredictable to say the least.

Read more

The village where I live – Saltaire, near Bradford, West Yorkshire – is a former Victorian mill town, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site. (A while ago I wrote a post about Saltaire and the weaving industry, with lots of photos of the village.)

When the woollen industry was at its height, thousands of people arrived in Yorkshire and Lancashire from India and Pakistan to work in the mills. After the woollen industry died in the 80s, the immigrants and their families remained, and Bradford now has one of the highest populations of people of Asian descent in the UK.  It’s thanks to an Asian neighbour that I now know how to make the best lamb pilau, and it’s thanks to her, too, that I was introduced to the fabulous world of Bollywood.

Read more