Somewhat related to the last post on railway photography, I thought I'd put some pics of an interesting and surreal location discovered whilst on my (Bens) various photography travels near to the house.
We live in the Worth Valley, just outside Keighley, and literally at the end of the main road through our estate is somewhere optimistically called the "Worth Valley Country Park". The area has something of a fascination for me, with my love of post-apocalypse science fiction, because it looks a bit like a set from a "ten years after the bomb dropped/zombies rose from the grave/plague hit" scene. Still, post apocalypse is better than actual apocalypse, though infinitely worse than pre-apocalypse, and I thought I'd snap some pictures of it all whilst it was still (just about) accessible.
The Country Park itself is in the grounds of the mill they demolished to build our estate; lots of mud-filled mill ponds, rusting sluice gates, overgrown rubble, and the ever-present Worth Valley dog mess. Most of the ill-maintained paths are closed and heavily fenced-off at the moment whilst contactors dig a giant hole in the middle of it, for purposes unknown (again, insert science fiction conspiracy theory here).
The closed paths force you onto this road; believe it or not, this is still listed on the maps as a public right of way to Damems Station on the Worth Valley Railway; I've followed it before from the main road, where tarmac turns to rubble, then to mud and half-buried litter. I'm told the flooding is caused by a non-maintained culvert up on the abandoned Great Northern Railway embankment that's about 30ft above the road. The mud is knee-deep in places, as I've accidentaly found out in the past.
Vehicles must still use the road though because there are heavy tyre tracks, but in the last 18 months the condition of the road has deteriorated enough to stop even the casual fly-tipping.
The road comes out at a junction near Damems Station, a slightly bizarre, very pretty little level crossing and halt on the railway, which looks somewhat out of place sat near a scrapyard full of dead bulldozers, lorries, and other industrial junk. Theres a few houses, but the inhabitants seem (perhaps logically) wary of strangers walking around, and such dogs as I've encountered round there are distinctly unfriendly. A nice path through this natural tunnel of trees (above), leads from the side of the station down to...
...a picnic area. When I first came up here a couple of years ago whilst exploring on a day off, there were still benches and things here; they've been progressively destroyed, I'd guess (from the graffiti) by the kids from our estate. Oddly though, given the general air of neglect, the sign has been replaced apparently, or at least had the worst of the graffiti cleaned off it since that visit.
At the end of the picnic area the path drops literally into the river, emerging the other side; logically it looks like there should have been a bridge here, to avoid the annoying long walk round via the muddy road.
One positive is the nice low-angle shot of the railway from the picnic area; indeed, something that looks like a guard tower from "The Great Escape" sits in the corner, giving a nice view of the trains. Despite being wooden, it has so far withstood the attention of the arsonists who wrecked the benches.
Finally, the road back to civilisation, just as post-apocalyptic (seriously, how has nobody come here to film something?). This is the second, and non-flooded route to the Country Park from Halifax Road, and is rutted, pot-holed, the remains of the tarmac broken. No idea if the street light works either. The abutments are on the trackbed of the old Great Northern Railway to Queensbury, now mainly used for fly-tipping and druggies, judging by the debris scattered along it (and shifty characters who seem to inhabit it when you walk past).
Its a bit of a shame really; the area looks as if about a decade ago somebody started to fund work on the Country Park, then either the money, time, or interest ran out. The paths don't look maintained, a bridge which would make it a logical circular walk is missing, never built (but apparently planned), anything that can be broken has been, nobody seems to be looking after it, and its full of dog muck and rubbish. I've only ever seen a few dog walkers there, occasionaly railway photographers, bored teenagers drinking, and two of the fore-mentioned junkies who chased me away one morning last year. With the one road heavily flooded, and the other looking like it would seriously wreck any non-4x4's suspension, its not exactly going to be a prime destination. Its a shame because it would be nice to have a proper bit of a park near our estate, and it would make sense to link the footpaths up so you could walk through the whole of the Worth Valley without having to climb back up to the main roads to get around this bit.
Still, for all that, its a fascinatingly weird place, and if I felt safe being there with a camera, it might be a good location for a proper photography shoot rather than just hasty snapshots taken at nine in the morning...
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