A Trip to Venice, and St Marks Square Flooding.

A Trip to Venice is a new video uploaded to YouTube I have done featuring various scenes taken around the Italian city whilst I was there for a few days at the end of October start of November 2018. The video is approx. 2 1/2 minutes long and features scenes from a boat trip along the Grand Canal, scenes around the ST Marks area of Venice and various other short clips of the canals and buildings of Venice.



St Marks Square Flooding is a 1min 50sec video of various scenes filmed around St Marks on random days and times during my stay. In 2018 whilst I was there Venice was suffering it's worst flooding since 1968 the hotel staff had informed me. On the day I arrived I had to wade through waist high water across St Marks Square to reach my hotel and every day the area was flooded to a certain degree. In recent news the reports have been saying that Venice has suffered worse flooding this year than when I was there, I feel desperately sad for the people and can only hope the plan flood defences are finally built that have been promised. The people were fantastic and just accepted the flooding as part of there everyday life.


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Steam and Modern Trains at Milner Royd Junction, Sowerby Bridge

Milner Royd Junction sits approx. 1 mile to the east of Sowerby Bridge Railway Station, West Yorkshire. The site is where the Caldervale line towards Halifax and the Calder Valley (the older of the 2) towards Brighouse split. The line towards Brighouse was closed to passenger services in 1970 and was a mainly freight line until reopening in 2000. The signal box is now redundant but still stands at the junction which is crossed by a 4 arch bridge. The bridge used to have a path towards Norland but for as many years as I can remember has been closed off and locked at its accessible northern side. The higher southern gate to the bridge is normally unlocked but is hard to access as the area around it in overgrown. It's just a spot I like to go now and again as you know you'll be left alone and you can watch the world of train transport pass by.

On Sunday 3rd November 2019 I had heard a steam train was to pass along the valley and through Milner Royd Junction, it was travelling from Blackburn to Wakefield Kirkgate an so I was there early to catch it, which turned out to be a good decision as the train was early which is not something you normally associate with British railways. The following 2 videos are taken from my YouTube account and were filmed that day.

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Accademia Bridge, Venice

Accademia Bridge is a set of pictures I around the bridge area and bridge in October - November 2018. The bridge itself is known locally as the Ponte dell'Accademia and is the southern most crossing of the Grand Canal. The full set of pictures can be seen on Flickr and Clickasnap with a small selection shown below.

The bridge is located near the final loop of the Grand Canal before the canal enters into St Marks Basin, Opened as a steel structure in 1854 the bridge was the first crossing here despite a previous attempt by locals to get a crossing built there. This bridge was replaced by a wooden structure in 1932 which stood until local politicians asked for designs for a replacement in the early 1980's. In 1985 the new bridge opened, it was an exact wooden replica of the 1932 bridge. There has been talk of again replacing the bridge, but I hope on a personal level they decide not to. I found it my favourite of the 3 bridges I saw that cross the Grand Canal (there are 4 bridges across the canal but I only got chance to see 3 of them), I felt it was a more interesting design than the Scalzi Bridge and a lot calmer than the Rialto Bridge.

There are a total of 11 pictures that were taken around the bridge area. They can be seen below or on Clickasnap where they are un-watermarked, full size and resolution.

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All the pictures remain the copyright of Colin Green.

Piece Hall, Halifax

The picture I have taken of the Piece Hall were done on a few occasions, the building being one of historical interest and basically it's on my doorstep. My first visit with a camera was in December 2013, armed with just a Samsung Tablet this was around the time I was just starting to take an interest in photography. I wanted to take a few pictures as the hall was due to close in January 2014 for a 3 year, £19million restoration project. I then returned in 2017 after the Piece Hall had reopened and you can see the transformation of the building from a tired old space to a shopping, leisure and community space.

The Piece Hall was opened on the 1st January 1779 as a place for people to trade cloth they had produced. As the cloth industry became larger and more industrialised the hall saw a decline in traders and was purchased by the Halifax Corporation in 1868 with conversion to a wholesale market following soon after. This is how the remained until 1971 when the wholesale market was dispersed and demolition of the hall was considered. Over the following years the hall underwent a refurbishment and was reopened as a tourist destination on the 3rd July 1976 including shops, museum and an art gallery. There was also an open air market added during this era before once again declining visitor numbers had the now Calderdale Council considering the best way forward for the building. A plan was put together with funding from various sources to refurbish the hall and it closed to the public on the 16th January 2014 to undergo a 3 year long refurb. The hall was reopened on the 1st August 2017 (Yorkshire Day) and provides restaurants, bars, shops and live entertainment including music concerts and has been the starting point for the Tour de Yorkshire.

Granted Grade I listed status on the 3rd November 1954, the reasons given for this were as follows

Historic interest
Rarity. It is the only remaining cloth hall in Yorkshire
Architectural interest
Architectural layout.

The hall is overlooked by Beacon Hill and the Square Church spire, which is all that remains of the church damaged by fire and partially demolished in the 1970's. The spire now forms part of the recently opened Halifax Central Library.

The hall also has a couple of supernatural stories linked with it, don't all old buildings. One of the units in the south west corner of the hall is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young girl known as Amy. The TV show Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns also broadcast from the hall in March 2006. In a segment of the show broadcast from the cellars at the hall, he claimed to have made contact with spirits known as Mary and another one known as Joseph. Another story from the hall is of the Hand Prints. Many local legends spring from these, at the westgate entrance to the hall are a pair of hand prints on the wall, sadly although still visible not as much as they once were. A couple of the more popular theories are that a local with was responsible for the prints, or the more well known story is that they were put there by a murderer as he was making his escape.

The pictures were taken on several occasions with various cameras, they can all be seen below or un-watermarked on Clickasnap by clicking on any picture a link should open in another window.

This set below was taken with a Nikon d3300 on the 12th October 2019.

The pictures below were taken with a Samsung Galaxy Tablet on the 1st December 2013. This was before the halls refurbishment.

The following pictures were taken on the 20th October 2018 with a Nikon d3300.

The following pictures were taken with a Nikon d3300 on the 3rd October 2017.

This final set of pictures was taken with a Nikon d3300 on the 22nd September 2019.

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All the pictures remain the copyright of Colin Green.

McInroy's Point, Gourock to Portavadie, Scotland

This set of pictures was taken in December 2015 whilst taking a delivery to Portavadie, Argyll & Bute, Scotland. At the time I was taking a delivery of Doors to a redevelopment near Portavadie Marina and realising I would probably never be in this area again snapped a number of pictures.

The journey started at the ferry terminal McInroy's Point, Gourock on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and once across the Forth took in a number of A and B roads until I reached Portavadie on Scotland's west coast a distance of over 30 miles. The journey is one of outstanding views and passes through a number of small settlements as well as Tarsan Dam, Kylies of Bute, Holy Loch, Riddon Loch and Striven Loch.

The pictures were taken on the 15th December 2014 using a Polaroid is2132 bridge camera.

The clip features all the images in a slide show video. The images below are a selection of the ones pictured on Flickr and Clickasnap that were taken on the journey. The rest can be seen on the Flickr album or video above.

The pictures below were recently re-edited for Clickasnap, they are a small selection of the 80+ I took whilst driving the route. Clicking any of them should open a link in another window to the un-watermarked version on Clickasnap.

McInroy's Point.

Gourock - Dunoon ferry.

Ardnadam Pier.

Tarsan Dam.

Loch Striven.

The previous 3 images are of the Kyles of Bute.

Thanks for looking, please take a moment to share and follow me on social media. Clicking any image should open a link in another window to the Clickasnap version.

All the pictures remain the copyright of Colin Green.