Titus Salt was a Bradford wool magnate who got tired of the smoke, the sickness and the squalor of the city, and in 1851 he began building a new mill and a new town beside the river Aire, a few miles north. Saltaire, his name joined to the river's, was a model community: tidy stone terraces of different sizes for different grades of worker, a hospital, a school, almshouses, a church, a park, and a huge Italianate mill with a campanile chimney. The mill opened in 1853 and was among the largest in the world. UNESCO listed the village in 2001 as an outstanding example of Victorian industrial planning.
Salt was a teetotaller, and the original village had no pub, an absence that was rather resented by some of the workers. The streets are named after members of his family, and the stone, honey-coloured and soot-darkened by now, gives the place a unity that few English towns have. Today the mill houses galleries, shops and a bookshop, and a large collection of paintings by David Hockney, who was born in Bradford, fills part of it. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal runs past, with narrowboats nosing along the towpath.
Baildon, the town on the hill just north, is a comfortable place with fuel, a handful of pubs and a moor on its doorstep, and Shipley is close. Bradford, a bigger city with a fine curry tradition, is a short ride away, and the curries of the district are the correct reward after a long ride. Saltaire has cafés and a good chip shop, and there is plenty of parking, though weekends fill it.
For riding, you are on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and moors, and within minutes the lanes climb to open country. Ilkley Moor, with the Cow and Calf rocks, lies above, and the road across it is narrow, windy and exposed. Further on lie Wharfedale and Airedale, with stone villages and rolling dales. Winters can bring snow and ice to the high roads, and summers are mild and green. Morning light on the mill's golden stone is a lovely sight.