Saltaire and Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Saltaire

   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.

   Read the complete Saltaire write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Saltaire is where the day begins. Next is Jodrell Bank Observatory.

2. 2. Jodrell Bank Observatory

   You see the dish long before you arrive. The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank rises out of the flat Cheshire farmland like something from a science fiction film, a white steel bowl seventy six metres across, tilting slowly to follow its targets across the sky. When it was completed in 1957 it was the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and one of its first tasks was tracking the rocket that carried Sputnik into orbit. The observatory, founded by Bernard Lovell after the Second World War, has been at the forefront of radio astronomy ever since, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2019 for its role in the development of the science.

   Read the complete Jodrell Bank Observatory write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Jodrell Bank Observatory comes up about 102 km into the recorded legs. Next is Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City.

3. 3. Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City

   Liverpool turned its back on the land and faced the sea, and the waterfront shows it. The Pier Head is dominated by three great buildings, the Royal Liver Building with its two clock towers topped by mythical Liver Birds, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, known as the Three Graces, built in the early twentieth century when the city was one of the richest ports in the world. Behind them the docks, warehouses and merchants' houses of the old town tell the story of a city that grew from trade in cotton, sugar, tobacco and, painfully, enslaved people.

   Read the complete Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 171 km into the recorded legs you reach Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City. Next is back through Jodrell Bank Observatory.

4. 4. back through Jodrell Bank Observatory

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Jodrell Bank Observatory write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Jodrell Bank Observatory, late in the day. Next is Saltaire.

5. 5. Saltaire

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Saltaire write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Saltaire. That is the ride.