A River Runs Through It

The theme for the City Daily Photo's start of the month shindig is 'brown'. Since there runs a big streak of glorious brown stuff right through the heart of town what else could I post other than another view of the river. As ever it's a symphony of browns. The river is empty now and rarely used, you know it's bad when they decide to turn the old dry docks on the right into a heritage feature; mind you I said they should do that years ago ...

An old stick-in-the-mud

I posted quite recently about the removal of this old trawler, the Arctic Corsair, from this site to a place upstream. I told a sorry tale of delays and inactivity. Well a new firm date has been announced for the departure, Sunday August 4. This picture was taken three weeks ago and I can see (even if you can't)  that some of the silty gunge has been shifted from the rear end (or stern for those like to go messing about on the river). I'm told this vessel has no engines so two tugs will pull it away and off to Alexandra Dock while the old dry docks where it is to be put on display are cleared and renovated for the return. As it has been sitting in the mud here for twenty years or so it is to be hoped all goes well. It will leave a bit of gap that the river will no doubt fill with glorious mud.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Tide has transfigured them into Untruth.

.... What will survive of us is mud.
 

(With apologies to Mr Larkin)

A piddling little stream

If you like mud then Hull could be just the place for you. When the tide is out there's acres of  thick oozing alluvium silting up the old harbour. I believe there are plans to clear out the gloop and improve the flow but then there's always plans for something or other in this place. It's at these times like this that you can see just what a small insignificant little stream the river Hull really is. 

 

Proof ...

...or at least good evidence that fish do not need bicycles.

47 Queen Street

Here's yet another of those old riverside warehouses reused as offices, this one is next door to that C4DI building I showed the other day. It's also the offices of Wykeland the development company that is building the C4DI site so that's handy.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The iconic view from from Sammy's Point

I don't know if you local paper has a buzz word that it uses over and over despite the writer not having a clue what the word means. With the local rag here that word is 'iconic'. So every old building becomes iconic, bridges become iconic, fried mashed potato patties become iconic, the very snot from kid's noses is a runny green iconic splurge. So, in the manner of the iconic Hull Daily Mail, we have here on the left in the background the iconic Humber Bridge, moving across Hull's iconic water front, the soon-to-be iconic C4DI building, the obviously iconic Holy Trinity, the newly iconic Millennium Bridge and the gloriously iconic Tidal Barrier. I'm standing in front of the iconic Deep and I realise I forgot to mention the iconic River Hull and iconic Humber with attendant iconic mud. Those clouds passing by, yup, part of the iconic Hull sky ...

Saturday's Post

You know those sisyphean tasks that this town gets itself into, bridges that take years to build, piers that are never mended, roads that will never be upgraded, derelict buildings that defy both the Council and gravity; the list goes on and on. Well now that silt you can see in the background, well there's now a plan to shift it and all the other sediments from all the way up to Beverley, some eight or nine miles away, out into the Humber to aid river flow. What's that the poet says about a man's reach ...?

The monochrome fun goes on at the weekend in black and white here.

Deep Brown Mud

Here's the local penguin farm and fish tank reflected in some glorious mud with yours truly in the shadows.

Windows and mud

Here's the view across the entrance to Humber Dock or the Marina as it's now called. This the old Steam Packet Wharf that I mentioned in a previous post. As you can see it's just a little bit silted up.

Arctic Corsair

Moored behind the Museums Quarter is the Arctic Corsair, a trawler from Hull's fishing fleet of the 60s and 70s. It's now a museum piece and you can clamber on board and have good look round though on the day I was here it was locked up.
You read more about this ship here and also here. 

Decomposed on Myton Bridge

 

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
  A sight so touching in its majesty...

 

Well, maybe not.

In June I showed you the construction of the bridge across the river; since when very little seems to have been done so we await developments here.The buildings on the left form part of the Museum Quarter which I admit I haven't been to in all the years I've lived here. The trawler parked up on the mud is the Arctic Corsair which is also a museum piece. There's more about that here. Towards the centre the dark brown tower is, or was until recently, a flour mill, the Clarence Flour Mill. There are some stunning shots of the mill here. This building is due to be demolished to make way for something or other, a hotel, I believe, but I'm not really that interested. Poking out from behind the mill is the Shotwell factory. If you've fired a shotgun chances are the cartridge came from here, they trade under the name Gamebore. The right bank is due for development but kindly don't hold your breath.

As you can see not much is going on here, I know it's low tide but there's only one barge tied up and no activity at all, the river as a working entity seems to have pretty much died. The only thing moving is the river and the only business now seems to be gazing at our collective past with far too many museums to be healthy.

...The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Trade: old and new

This is the entrance to what is now Hull's Marina but what used to be a busy trading dock. During the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Europe passed through this dock on their way to the train for Liverpool and the boats to America. The tide is out showing a gloriously muddy basin.

The glass construction is a World Trade Centre; a different sort of trading goes on in there.