Middlesbrough | The mouth of the River Tees, on the littoral fringe of Yorkshire in northern England, is a surprisingly pretty place considering its history as a grimy crucible of Britain’s iron, steel and chemicals industries.

Seals splash about in the estuary just east of the still-active port, and water birds of all kinds patrol the shores, sometimes in the shadow of hulking, disused factories and warehouses, which serve as almost poetic remnants of the region’s industrial past.