The drawbridge, the old factory and the Sea canal

In the evening I decided to take a walk to the Kanonersky Island. Kanonersky Island is the western border of the city. The residential neighborhood occupies the eastern part of the island, and the western part of the island is a piece of almost untouched nature. The island is home to nesting and resting places of migratory birds. Some of these birds are in the red book and the nature of the island is protected.

On the way to the island I crossed the bridge over the Ekateringofka River. This bridge used to be a drawbridge, and a small pavilion of a draw mechanism still decorates the bridge. Until recently the backdrop for this pavilion was the old factory buildings, but recently an office building was erected in their place. Similar factory buildings still remain on the opposite side of the street: fences, red brick buildings, the usual landscape of the city outskirts.

Very interesting factory buildings are located on the other side of the river. They are closed by the fence from the street side, but clearly visible from the river side. These buildings belonged to the state alcohol distillery. This plant produced synthetic rubber from ethyl alcohol. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries the demand for rubber rose sharply because of the rapid development of industry, natural rubber was in short supply, and ways were found to replace this important raw material. In the middle of the century, more advanced technologies of synthetic rubber production were developed. I do not know what was produced in these hulls in the second half of the twentieth century and what is happening there now. When I first saw them, they looked exactly the same: mysterious brick buildings behind a blind fence.

The next part of the route I traveled by bus: the road to Kanonersky Island leads through a long and gloomy tunnel, walking through this tunnel is unpleasant and even dangerous.

The previous days were frosty, then it got sharply warmer. The snow and ice on the city streets had partly melted, and partly had been removed by the city utilities. So the first part of the trip was easy - I just walked toward sunset and admired the views without worrying about what was under my feet. But on the island, the road outside the residential neighborhood proved difficult to walk - the paths were covered with a very slippery ice crust.

At first I walked along the Sea Canal, and then turned to the opposite shore of the island, to the Gulf of Finland. It had already begun to get dark, but the lone sail continued to hover over the icy expanse of the bay. I took a few pictures, but they were all unsuccessful: on long exposures the pictures were blurry and on short exposures they were dark.

The sun had already set, and only a small bright streak reminded me of a burned-out sunset. On the opposite side, on the city side, the streetlights came on and grew brighter by the minute. The line of lanterns illuminated the outline of the expressway that ran above the island at high altitude. Here I decided to end my walk.

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Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia