Dewsbury to Wakefield 13/02/19

6.8 miles, via Earlsheaton, Chickenley, Ossett, Roundwood, Borough Corner, 
 Westgate Common and Westgate End. 

The second day of local strolling in the bonus week off work takes us back to Dewsbury by hopping the local train for a 9.40am start, before the day has started to really warm through so opening steps will be feeling a touch chilly, and the legs might take a while to get the muscles feeling loose as after two plus weeks of doing really very little exercise, the calves are feeling tight and sore and this week will prove useful for getting them back in order as much as my brain needs its headspace illuminated. Onward, then, across the Ring Road from the station, and down Bond Street, noting that Dewsbury is a fine town for landmark buildings on acute corner ends, descending down to cross Northgate, where the shops seem rather quiet at this time of the morning, and proceed on over the old Market Place, avoiding the charity panhandlers as we make our way over to the Town Hall square, home to the infamous chundering statue, with the Town Hall itself looming large above, giving Morley a contender in the 'Grand Edifice in Town that's Really Too Small for it' stakes. Meet the bottom of Wakefield Old Road and ascend up it to the Ring Road, carrying the impression of the town that existed before it was extensively bypassed, and set the trajectory off to the east as Wakefield Road sets off uphill, at a slightly friendlier pitch than Leeds Road, passing over the Kirklees Way route and the lost railway tunnel as it rises above the old Ridings Colliery site and past various derelicts and houses that suggest an age when there was more activity by the sides of this lane, which we split off from as the A638 doesn't offer the best route on to Wakefield. Shift on to High Road as it rises over the woods that conceal a lost corner of old Earlsheaton, including its lost parish church, and note that the other side of the road has brought up the contemporary villas with a view for looking towards Thornhill and across Kirklees district, reaching the top of the hill that has the walkable railway tunnel running beneath it, past the Park Inn and the former non-conformist chapel to follow Town Street past the village green and the Spangled Bull(!?) at the heart of Earlsheaton village.

Dewsbury Town Hall.

The haul up the A638 Wakefield Road.

Earlsheaton village, and the Spangled Bull.

It's a satellite to nearby Dewsbury now, with urban growth sitting right up next to its rural face, and after ascending up to it, our route soon enough takes us downhill again, as Ossett Lane tilts downhill sharply, giving sight towards the eponymous town and the tall church spire that sits ubiquitously above it, and also illustrating the amount of engineering that went into the GNR's line that came this way, slipping down from the junction on the west side of Ossett as it approached the local station, the road of which we pass as we roll on with the undulating to meet the Chickenley estate, at the eastern edge of Greater Dewsbury. Entering Wakefield district, we're only a field's breadth away from the railway-greenway path down here as the path briefly bottoms out as it passes the plots of council houses, but our way along Pildacre Lane soon has us going up again, as we cross the beck and pass the bed factory that occupies the last mortal remains of Pildacre Mill, ploughing sharply uphill as I'm given the reminder that this corner of the lower Calder Valley is nowhere as level as you might imagine it being. Then we rise over the passage of the old Wrenthorpe-Adwalton GNR line, where I chose to redirect the Wakefield Way route in 2015, before we touch the outer edge of Ossett and get another vantage point to look over to Thornhill and the Emley moor masts, as well as back up the Calder to Ravensthorpe and Mirfield before burrowing into the next town, through the suburban perimeter and on to Wesley Street, where terraces, mills and proud Victorian townhouses once co-existed, though it's looking most residential and leafy these days. Pass the flock and felt factory at the eastern end, which has littered the lane with loose fluff, and look back to the spire of All Saints again before we enter the town centre, passing the King's Way church and crossing Ventnor Road to join one of the many stubby commercial terraces that surround the Market Place, which we cross by the War Memorial, and keep a distance from the looming Ossett Town Hall because of all the vacant stalls that apron it, feeling some delight that the sun has arrived to warm the day.

Chickenley.

A view to Emley Moor, from Pildacre Lane.

Wesley Street, Ossett.

Ossett Town Hall, and Market Place.

Pass onto Town End, where the worst sort of 1960s commercial development has attached itself to the town, and then we pass onto Towngate, among council flats and soon on into 1970s vintage suburbia, which indicates that the ancient sounding name is a con, and its long sweep eastwards offers little to immediately amuse the mind, where a petrol station provides a point of interest, and the mind would have to be particularly stimulated to note the spot where the railway line once ran though here. Roll out by the Malagor Thai restaurant on the Queen's Drive corner, where my previous paths in this quarter crossed, and join the road that leads east, rising beyond the semis and into the fields where we can look back to the spires of Ossett and Horbury before the passage under the M1 rather spoils our green idyll, rising on uphill past the playing fields and the Holiday Inn at Junction 40. Our brief passage through the countryside thus ends as we meet Wakefield itself, turning back onto the A638 Dewsbury Road as it sets forth into the city, through the increasingly burgeoning commercial-industrial district that lacks an obvious name, but which I'll call Roundwood after the colliery that once dwelled here, and we'll set course for the town among the mining vintage terraces before we meet the corner by the redeveloping Broadway inn and the top of the Lupset council estates. Dewsbury Road has a pretty large footprint to occupy down here, clearly wide enough to hold a dual carriageway for city traffic heading out to the motorway, but with only a regular sized road being separated from a residential access road running along in front of the semis on the southern side, which gives a shifting vista for the walker, getting to take both the options of the leafy lane before the many front gardens and along the embankment at the roadside. The road then straightens out a bit past the Sainsbury's Local, teasing us with a direct line view towards the knobbly spire of Wakefield cathedral on the horizon and getting a bit more conventionally suburban as we pass English Martyrs RC church and school, and pass the corner through the Flanshaw Estate which friends once directed us to with the instruction of 'if you pass the Morrisons store, you've missed it'.

Suburbian Ossett on Towngate.

Queen's Drive and the passage under the M1.

Dewsbury Road's terraces, Roundwood.

The unusually wide passage of Wakefield's Dewsbury Road.

This district has the vague title of Borough Corner attached to it, and it gets a bit more red-brick terraced styled as we progress pass The Magnet on the Cross Lane corner, and delve deeper into a district of car dealerships occupying the non residential plots, aside from the most urban of cricket clubs to be found next to the allotment gardens, and then its terraces all the way to the Horbury Road corner, where the squat St Michael's church sits securely on its own little traffic island. Meeting the Westgate Common end of the city, we join the commercial side of the A642 by the Waterloo Inn, and it looks like every other property along here is revving the district as the main Hipster Bar drag, to contrast the against the long lines of terraces on the opposite side, noting two more pubs and a particularly proud Wesleyan chapel before we run close to the edge of HMP Wakefield and its tied houses and attach ourselves to Westgate End. The city really does show up its ability to hide Georgian Townhouses in plain sight here, and it would be easy to end the day at Westgate station, but our plan is to continue on be following the railway embankment as it tracks south to join Ings Road as it passes beneath the northernmost end of the viaducts that carry the railway away over the lower town and the Calder, which are damnably difficult to photograph from the ground. Tracing to the south of the city centre you could be forgiven for thinking this road of commercial properties and superstores was a late 20th century establishment but it's got a lot more history than that, making our passage this way just that bit more worthwhile as we meet the other railway line and track off towards the A61 which we cross by the Grey Horse inn. Only a few steps remain from there up Park Street in the shadow of the tower blocks to meet Kirkgate station, which has had a major renovation thrown at in the years since I last travelled here, which has it looking loved and full of life in a way that the dereliction of 2012 would never have suggested would be possible, and even the wreck of the Wakefield Arms is getting work done on it, and we'll faff around with pictures for a while before the trip wraps at 12.10pm, well ahead of our ride away but that's no matter as we've got multiples of freight trains to spot before maybe my last ever 144 Pacer journey can commence.

St Michael's church, Westgate Common.

Westgate End, Wakefield.

Ings Road isn't the city's best face.

Wakefield Kirkgate Station is Redeemed!

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 3662.3 miles
2019 Total: 11.9 miles
Up Country Total: 3269.2 miles
Solo Total: 3376 miles
Miles in My 40s: 2256.1 miles

Next Up: The Last Leg of Our Local Triangle.