Our preceding Friday evening was spent drinking after work, to celebrate the imminent retirement of an absolute stalwart of the LTH MRL department, manager LT, which was my first works occasion out since Christmas 2019, and my forst episode of getting boozed up before aiming myself at a walking weekend in possibly a decade, so it'll be immediately interesting to see how my aged self gets on with exercising off my hangover, as the August Bank Holiday can't lose its allocated day, as my Mum is coming to visit for the remainder, and we've got a Late Season slate to get started, tying together all these lose ends across South Yorkshire that we've been dropping since May. So we start in the east, with a whole bunch of routes plotted to the west, starting our first at Adwick at 8.55am, in an already much warmer and brighter climate than I was anticipating, rising from the station to the B1220 and immediately splitting from it as Church Lane enters the village of Adwick le Street, taking us around the parish church of St Laurence, and then on a bit of a circuit along Village Street and Fern Bank, past the Forester's Arms and the Methodist chapel to get us onto our clear trajectory along Tenter Balk Lane, out of the old village and into the suburbia of greater Doncaster beyond. Past the village park and Northridge Community School, we come up to the A638 Great North Road, where the dual carriageway is negotiated to take Ridge Balk Lane as it passes between the two vintage halves of the woodlands estates, the older and more aesthetically interesting one sitting to the south, as we already knew as the Roman Ridge road crosses beyond it, passing over our Doncaster route and starting the inflation of the field of walking experience before we carry on beyond the burgeoning suburbia at Skylarks Grange, and on along Long Lands Lane between the Red House depots and the Brodsworth Community Woodlands, before we meet the Markham Grange nurseries complex and our proper entry into the countryside across the A1(M). Red House Lane angles across the infilled cutting of the H&BR South Yorkshire Junction branch, and among the fields of the poorly named Green Hills, heading in towards Pickburn and Brodsworth, and its parklands, but before we get there we're shifting off onto the bridleway that has a concrete cast of a trig pillar abandoned at its entrance, before it aims uphill into the fields mown and dry below and beyond Chapel Plantation, and onto a rising track that places us south of the Hampole windfarm, and gradually rises to elevate All Saints church's spire and the Brodsworth Colliery tip onto the local horizon, and sneaks that of the downstream Don beyond it.
Monday 29 August 2022
Adwick to Barnsley 27/08/22
Sunday 21 August 2022
Hemsworth to Bretton Park 20/08/22
The last two rounds of train strikes thankfully didn't effect our walking plans as Northern Trains weren't involved on either of them, leaving us to come and go as we had intended but for this day we have a general stoppage which means we are going to have to delay our planned late season residency in South Yorkshire and instead pull something off the end of season list instead, feeling fortunate that we do have full bus services available across Wakefield district thanks to the end of the beef at Arriva, ensuring that we can take a couple of rides south on the #427 and #496 to give us than chance to go for a Summer afternoon walk in the park in the late stretch of the day's passage. It's to Hemsworth we ride, to alight at the bus stand that could be easily mistaken for part of the Tesco superstore at 9.10am, just a few steps away from the library and the tangle of the roads in the middle of town at Cross Hill, where we pick the fifth and final of them for our westbound path, joining the Barnsley Road as it pushes out via the urban borough of West End, with its pair of Working Men's clubs giving the sort you'd anticipate as we pass the midway point on the old turnpike between Pontefract and Barnsley, and depart the suburban ribbon of the town as we elevate out past the Vissitt Cottage bar and hotel. The fields around Vissitt Manor give us the looks east towrds the fall toward the Don, but we are upper Dearne bound from here on in as we join Robin Lane, passing the suburban ribbon as we have the Enley Moor masts landing on our horizon, following west to meet the Holgate Almshouses, which are a fine bit of late Gothickery that you really can't get a good angle on from the road, which gives better sight toward distant Barnsley as we progress, shadowing the fall of Frickley Beck and the H&BR mainline beyond Brierly tunnel as we are drawn into the village enclave above Hiendley Common, distinct with its estate house and terraces from its near neighbour to the north, but apparently unnamed.
Sunday 14 August 2022
Pontefract to Doncaster 13/08/22
If there were ever a day that needed an 8am start it was this one, as Saturday has us settling into the fifth day of the mid-August heatwave, but such options aren't available to get us to the start line before the day's heat has started to kick in, as there's no early services to be had via Castleford thanks to engineering works (rather than strikes that Northern aren't being affected by), and bus services are no alternative when the need is to get going in a hurry, and thus the first ride to take us directly out to Tanshelf is two hours later than I'd have liked, returning us to Pontefract's other station nearly six months after I laid it down as one of this season's jump off points. Alight at 10.05 am, dressed in the summer get-up of light shirt and floppy hat, carrying much more liquid than food, and hoping that the day's trek, to the 12th and final new destination for the year will prove as unchallenging as I'd project as we rise to the side of the A639 Park, which will be our companion for a while as it leads us south past the western edge of Pontefract Town centre, uphill past the former Queen Hotel, and the Haribo factory, which looms large over its store at the end of Cornmarket and following Jubilee Way as it crests over the town's hilltop to descend down by the end of Ropergate and the Central Methodist church before we get into a tangle with the A645 Southgate, at the west end of Friar Wood gardens. Away from the Wakefield Road, we rise with Mill Hill, passing through a shaded groove in the landscape, concealing what appears to be caves in the rock faces amidst the landscape of villas as we pass south ito the suburban reach of the town beyond the Carleton Road crossing, and keeping on as we meet the division of the A628 Barnsley Road, hanging left as we meet the wide boulevard of the Hardwick Road as it pushes out of town, along the supposed alignment of the Roman Ermine Street, passing under the upper half of the Swinton & Knottingley railway line and into the fields beyond, into the Little Went Valley. The footway keeps us secure along the straight and quiet passage of the A639 as it passes among the fields, across the fall f the streams as we pass Haverlands farm, looking east to the rise of Went Hill and heading up the modest rise among the parched and recently harvested wheat fields in the full glare of the sun as we head along towards East Hardwick, the sole village of note along this stretch of the lane, which is probably why the traffic is so light, coming up the rise to pass the cottages and pump at the west end of Darrington Road, before we lose our pavement and have to brave the metalled road surface beyond, across the east end of Ackworth's Station Road and over the Wakefield Way route.
Sunday 7 August 2022
Knottingley to Bentley 06/08/22
After returning to work for a week of cross-site activity between the hospitals, and suffering a horrible bout with an upset stomach along the way, we return to the trail come the weekend, hopeful that we have better luck with the trains and weather than we had last weekend, and that a rapid turn on the ground might be had after a month of dawdling, and despite there being half the number of services passing through Morley today, the extended trip to the northeastern corner of the 2022 walking field can let us have a half-hour turn-around at Castleford to see how the station's redevelopment works are progressing. Thence we can alight at Knottingley after 9.30am, as we set a course to the south and east, rising to the Station Hotel and the A645 to remind ourselves that there's a lot more to this town than is recalled, with most of it lying to the east of the station, as we work a way with Headlands Road and Spawd Bone Lane around two sides of the railway triangle with the former motive power depot in its middle, also passing below the chimneys of the Ardagh glass works and noting the adjacent Reiki practitioner and Guns & Pawn store as being the strangest of neighbours before making our fifth railway transit via the England Lane level crossing. This returns us to the Weeland Road by the Stoelze Flacconage glass works and the CT Transport depot before we start our southbound turn by joining the Womersley Road, taking us over the Askern branch again by the Winston inn, for our sixth passage of the local railway lines before heading on out past the town cemetery with its obvious pair of mortuary chapels, and through the suburban enclave that grew on the quarried pits that must have brought the glass industry to the area, where one aggregate supplier still operates, ahead of the turn by Park Balk farm, where we shift into the countryside. We are initially shadowing the southerly track of the railway, and then the eastwards push of the M62 as we pace among the fields and find ourselves on the low bluff of King's Standard Hill, revealing the vast flatlands between the lower Aire and Don in the east, tracing the any pylons across the fields towards Drax Power Station, while noting that the last remains of Eggborough have now vanished completely, demolished two weeks ago, with the massive spoil tip, or landfill, on Gale Common rising unnaturally ahead as we come around to pass over the motorway.