Morley to Harewood 30/09/23

13.4 miles, via Valley Mills, White Rose, Beeston Park Side, Cross Flatts Park, Hunslet Carr,

  Pottery Fields, Crown Point, Leeds (St Peter's), The Leylands, Sheepscarr, Buslingthorpe,

   Scott Hall, Chapel Allerton, Moortown, Moor Allerton, Alwoodley, Alwoodley Gates,

    Sturdy Bridge, Cote Hill, and Wall Side. 

The first weekend of Autumn is spent away from the trail, as we've got a reunion to do celebrating (almost) 30 years since we first came to Leeds to attend University, reuniting five of the original ten members of our first student residence, seven (7!) years after our last meetup and feeling a lot more like a reunion of old guys this time around, as we ate and drank an afternoon and evening together, also presenting pretty nice day for it as well as we trolled ourselves from town to Hyde Park and back along the way of it, and experience that I'll probably have more to say about at the year's summation, but for now it's just good to take a break and catch up with some old heads before we resume another push into the Late Season. When that does come around, the weather hasn't travelled and we've got both a tight window ahead of rain and a total lack of trains to play with as our route chooses itself, having intended to approach if for much f the Summer, and as we descend to Morley Station for our 9am jump off, noting proper construction finally having started around the lift towers at the new station, we find our early going is all very familiar, down Valley Road past the old gasworks and mills, and onto the muddy avoiding path and thence down the railway-side, mostly undercover of overgrown foliage as we travel towards the White Rose Centre and its own woodland walk. This leads us out to the Dewsury Roads, amidst the tangling of the main road with the access way and the petrol stations, crossing over by the island in sight of the culverting Millshaw Beck and hitting the surprisingly long drag uphill on the A653 Dewsbury Road towards the greater city, with the railway bridge at the urban edge, beyond Stank Hall always being further along than expected, and running into Beeston Park Side, you become very much aware that we've already set two tracks in this direction, as we merge in with Ring Road Middleton, past the old St David's church and up to the Tommy Wass junction. The Dewsbury Road will be our obvious red route into the city, taking the left-side pavements along the dual carriageway to mix things up from our last trek this way in 2014, passing the long stretches of terraced ends of South Beeston around the shopping parade, across from the suburban semis that run down to the Broadway Inn and the Harrison Sparks plant, before we touch base with Cross Flatts Park, astonishingly less than an hour away from home, and pass the Dewsbury Road social club and the corner where we dwelled very briefly back in 1998, carrying on as industry bumps up to the lane, as the terraces return to the roadside, displaying a fine ghost sign before we pass the former cinema (and 'health club') on the Parkside Lane corner.