Birstall, Birkenshaw, Tong & Farnley Circuit 27/03/21

14 miles, from Morley Station, via Troy Hill, Scatcherd Park, Bruntcliffe, Howden Clough, 

 Brown Hill, Birstall, Gomersal (station), Birkenshaw Bottoms, Birkenshaw, Tong Moor, 

  Cross Lane End, Tong, Roker Lane Bottom, Farnley Park, New Blackpool, Farnley Wood, 

   St Bernard Mills, Rooms, Clark Springs Wood, Lane Side, and Daisy Hill.

Having spent the bulk of my just-passed 10 day weekend making myself useful elsewhere, we return to the trail, having passed the first anniversary of the start of our first national lockdown and finding ourselves at the hopeful end of our third national lockdown, a situation we probably hadn't imagined when we rolled into that long weird Spring of 2020, but at this time around, we can start to imagine trails a bit further afield once the 'stay local' restriction ends as of next week, and thus we aim ourselves into the last local circuit for this phase of the Covid pandemic, at least. Our targets all lie to the west and north of Morley, so it's natural that we will pick our eastern start line for this occasion, departing Morley station at 9.25am, and heading up Station Road as far as Dartmouth Mills, and joining the ascending footpath that rises up the wooded angle above the valley and the recreation ground, up to Albert Road and across to the bottom of Troy Road, and continuing the ascent onto Troy Hill, possibly the most pronounced of the town's seven, along the terraced parade on the south side. At the top we meet St Mary's in the Wood, with the church building still derelict after being gutted by fire in 2010, and its graveyard looking increasingly forgotten in the interim, a site we skirt around as we drop out onto the top of Queen Street at Coffin Corner, before heading up Queensway, passing Scatcherd Park, Morrisons and the leisure centre on the way up to Corporation Street, which is crossed as we make our way forward through the council estate along Wynyard Drive. We're obviously varying the routes so we aren't always making the exact same footfalls, but emerging onto Bruntcliffe Lane again, it's equally clear that we are running short of dynamic routes after all these local walks, and thus everything remains familiar as we pace on up the A643, beyond the cemetery and the school on the rise up to the cross roads, where every plausible crossing option has already been used this year, heading on south past the Bruntcliffe Club and downhill beyond the Methodist Chapel and the Cassellie plant, and over the M62. Southwest again we head with the Howden Clough Road, past the outying terraces and the expansive view over Kirklees district, and through the edge of Birkby Brow woods as it reaches up to the roadside, descending to the bottoming out by Howden Clough mills and the stream that feeds the valley, where it's already been noted that neither Leeds or Kirklees seem to want to claim the valley floor, according to the signage, and as we rise among the terraces at the edge of Howden Clough village, a novel route forwards needs to be sought. 

Greater Dewsbury & Crow's Nest Park Circuit 20/03/21

14.9 miles, from Morley Hole, via Dean Wood, 62 Leeds & Treefield Industrial Estates, 

 Gildersome Street, Birstall Retail Park, Birstall, Birstall Smithies, White Lee, 

  White Lee Common, Bunkers Hill, Staincliffe, Westborough, Boothroyd, Crow's Nest Park,

   Eightlands, Springfield, Batley Carr, Commonside, Batley Junction, Soothill, Croft House,

    Woodkirk, Tingley Common, Birks, and Town End.

As Winter comes to its end and Spring looms, it's probably time to start taking our planning just a bit more seriously, even if we are going to be staying close to home for another few weeks, as focus needs to be gotten on to get me out of bed and out of the house in the mornings and to walk with a bit more impetus as we don't have any fixed deadlines on our walking days, so that we might pass into the next season with a bit more mental order than we managed last week, altogether a good collection of intents as we aim as distant a public park that I can claim as local. So we're almost up with the lark for a 9.20am start, with climatic conditions looking a bit more favourable than were projected through the week, and thus the sun shines through as our next circuit over the top of the local watershed ridge starts, heading off northwesterly, in the wrong direction, up Asquith Avenue again, past the school, the terraces and estates, while generally making short work of this familiar lane, walked on the unfamiliar side as we pass Deanfield Mill, and head out over the M621, snaring to view towards Leeds before we start to move away from the big city. We can't have every excursion tracing the exact same pavements, so once through the spread of Dean Wood, we take a turn with the available walkway to pass through the 62 Leeds industrial estate, only laid out in the landscape very recently and claiming all the fields between the cleft of the woodlands, fenced off below, and the A62 above, with most of it being occupied by an industrially scaled laundry, with more security on site than workers it seems, and the access road to the southern side, on its embankment over Dean Beck can be paced too despite the works here being apparently abandonment. This extensive and barren foundation plinth has been observed before but as a right of way passes around it, it remains publicly accessible, as does the way down to the longitudinal path at the edge of the older commercial facilities, which we'll pass over and through a gap in a theoretical barrier gate to pass on westwards through the Treefield industrial estate, which is dominated by the Leeds TNT depot (for distribution rather than explosives), and only a short traverse before we alight onto Gelderd Road again, between the Street Lane rec and the Overland Park retail stores at Gildersome Street. 

South Leeds & Middleton Circuit 13/03/21

15.3 miles, from Morley station, via Daisy Hill, Churwell, Cottingley Hall, Royds Farm Ind Est, 

 Beeston Royds, Gelderd Road, Monk Bridge, Granary Wharf, Camp Field, Crown Point 

  retail park, Pottery Field, Hunslet Moor, Middleton Railway, Middleton Park (Belle Isle 

   railhead, & Broom Pit), Middleton, Thorpe Lane, Tingley Common, Glen Road playing fields, 

    and Magpie Lane rec. 

We've passed the first anniversary of the declaration of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and we find ourselves still constrained by the restrictions of National Lockdown, still in a situation which I'm sure none of us through we'd find ourselves after 12 months, but as HM Government is not looking to offer any meaningful release for the remainder of this month, we need to plot out things for our walking year on a local bubble basis for the next three trips, and thus the breakout of the season is held back while I seek parklands or other points of interest in the vicinity if Morley. South Leeds is thus the target for the day, as I've never done a there and back to the city before, and we don't get started early as the morning is looking aggressively mediocre, with wind being the major issue as we don't get to the starting line at Morley station until 10.10am, and setting off on a northbound and clockwise path that leads us up the steps to King George Croft and on to the ascent of New Bank Street up to Daisy Hill, and we haven't got much further along, onto the dirt path through the valley, before the day's issues start to take hold. As soon as we start to descend on the muddy slope, my feet slip from under me, planting me on my backside as I realize that I don't have my walking stick with me, before finding that traversing up the field path towards Broad Oaks is much harder going than expected as the soil is extremely damp, and once on the lane I find that my camera has decided to get fritzty and under-responsive as the farm track out to Elland Road is traced, meaning my photography is going to slow me down further as is the wind as it blows in hard from the southwest. Cross the A643 feeling muddy and mightily frustrated, all ready to quit on the trip before we've barely traced a mile as we continue on to seek the footpath beyond the end of Daffil Road, that leads us onto the end of Smools Lane, and into the top of Churwell's suburban spread and urban woods, tracing the Daffil Wood path until we reach a split off onto an older right of way that leads us out into the open fields on the side of the M621, which have still managed to resist both phases of Churwell's suburban expansion. With the motorway droning away to the side of us, we pass alongside a large leveled off area which seems to be formed of colliery spoil, before we are compelled to descend with the path as the valley space below Farnley Wood hill, formed by its beck, crosses the landscape, offering a view to the city and a slippery service that I lose traction on again, hurting two different muscles in my right leg as I slither downhill, cursing my rotten luck noisily as we come down by the most recent development of the Churwell new village at Fairfield Rise. 

Wilton & Oakwell Hall Parks Circuit 06/03/21

13 miles, from Morley Hole, via Bruntcliffe, Schole Croft, Howley Beck, Upper Batley, 

 Wilton Park Greenway, Wilton Park (Carlinghow Shaw & Bagshaw Museum), 

  Birstall Smithies, Birstall, Oakwell Hall Country Park (Well Spring Woods, Oakwell Hall, 

   & Colliery Field), Gomersall (station), Birkenshaw (Swincliffe), Kittle Point Wood, 

    Drighlington, Lumb Bottom, Nethertown, Cockersdale, Gildersome, and Dean Wood.

2021-22 finally gives us the
chance to really fill in the blanks
 in my walking calendar!

It hasn't been extensively trumpeted on my blog, but one quiet fascination that I've developed over the walking seasons has been watching the sequence of available Saturdays shifting around as I've travelled, and as entering the tenth year of my career, we finally land ourselves on the seventh, and final, schedule of dates that have not been traced thanks to the movement of the Leap Years, and from now until the end of February 2022 we are going to have the chance to fill in a lot of the blanks in my calendar, to see if we can walk on all 285 days in what I've deemed to be my walking year before I turn 50 at the end of Season 13! So, with that thought in mind, we open out March, without it's business feeling too serious as we are still compelled to keep things local through the enduring lockdown conditions, heading out with the intent for more local park walking, over the border in Kirklees district, as we start out from Morley Hole at 10.10am, and immediately finding that the amount of local trails blazed is really starting to run me short of original routes to illuminate as we are compelled to set off up the A643 Bruntcliffe Lane, among the estates and industry, cemetery and school, in order to travel to the southwest. Crest to the south side of the Aire-Calder ridge beyond Bruntcliffe Crossroads, and note that over the last nine years we have been witness to the decline, closure and finally demolition of the Shoulder of Mutton inn, which has now been replaced by a vacant lot in the heart of its urban hamlet at the town's fringe, which peters out as we cross over the M62 and aim ourselves down Howden Clough Road between the pair of rural outlying terraces, seeking the one local path that seems to have escaped my feet so far. We may have come up this way in 2012, at the conclusion of my Leeds Country Way circuit, on the trail out of Birkby Brow Wood, and paced across these open fields last year, but the long wandering driveway to Schole Croft farm across this lofty, and still rural, plateau had escaped my passage until now, directing us toward the decline of Scotchman Lane, with the Gawthorpe and Ossett towers directly ahead of us, at the edge of the long Kirklees horizon to the southwest, sadly shrouded by much cloud, though the pervasive gloom of the morning does look like it might break.

Middleton & Cross Flatts Parks Circuit 27/02/21

11.1 miles, from Morley Station, via Newlands, Owlers, West Wood, Middleton Park 

 (via The Urban Bike Park, Middleton Wood, Belle Isle railhead, Broom Pit, The Lake, 

  The Carriageway, The Rose Garden, Wood Pit, & Park Wood), Cross Flatts Park, Beeston,

   Millshaw (& the playing fields), Broad Oaks, and Daisy Hill. 

Throughout this pandemic, it had been a small point of pride to me that I had managed to not be unwell through it's first 11 months, but that long streak came to end this week as I somehow got afflicted with a head cold, despite all the personal precautions that have been taken, which blighted my working Thursday and knocked me out of Friday completely due fierce sneezing and a persistently running nose, leaving me feeling rather flat but not showing up any symptoms that could be a harbinger of something worse once the weekend rocked up. So I might be only feeling about 80% charged on Saturday morning, and the impetus to rise with the lark isn't there either, but we need to get some oxygen back in the blood for a few hours and thus we start out a bit late, hopeful that the afternoon will bring the sunshine that isn't apparent as we descend down to Morley station for the 10.40am jump-off on my next parks circuit, targeting the major pair in South Leeds, with our route starting us off out of the valley and up the steps flight to Albert Road. From there, we immediately we start our track eastwards, through the small industrial zone that has grown on the site of Morley Main colliery, and then on among the houses that have recently been developed over the sites of the old spoil tips and alongside the estate that arrives as we merge in with the end of Peel Street, turning with the lane corner to meet a local pavement that oddly hasn't landed below my feet before, down to Wide Lane between the nursery in the former Low Common End farm and the recently rebuilt Newlands Primary school. Meeting the B6123 by the Gardener's Arms, we're on to the red route out of town soon enough, between the Newlands and Owlers estates, and into the fields that development hasn't claimed just yet as we run on to meet the Mcdonalds by the roundabout on the A653 Dewsbury Road, which we have to cross to get onto the track of West Wood Road as it descends among the fields to pass over Mill Shaw beck before rising to meet the railway bridges, both contemporary and former. We split from the track here to take the rough path up through West Wood, which feels more familiar now after last year's visits, rising though the tree cover and getting a better look at the lost GNR line thanks to the lack of foliage before we emerge out into the pasture on the western fringe of the Middleton estate, where no horses seem to be grazing today, which at least opens it up for the locals for some free dog running, as trace our way around its perimeter, tracking north until one of the few formal paths into the estate appears to send us eastwards again.

Morley Roads: North-West Circuit 20/02/21

9.8 miles, from Morley Station, via Morley Hole, Lane Side, Churwell, Cottingley Hall, 

 Beeston Royds, Far Royds, New Blackpool, New Farnley, Upper Moor Side, Cockersdale,

  Drighlington, Adwalton, Gildersome Street, Bruntcliffe, and Morley Hole. 

The climate has returned to something approaching its February norm as our walking year gets back onto it's regular sequence of filling in the Saturdays that follow my walking weeks, with the glumness remaining, but the bitter cold being replaced by a more tolerable temperature, so we're free of snow and the bleaching effect of so much gritting as we alight on the second of my pair of obvious road circuits around the town, but starting out as late as possible to let the morning's inclemency pass, getting to my starting line at 11am. To match my last trip, we this time start out from Morley station, to pound the uphill pavement of Station Road and its pitch that gets more noticeable the older I get, noting that someone has recently been planting trees in the middle of the recreation ground's slope, as if someone wants to render this parkland even wilder than it was before, and then rising up to Morley Bottoms to see yet another empty property getting a makeover to join the local bar culture, drawing these three commercial blocks to as close to full occupancy as I've seen since first moving here, nearly 14 years ago. Then on, around Victoria Mills/Court along Brunswick Street to start the road loop proper at Morley Hole, joining the side of the A653 as it heads towards the city, rising from the primary school past the Ingles Estate and following Victoria Road as it heads past the Springfield Mills roads, St Peter's church and is its pubs on the junction corners, and on to the long downhill stretch, easing us past the villas of the Victorian town above Laneside farm, and the mills sites across the way with the own impressively scaled houses. Walking a north-easterly trajectory on hugely familiar road means there's not a whole mass to describe as new as we run into Churwell, still distinct beyond the open fields to one side of the road, heading down Elland Road on its absurdly steep stretch between the many former churches and chapels, and its enduring pair of pubs, passing the community hall and the memorial gardens before angling to pass down below the bulk of Churwell viaduct, still obscured from view by all the trees despite the seasonal lack of foliage, and over Farnley Wood Beck as it emerges from below the various railway lines that hide it away. 

Morley Roads: South-East Circuit 13/02/21

12.7 miles, from Morley Hole, via Valley Mills, White Rose, Topcliffe Hill, Tingley Common, 

 Birks, Bruntcliffe, Gildersome Street, Gelderd Road, Farnley Junction, Beeston Royds, 

  Cottingley Hall, Millshaw, White Rose, Broad Oaks, Daisy Hill and Morley Station.

Arriving at the concluding weekend of my week off, the need to start the proper push on the walking year comes along with it, but as we look to longer mileages, the sunshine that shone through the previous days has been lost, and is replaced with glumness, while the penetrating sub-zero temperatures remain, and coupled to the enforced local trails, there's little impetus to try to do anything toe exciting, and to instead to look to some raw mileage on the local main roads, as there is a pair of local circuits that advertise themselves obviously. The challenge they present is no more complicated than picking where to start out on their circular routes, and so we commence out from Morley Hole at 10am, to initially draw a line across my earlier parks circuit, down the groove that divides the town in half, traversing Brunswick Street to Morley Bottoms and on down Station Road along the hidden and culverted route of Cotton Mills Beck down to the railway station, where last year's Social Distancing Circuit can be met and traversed for old times sake. This leads us down Valley Road, to the town'd gasworks site, and the Valley Mills, which we move around on the footpath, where the cold weather has caused the natural spring that regularly moistens this path to turn into an ice sheet that turns the descent down to the footbridge into a slippery slope par excellence, ahead of us striking east on the muddy paths to the south of the railway which have frozen into hard and uneven going, as the absence of trains along the way is noted thanks to the reduced lockdown timetable. We are thus lead to the edge of the White Rose Centre's site, where the southern portion of its woodland walk  need to be approached for the first time, as it meanders its way downhill alongside the circuit road, matching the boundary of the sewage works site that it now occupies before we are dropped out by the overflow car parks, and our way is made out onto the Dewsbury Road, right by where Morley's concealed stream emerges, flowing under the A653 towards Millshaw Beck. Join the footway alongside the dual carriageway as the road circuit proper starts off southbound, rising steadily up this small valley, which West Wood on the Middleton fringe looms over as we pace on along one of those sections of roads that I have very little reason to encounter, on foot or otherwise, as we head up towards the Wide Lane roundabout, the familiar transit point out here, where my instinct from last year to the Harvester's seemingly imminent demise proves to have been correct, as it's been replaced by a Macdonalds, which doesn't really feel like a massive social upgrade in my eyes. 

Morley Parks Circuit 11/02/21

7 miles, from Morley Station, via Lewisham Park, Magpie Lane Rec, Glen Road Playing Fields,

 Hembrigg Park, Hopewell Farm estate, Dartmouth Park, Scatcherd Lane Playing Fields,

  Scatcherd Park, Scarth Gardens, Morley Hole, Springfield Mill Park, Clark Springs Wood, 

   Daffil Wood, Japa Wood, St Peter's churchyard, and Station Road Rec. 

My original walking season plans for 2021 hadn't intended us to get off to the rapid starts that have featured in previous years, but the renewed lockdown has me thinking that the Nine Day Weekend (which is what we can regard weeks of annual leave as if we are unable to travel away) might be put to getting down multiple days of local mileage, but no such luck as my start-off Saturday, the 6th, is lost due to constant rainfall, and the subsequent four days are blighted by repeated snowfalls and persistent sub-zero temperatures as the third storm that I can recall being named 'The Beast from the East' passes over. So it's not until Thursday that the risk of further snow has passed, and the climate has settled into one of generally cloudless skies and arse-freezing-ness, and 2021's walking year has to be kicked off before I start to succumb to the risk of going stir crazy, donning all my thermals and leaving my flat to see if all the local walking from last year has left enough of an impression in my mind to tour around all of Morley's notable parks and green spaces without the need of a map, hopeful that the constant coldness won't have blighted the town with sheet ice literally everywhere. So it's to Morley station we head to start our circuit, departing at 10.30am, and full of intent to get around without stopping, heading off southbound and clockwise as we depart Valley Road and head up the non-treacherous flight of steps up to Albert Road, arriving between the Miners Arms and Fisheries and pacing on along Ackroyd Street to the old Co-op and chapel, and then on to the terraces of Cross Peel Street and to Peel Street itself, carrying on up its pavement to the City Mill and former Board School, where we take a left onto South Parade. He we can detour into our first green space, Lewisham Park, which was laid out with the building of the Middleton Road estates, and now offers a dog-exercising and perambulation space behind the semis, as well as frozen playing fields and a pavilion complex that aren't seeing much business as of now, as we traverse our way along the northern perimeter path, which leads us east over its long axis to the exit onto Clough Street, where we renew our wandery trajectory southbound, directly into the low sunshine along the estate's snow-dusted pavements that are doing their absolute best to melt off in the radiant heat of the sun.

Out of the Dark Season... and Onwards?

Snowy January in Leeds.

With the passing of every festive season, I normally crack wise about hiding away for the remainder of January, and essentially going into hibernation for five weeks that lead us out of the Dark Season and on towards our renewed walking career, but 2021 has already given us enough reason to literally do that, as a renewed National Lockdown, our third since the start of the Covid Pandemic, which means my inclination for keeping out of circulation for the month has no been imposed on everyone else too, and as we look forwards to my Tenth year of walking, I'm feeling deeply uncertain about what's going to come next. Not with regards the pandemic situation, as I can honestly say I've finally gotten a proper handle on that, but with how I'm going to conduct myself as we look to get walking again, as restrictions look like they're going to be in place for a while, and although it seems like severe time limits for exercise are not going to be in place this time around, there seems every indication that local exercise is going to mean just that, and so all the plans that I'd been hatching for 2021 during the late passage of last year are effectively junked to comply with the instructions passed out. So for once, I find myself on the waning edge of the rotten three months of the year, looking forward without a great deal of certainty about where my walking year is going to go, as I'm not immediately feeling a lot of enthusiasm for making more trails around Morley, having exhausted the vast majority of the plausible paths during that long Spring of 2020, with my desire to engage with the walking year feeling like it's at its lowest ebb in along while. I don't think I'd really expected to be in such a place when my last walking year ended, with the country going back into lockdown in the teeth of a second Covid wave that my optimistic brain would have hoped would have never come to pass, indeed my thinking back in March would have had us on the tail end of this pandemic, as it retreated into the background after the effective and well considered actions of governments and health care systems worldwide would have taken a firm grip on it. 

Rumination: Lockdown 2.0

Pandemic Thoughts - November 2020

The Following is for Reference Only, the 2020 Summary will follow in a Month from Now.

On December 2nd, the second National Lockdown to attempt to arrest the resurgent spread of Covid infections came to an end, and even after four weeks of renewed restrictions and attempts at containment, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it, with most of my most substantial thoughts having been shared at its outset, as it hasn't seen me get out of work, predictably enough, and aside from having no opportunity to travel away to visit Mum, it had no other impact on my plans which mostly involved hibernating my weekends away at the onset of the Dark Season. I'm sure all those involved with the hospitality, leisure and non-essential retail sectors will have really felt the sting of it, especially after so many weeks of mixed messaging from those who would govern us ahead of the inevitable, but being in the business I'm in, and having so little social interaction beyond my familiar circle, I really can't make any more useful observations beyond the facts of trains into Leeds being noticeably quieter in the mornings, but inexplicably busier in the evenings. It's not been an experience anything like the first national lockdown though, where most businesses shut down and so many people were effectively confined to their homes for two months, as this time around schools have stayed open, and suffered all the fluctuations in attendance and operations that might have been expected when operating through a pandemic, while there have been a lot more retailers opened up and offices not doing nearly as much working from home as before. I'm sorry that I can't report anything personally in more detail, but my attitude towards self-protection during this crisis means that I've been witness to so very little, and can only really reflect on what I've learned through the usual methods of reportage, such as noting that the Covid infection rate dropped by 30% during the past month, which is a substantial drop and not a stat to be taken too lightly, but it feels less like a good reason to return to normality than a reason to get everything back to normal, than a cue to keep things shut down for another month to arrest the spread further. It's certainly discouraging to see the increasing infection rate in school age kids, and the dangers that it presents to families nationally, and for the first time in months we've started to look seriously at the death rate again, which HM Government had massaged down to 41,000 at the start of July, but has since risen to 60,000, presenting the horrifying reality of this second wave, with the ONS suggesting that the rate should be revised significantly upwards again to reflect all the indirectly caused deaths that have occurred due to medical access restrictions during the months of pandemic conditions.

The 'Back in Lockdown' Finale Circuit 11/11/20

10.7 miles, from Morley Hole, via Dean Wood, Gelderd Road, Gildersome Street, Birstall Retail 

 Park, Upper Birstall, Oakwell Park, Gomersal (station), Birstall (Kirkgate), Popeley Gate, 

  White Lee, Carlinghow, Upper Batley, Scotchman Lane, Elvaston estate, and Scatcherd Park. 

The disappointment that we feel right now is the fact that I am unable to travel away to spend my birthday weekend with My Mum down in Leicester due to the re-imposition of national lockdown restrictions, and so we are effectively back into isolation in Morley for another month while we hope that the Covid infection rate starts to go back down, but extra time on my hands gives me an opportunity to walk some more, after the date that had been the scheduled conclusion for the year, and why not, when there's an opportunity to push my mileage total just that bit further along? So, ahead of turning 46, we'll snag ourselves another local Lockdown circuit, for old times sake, and to snare a few more nearby lanes that wouldn't offer up an otherwise obvious passage, heading out to Morley Hole under the least inspiring sort of late season gloom, for a 9.05am start, and immediately seeking the local roads that haven't already seen all the footfalls back in the Spring - Summer section of the year, which means we head off up Asquith Avenue, heading northwest along a pavement untraced in six seasons, beyond Morley Victoria school and the terraces adjacent to it. Then on, between the Dean Hall and Ingles estates, up to the still extant Deanfield Mills and its terrace block before heading out of town over the M621, and down with the road as it dives through Dean Wood, the enduring bastion of greenery above Dean Beck and Gildersome tunnel, ahead of the rise up alongside the 62 Leeds industrial estate, which has claimed all the open fields between the woodland and the A62, which we meet at the Gildersome Arms corner and join instead of continuing on into the village. We'll keep on Gildersome's periphery as we trace the side of Gelderd Road southwesterly, on the trunk route to Huddersfield (a passage from Leeds that I'm still to do in its entirety, incidentally), landing in a landscape that is almost entirely one of industrial estates facing the suburban fringe of the village, with only a few outliers giving it any appeal at all, like the Belle Vue terrace and Parkfield house, ahead of the rise between the Finnings Caterpillar dealership and the Overland Park industrial estate, by the playing fields and the passage of the Leeds Country Way. Rising up towards the top of Street Lane, gives a clear indication that the A62 - A650 junction at Gildersome Street sits squarely on the Aire - Calder watershed, and why the old Ardsley - Laisterdyke railway line needed a tunnel to pass below it back in the day, and once we've traced our byzantine passage across the traffic island, we start our descent down the other side, below the Junction 27 flyovers of the combining M621 and M62, seen up close on multiple occasions, and still showing up just how overly massive and unnatural motorways appear in the landscape when regarded on foot. 

Brighouse to Morley 07/11/20

10.6 miles, via Brighouse Bridge, Clifton, Hartshead Moortop, Hartshead Moorside, Hightown, 

 Knowler Hill, Liversedge, Littletown, Westfield, White Lee, Smithies, Birstall, Copley Hill, 

  Howden Clough, Bruntcliffe, and Leeds 27 Ind Est.

So, as of November 5th were into our second National Covid Lockdown, but it already looks like it's going to be a different beast from the first, as much greater flexibility and mobility is permitted, and indeed expected, this time around, and despite inessential travel being discouraged, I'm figuring that a single half-hour trip out of the region at the end of my walking season to complete the second leg of my homeward bound trip is going to be way down the risk list as we speak, and that the British Transport Police are going to have better things to do that track down solo-walking miscreants like myself. Thus my revived season concludes by heading out from Brighouse, just like it started back in July, alighting my train at 8.50am having travelled out through fog and mist that looks like it's going to linger over the whole day, and again starting out by not taking the most obvious route forwards, by heading west from the station via Railway Street to Gooder Lane, so we might pass the church of St John the Divine, which claims to be in Raistrick, to further confuse the geography of the area, ahead of pacing John Street to meet the long flight of steps that drops us down to Bridge End by the Star inn. Joining up with the A643m, it takes us under Brighouse viaduct and over the Calder at Brighouse bridge, before snaking around to meet Briggate once again, passing over the Canal and completing one of my most fatuous detours designed to keep my paths fresh, only getting properly on track as we join Bethel Street as the local shops are opening up, and barely showing the indications of the lockdown situation that exists at present, while getting the feeling that we've really done a number on this town centre during my many passages across it this year. Lawson Road leads us to the tangling of the local bypass roads, where we cross over to get on track with the A643 Clifton Road again, passing though the industrial band that sits around the lower reach of Clifton Beck, which is crossed over ahead of passing over the Calderdale Way route and meeting the remains of the railway embankments of the L&YR's Pickle Bridge line, with the station remnants of Clifton Road station being seen to the south of the main road. The climb of Clifton Common beyond is one we've paced before, and continues our theme of serious rises and falls on the year's paths, rising past the strings of terraces that rise up the hillside from the hillside up to the suburban infill, before we reach the open fields ahead of Clifton village, where we'd expect our views back into the valley, but there's just fog blanketing the scene instead, meaning all our attention will settle onto our pace in the absence of views as we run past the Armytage Arms and rise to Highmoor Lane beyond.

Mytholmroyd Bubble Walks 1 & 2 13/06/20 & 14/06/20

3.2 miles, from Cragg Road, via Mytholmroyd Bridge, the Rochdale canal, Brearley, 
 Scout Scar, Hall Bank and Hoo Hole. 
& 1.9 miles, from Cragg Road, via Scar Bottom, Caldene Bridge, the Rochdale canal, 
 Hawksclough Bridge, Caldene Bridge (again), and Mytholmroyd bridge.

Wednesday evening brings a surprise, a pleasant one for a change, as an announcement from HM Government is made, which from the following Saturday allows single adult households to form a 'support bubble' with another household without any social distancing rules applying, and within half an hour of this being made public, I get an e-mail invite from my good friends in Calderdale, suggesting that I might travel out to stay with them in Mytholmroyd for the benefit of renewed sociability and the mental health of those that enforced isolation has taken a toll on. I seize this opportunity with joy, and would probably have been ready to jump on a train on Friday evening after another frustrating working week, but we'll stay within the official rules for now, and claim my travel as essential, by heading over on Saturday morning, to land with IH & AK in time for a brew for elevenses and for a lunch of locally sourced bacon and egg rolls, and just being able to chew the fat in a domestic setting, and to sit down with friends for a meal feels like the most enormous of releases, having not done either since February. We need to exercise ourselves too, of course, as Calderdale offers many paths, and it's unpredictable weathers ensure that when we head out from our base on Cragg Road at 12.45pm, we've all donned light waterproofs in anticipation of coming rain, while the clouds hang hazily above the sides of the valley as we amble down into the village, along the downstream flow of Cragg Brook, past the Shoulder of Mutton and under the railway viaduct to note which stores on New Road have endured or suffered before we meet Mytholmroyd bridge, over the Calder and just upstream from St Michael's church. Here we pause to examine the building work that is still ongoing after the boxing day floods of 2015, having widened and heightened the river channel to create a pool below the Cragg Brook confluence, a plan which didn't pan out with the heavy rains of earlier this year as it had failed to consider the potential amount of water ingress on the dry side of the wall, and thus remedial work is ongoing, to be examined as we progress on along the A646 Burnley Road, past the Russell Dean furniture store, the business that completely rebuilt its premises after the flooding in order to stay local, in the direction of the other Mytholmroyd bridge, by which the Red Lion inn still stands disused and sadly derelict.

Morley West Circuit 06/06/20

9 miles, from Morley Hole, via Chapel Hill, Rooms, Farnley Wood, Upper Moor Side, 
 Barker Hill, Gildersome Moor Head, Cockersdale, Nethertown, Lumb Bottom, Adwalton, 
  Birstall Retail Park, Howden Clough, Birkby Brow wood, Scott wood, Dartmouth Park, 
   and New Brighton.

After our warm spikes and bright days at the end of May, it's entirely predictable that June responds by becoming its usual unpredictable self as rains washes over with the increased cloud cover, and the temperature start to drop, maintaining its reputation as the 'Flaming' month in the pejorative sense, with the first weekend offering a choice of days that are either changeable and windy, or calmer but overcast, which a colleague of mine suggests we might be looking forwards to a Summer like we had in 2007, when it rained consistently from mid June to the following Spring. 2020 can do without a seasonal turn like that, and I'll seize the changeable turns of Saturday morning for my fifth and final trip around the immediate environs of Morley borough, looking to the western side as we head out to Morley Hole for a start at 9.05am, getting going with our familiar passage past Morley Manor, Victoria Mills and the Cheapside parade on our initial trajectory, while noting the oft-overlooked presence of the former Brunswick Arms this time, before we strike a path up Chapel Hill, ascending a sixth of the town's seven, while also noting the ghost signs on the end wall of the Conservative club, easily the best in the area. We'll not be doing much that's too original in today's early going, rising past the old Co-op and Herbert Asquith's house on the way past the old chapel and the run of terraces on the way to the Nelson Arms corner on Victoria Road where we cross the A643 by St Peter's church and join Rooms Lane, as it describes the suburban growth of the town as we press north, up to Springfield Mill park and the tip of Clark Springs wood and on to meet the long stone wall that used to surround a couple of old houses, now lost, which seem to have had nothing to do with either of the mill sites out here. So we progress out of town, on Morley's definitive road to nowhere, over the M621 bridge with its view to the city, and on past the end of the metaled surface, diving into the rural landscape past Lister Cottages and between both the farms that call themselves Rooms, before we come down over the Leeds New Lines, where railway walking won't be a feature of this circuit, noting that the site of Gildersome station has been scoured level, like someone has a brownfield development in mind for it, despite it having been fallow for 55 years now, and then we press on to the A62, among the greenery that conceals the fact there was once a colliery on this corner.

Morley East Circuit 30/05/20

7.1 miles, from Morley Hole, via Dawson Hill, Scatcherd Hill, Town End, Topcliffe Mill, 
 Capitol Park, Tingley Common, Tingley Viaduct, Sissons wood, West wood, Stank Hall, 
  Millshaw, Churwell and Lane Side.

After so many weekends out of the routine, it feels good to have been granted the space to get my walking career back on track, though we shall probably be keeping it local until July at the earliest due to public transport issues, but that's no matter as there's still plenty to mick out around Morley, especially when we are greeted by a bright and sunny morning that gets me feeling all sorts of enthusiastic, ready to push out to the east of town with another three hour course prepared in my mind. Thus it's down to Morley Hole once more, to get going at 9.05am, striking my way for the opening stretch to the south by departing Brunswick Street to rise up and over the shady passage of Dawson Hill, which as we rise over above Morley Bottoms has me wondering just how many of Morley's seven hills we have visited over the course of our recent touring and as Banks, Chapel and Daisy have all featured thus far, we check off this one as number four, and soon strike on to number five as we drop out onto the rising stretch of Queen Street and on up Scatcherd Hill. The town centre beyond has been completely unseen during the weeks of Lockdown, and the main drag of Queen Street past the Town Hall still looks light for general business, though not feeling like a ghost town as well-drilled queues organise themselves outside the green grocers and butchers to keep these local business going, which is an encouraging bit of social solidarity to see as we press on to the south end of town, down to the Fountain inn and the New Pavilion theatre, where the rise of South Queen Street grazes the edge of Hunger Hill, hill #6. So past St Paul's church and the mill conversion before we land on the Bridge Street - High Street roundabout, where we follow the footpath onto Magpie Lane which leads us into the Glen Road estate, shadowing the route of the GNR line to the east of Morley Top station, bounding the development to its south side, while we pass The Carriers Arms, another of the town's hidden pubs, and then follow the pavements and footways as they lead us among the residences of Glen Mount and Beacon Grove, noting that this estate was also built with a lot of green space around its closes, as we trace the embankment onwards along the edge of resumed edge of Glen Road before we land on Topcliffe Lane. Oaks and Topcliffe mills stand proud here, illuminated in the Spring sunshine, and our railway walk proper starts here, joining the Ardsley - Laisterdyke line as it presses east, joining the cycleway into Capitol Park as it follows the embankment between the yards full of cars and beer barrels, leading into the site of the triangular Tingley Junction, where the business park's growth looks like it arrested some years ago, to never be resumed, and the pair of cycling Community Support Police take an interest in my exploits as they pass.

Lockdown: Day 63 - 25/05/20

When Spring Bank Holiday Monday comes around, I've no desire to head out for another 3 hour trip in the locality as the day looks like it's going to be a proper hot one, and every one of this last week's excursions have left me feeling completely zonked, as if I've gotten out of practice with the walking routine after two months off it during some of the best weeks of the season, so perhaps it's just as well that I've no plans to bust the season open any time soon, as I've got a good few weeks of local trails to pace as lockdown eases. Thus, I'll take the relaxed option that won't leave me feeling gassed once the time to return to work comes around, picking out the Trainspotting variant of the Social Distancing Circuit, and timing so that I might be in a good location to capture all four of the Nova services as they pass on the Trans-Pennine route, now that we've had a timetable change and it looks like full services have been restored between Leeds and Manchester, and that provides an amiable stretch for 75 minutes, pacing among the greenery and blossom that has come, and gone, over the preceding nine weeks. I hope that will be my last time out on the local SDC, as the optimistic half of my brain hopes that and easing of lockdown might allow for some longer local trips and a bit of weekend public transport usage as we slip towards summer, though the pessimistic other half of me worries that this is where July and August could easily end up again if a second spike in Corona Virus infection occurs, as it well might. Anyway, a week off has been a grand time to focus on getting my numbers back in order, having worked through the paper record of my walking which I started in the 2017 off-season, and have abandoned and re-started twice over since then, re-doing all the calculations to ensure that the stats that I present are correct, and after much hard work, the revision session is complete, and the numbers presented here from now on will be as correct as they'll ever be. My Up Country total proved to have the fewest issues, having been short by 4 miles since its initial calculation in 2014, while my Overall total turned out to have been short by 4 miles since 2013 (meaning that my 1,000 mile gain points and the sum of 1402.2 miles for my first three years were both wrong), before somehow losing another 15.1 miles in 2018, while my Solo total became my cursed number, having no fewer than six addition errors along its course, ending up at 19.5 miles ahead of reality.

Morley South Circuit 23/05/20

7.6 miles, from Morley Hole, via Bruntcliffe, Howden Clough, Birkby Brow Wood, Cliff Wood, 
 Howley Park, Howley Hall, Soothill Tunnel, Woodkirk, Tingley Common, Capitol Park, 
  Topcliffe, Gillroyd, and Brunswick.

After the hot spike that landed on us from Tuesday through to Friday, conditions have taken something of a turn for the chilly as we look to make the most of the three day weekend at the far end of our 10 day stretch of being NIW, and the promise of early morning sunshine has mostly dissipated even before we've gotten to the day's starting line, and it looks like a stiff breeze is going to keep the day changeable as we look to our third tour around the town, looking to the south to retrace a number of routes from early season career that I haven't seen in a while. So to Morley Hole we head, for a 9.20am start, with the cloud cover already starting to accumulate as we set the day's trajectory southwesterly along the side of the A643 Bruntcliffe Lane, rising past Hillycroft fisheries and on uphill, along a familiar pavement, though the stretch between Corporation Street and the Wynyard Drive estate end, opposite the Highcliffe industrial estate seems to have avoided an officially measured visit until now. Rise up, past the cemetery, Bruntcliffe Academy and the Junction 27 industrial estate to land at the A650 crossroads, by the Travelodge and Toby Carvery, noting that the Morley in Bloom garden has been adorned with decorative archways featuring an aphorism by Dr Seuss, which bears recounting as it well suits my contemporary walking mood;

'You're off to Great Places, Today is Your Day, Your Mountain is Waiting, So Get on Your Way'

and thus we do, over the Bradford road and past the WMC and the Shoulder of Mutton inn, and over the crest of the road at Bruntcliffe, heading downhill along the pavement, over the M62 and snaring the views across to the high and distant southern boundary of Kirklees district before we slip past the last terrace in town. We head on into the greenery and leafiness that surrounds the descent into Howden Clough, where the signage indicates your departure from Morley, and Leeds District, long before the bottom of the valley where greater Batley and Kirklees start, and getting a grand look towards Howden Clough mills, which still remains in industrial employ despite is obvious value as an out-of-town and upscale residential development opportunity, before we take a turn to track southeasterly, entering the forestry of Birkby Brow woods, via the roadside entrance that wasn't used by the Leeds Country Way or the Kirklees Way on either of my prior traversals.

Morley Central Circuit 21/05/20

7.6 miles, from Morley Hole, via Daisy Hill, Broad Oaks, White Rose, Low Moor farm, 

 Bantam Grove, Burn Knolls, Morley Top, Dartmouth Park, Bruntcliffe, Gildersome Spur, 

  Dean Wood, Gildersome Tunnel, and the Ingles estate.

Wednesday brings the temperature spike that the week was due, but the heat doesn't attract me out, as housework and a general burst of aeration is necessary around my flat, and we wait until things have cooled a little before we strike out again on Thursday, not as early as I'd hoped to be out thanks to under-sleeping through the night and then oversleeping in the morning, which means that I depart feeling ever so slightly addled on my way to the start line at Morley Hole, getting on track at 9.45am and feeling hopeful that my paths won't be crowded as this weather improvement is sure to attract the populace to more engaging climes than this one. So east we strike again, on the literal middle one of the three loops that I've plotted arpund Morley, heading down Brunswick Street in the shadow of the Victoria Mills complex before we join Bank Street to rise up its other half, below the high walls above which Bank House, surely the oldest house in the town, stands, and above the back of the Cheapside parade at Morley Bottoms, pressing on as the road diminishes to a path by the low-rise flat blocks before it ejects us out onto Chapel Hill. Cross the lane to join New Bank Street by the off-license that has never been open in all my years here, heading on among the elevated terraces above the valley cleft through the heart of the town, passing the still vacant Baptist chapel site and declining with the lane to meet my Lockdown Circuit route and the empire of suburbia that has grown to the east of the town, before rising to the Daisy Hill prominence, where the old mill houses still stand along with its gateposts, from which a view back to town can be noted before we strike into the grassy cleft that lies beyond. It's still May Blossom season out here, giving us some floweriness among the foliage as we drop out into the fields once more, and rise up towards the track to Broad Oaks farm once again, as if every local trail feels the need to come this way, it's really to ensure that we get a decent photographic second look at the Social Distancing Circuit route while the greenery of Spring covers it, having been still a mess of bare earth when the lockdown walking session started, and despite the warmth of the day, the view from here to the city is clear and not burdened by haze, giving another good reason to come up here before we strike for the railway bridge.

Morley North Circuit 19/05/20

5.2 miles, from Morley Hole via Valley Mills, Broad Oaks, Millshaw, Churwell New Village, 

 Rooms, Churwell Urban Woods, and the Ingles estate. 

At last we land on my next week off, and it's been a proper long haul to get here, and quite the roller-coaster of emotions to due to the health crisis and the national lockdown which we have been compelled to traverse, landing on 10 days of being NIW with so much relief, as a regular seven week spell of work can be hard to get through, a stretch like this has proved to be interminable, with time ceasing to have much meaning despite my working weeks having about as much shape as normal, and now I can look to a stretch of getting my head turned back towards normal after experiencing all the stresses that came my way over the preceding days. Interestingly, speaking to one of the departmental supervisors last week, she told me that she was cancelling all here leave for a long as the lockdown lasted as she couldn't face being stuck at home and completely out of circulation during her time off, and that's completely the opposite for me, glad to get away from it and have time completely to myself before having to face what comes with an eased lockdown and the working throngs starting to return to the city. As exercise rules have now been relaxed, going out for more than an hour at a time is now possible, and I could travel further afield if I had an independent transport option, but I don't and public transport use is still discouraged, not that I'd be taking just yet anyway as I'm convinced this lockdown easing has come at least a month too early, and thus I'll be looking towards some circular routes about my resident town, as Morley's lanes and fields haven't seen too much action over the last few years. So the plotting head goes on to find routes that offer a bit more than the sub-3 mile circuits that have been my route for most of the last couple of months and might keep me occupied locally until I feel emboldened, or am permitted, to ride away further from home and back towards where I wanted to be in my 2020 season and I've gotten a good local selection to keep me going, even if few of the passages will prove to be particularly novel. But before we get going with that, I'd just like to share a little more of the new lockdown hobby that I've fired over the last couple of weeks, namely going for a train-spot or three thanks to discovering the live train tracker at rail-record.co.uk, which has informed me of the movement of TPE Class 68s across the Pennines to the Siemens depot at York, which I can thus catch as they run light through Morley, taking their pictures and sharing them here as I have no shame at all about resuming a passion that I had as a child, an action that I'm sure would have delighted My Dad, no end.

Lockdown: Day 55 - 17/05/20

Well, this has been a strange week, through which we've pressed hard to get to the 10 (TEN) days of annual leave at the other end of, the week where Britain supposedly gets back to work, while lockdown because of the Corona Virus still continues, and for this week at least, there's little indication of there being any difference on the railways, as there's just as few people on the Morley - Leeds trains as there ever were, and no obvious differences on the Leeds - Cross Gates services either. Which is just as well because this is the week that I chose to start shooting video from the windows of my morning and evening commuter rides, as that's certainly something that you can't do on the trains under normal circumstance, unless you are a travel blogger with a semi-professional YouTube channel (and that's not a future I envisage for myself after discovering the brutal upload times which that site has) and it's amazing that you can find along the way of two line, once you factored in the orientation of the train and the direction of travel to give you as many a 16 variations. I can honestly say that I'm not looking forward to public transport getting busy again, as I can't envisage how you're supposed to effectively socially distance on a train when it's at more than 25% capacity, and thus it's relief to see no change through this week, as I doubt many businesses even had a plan to get people back on site in the city when the announcement was dropped last weekend, and the only indication that I can take of there being any real change in circumstances is the locally observed lower number of cars in the yard of my flat block, and the increase in apparent activity at the industrial units and workshops at the lower end of Station Road in Morley. My Friday evening swing around the town, to grab the weekly essential goods shopping at Bond Street Tesco, will thus be my probable last to see the deserted streets in the city centre before the retail sector starts to revive, and the only crowd to add to the regular few people traversing the street is the bunch who empty out of the Albion Street branch of Barclays Bank, ahead of my working week coming to end. The long weeks of being NIW to come should prove a good time to decompress after ploughing a relentless path of work through seven weeks of national lockdown, and the frustrations of the moment are combined by the thought that I ought to be on holiday to walk the Rossendale Way, and the fact that while restrictions of time allowed for exercise have been relaxed, the use of non-essential public transport use is still discouraged, which renders me relatively stranded in Morley for the time being, only fancying a regular short circuit out on Sunday morning, ahead of potentially putting down quite a few more local miles during my week off.