Mytholmroyd Bubble Walk #6 17/04/21

5 miles, from Cragg Road, via Hoo Hole, Dauber Bridge, Clough Foot, Birks Hall, 

 Sutcliffe Wood, Hollin Hey Wood & Bank, Stake Lane, Windle Hill, Nab End Quarry, 

  Miry Lane, Stake Lane, Long Lane, and Hoo Hole. 

Post-Easter holidays, and Post second Covid vaccine dose, seems like a good spot in the year to return to my Support Bubble in Calderdale, which isn't point that we would've imagined being in at this point in the season when we last convened to flush 2020 away, more than three months ago, but with Spring resolutely refusing to be sprung, a sociable get together with my good friends IH & AK seem like a good option for a couple of evenings, to get in the necessary drinks and dinners while bracketing another bubble walk, while otherwise taking it easy before the year starts to get serious again. For them that means getting psyched up for trying to bring a school year to a satisfactory conclusion in only three months, while also organizing an examination regime on the top of it, so it's natural enough that landing with them on the Friday evening disappears into a quantity of red meat and wine, ahead of us all feeling the need to sleep off the effects, and thus Saturday morning means a late rise, and no option for getting out until after lunchtime, and there's no trouble with that as there's still plenty of fat to be chewed between us, and another day of early chill to be cleared before we head out. So it's away from our base on Cragg Road at 1.25pm, as getting out of doors in the British countryside seems to be a better way of patriotically expressing ourselves than staying in to watch the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, and we've a new location to visit a short distance from Mytholmroyd, unseen by my local friends despite having been resident for nearly 15 years, though it's proximity is offset by the altitude away to the southwest, and thus we have to take a long circuitous route to get to it, pushing away on the trajectory out of town to the south, to gain height gradually as we pass up Cragg Vale. Thus we head past Royds Ices, Hoo Hole Mill, and into the countryside, over Dauber Bridge and uphill, getting a good view of the passage of Cragg Brook through the still leafless trees, before passing around the caravan site that has already filled to available capacity with visitors and below the bowl of Broadhead Clough, and rising on beyond the Clough Foot farms and into the dramatic lower stretch of the valley, which still seems short of Spring colour until we meet the Cragg Vale community gardens with its riot of still ripe Daffodils, where we split off from the roadside.

Mytholmroyd Bubble Walks 4 & 5 15/08/20 & 16/08/20

1.2 miles, from Cragg Road, via St Michael's, Mytholmroyd Bridge and Caldene Bridge, 

 & 1.8 miles, from Cragg Road, via Hawksclough Bridge, the Rochdale Canal, 

  Mytholmroyd bridge and Cragg Brook.

It hadn't been my intention to drop out from my walking schedule this weekend, but when a call came inviting me out for another return to my Support Bubble in Calderdale, taking the opportunity seemed too good to miss, as the local lockdown restrictions don't apply to our particular type of socialising, and Barbecue is offered as a clincher by My Good Friends, and that seems like a most appealing prospect when the weather projection isn't great, far cooler and greyer than last weekend turned out, demonstrating further that this Summer has no idea at all what it's trying to do. Sadly, opportunities for major exercise aren't really forthcoming as my invitation only gets a late response due to me not seeing it until Friday evening, curtailing the chance of a two night stay, and also precluding an early start on Saturday as supplies need to be gotten in ahead of my visit, as they haven't been obtained preemptively, and so we don't land at Chez IH&AK until after Saturday lunchtime, meaning there isn't enough afternoon to head out for an uphill blast after brews and a conflab, meaning that none of us will have the chance to hit the 383m summit of Crow Hill for the first time. So we only stroll in the village instead, and I really mean stroll, as the walks we do would barely feel worthy of recording at all if it wasn't for all the potential miles lost during 2020, heading out from base on Cragg Road at 2.35pm, walking into the village , beyond the station and viaduct to see how more of the flood defence works have progressed, noting that while so much has been built anew along the sides of Cragg Brook over the last couple of years, some of the older walls retaining the gardens of Streamside Fold have started to suffer from cracking. A detour off New Road takes us through the churchyard of St Michael's, which gives us a dramatic foreground for the fine view up to the woodlands and rocks of Scout Scar above the valley, a grand backdrop to take in as we visit the public gardens around the bowling green, recently replanted after the civil engineering depot that had spent many months on the tennis courts site finally moved out, having completed most of the work deepening and widening the channel of the Calder, downstream from Mytholmroyd Bridge. The major local interest point remains the relocation of Caldene Bridge upstream, with the original span now completely removed as a pool is created upstream from the Calder-Cragg confluence, hopefully to allow water to back up safely in times of spate, and the increased width of the river is obvious as the south bank is completely rebuilt, with the piles now driven in and the construction of new retaining walls having started, allowing my friends to feel like this project is coming to a conclusion after nearly 4 years of work, as the village centre seeks its own new normal again.

Mytholmroyd Bubble Walk #3 11/07/20

4.3 miles, from Cragg Road, via Hoo Hole, Dauber Bridge, Parrock Clough, Spring Wood, 
 Broadhead Clough, Erringden Moor, Bell House Moor, Lumb Stone, Cragg Bottom, 
  and Cragg Vale.  

Having exhausted my supply of local and socially responsible walking circuits, and now finding myself at another ten day stretch of being NIW, I naturally feel like it's time to venture out to my Calderdale Support Bubble for some sociable R'n'R before we start to think about formally reviving the 2020 walking season that has been on hiatus for the better part of four months now, and thus we ride the rails out to Mytholmroyd on Friday evening straight from work, to get our weekend off with IH & AK to a quick start, catching up on the concession of Chicago deep dish pizza that I missed out on last time, before settling into the wine again as we chatter our way through the last few weeks of happenings. Boozing like that ensures that an early start won't be easy to come by, and factor in a Test Match on the TV, and the scope for a lot of walking drops away, so we don't head out until after our lunch break that has coincided with that of the cricket, departing our base on Cragg Road at 1.20pm, and setting off out of town to the south, to find that Mytholmroyd isn't really much more than half a mile deep in this direction, passing out of town by the Royds Ices factory and the Hoo Hole mill into the low fields, scattered suburban houses and high wooded banks that form Cragg Vale, the most significant branch of the Calder in this quarter. Our plan is too follow the Cragg Vale Coiners Walk, a path created to take us past the historical sites of the infamous counterfeiters of the 18th century, and those of their fictional counterparts as featured in the novel 'The Gallows Pole' by local author Benjamin Myers, following a map plotted and illustrated by Christopher Goddard, our admirable local variant of Alfred Wainwright, which is almost too nice to use as a route guide, which we follow as it leads us out of town up to Dauber Bridge to split from the main road and onto the rise away from Cragg Brook, along a steepening track that does lead to farmsteads at its high and distant ends, which are not to be seen on our ascent. The route is soon sending us up one of the main branches of Cragg Vale, elevating us above the stream in the cleft of Parrock Clough as we twist around below the cover of trees gaining altitude all the way before we enter open fields which give us some scope of the environs and the amount of ascent still to come, before we meet a herd of young Highland cattle who won't be stirred from the track they are blocking, forcing me to take a dynamic lead in clearing a way past them as these are the sort of cows that are placid enough to not inspire fear in me as we head on with the rise to meet Spring Wood.

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.