The Halifax Circular 17/10/20

14.5 miles, from Sowerby Bridge, via Warley Town, Newlands Gate, Warley Common, 

 Mount Tabor, Moor End, Mixenden, The Bank, Illingworth, Holdsworth, Holmfield, 

  Slack End, Swales Moor, Pule Hill, Pepper Hill, Claremount, Beacon Hill, Bank Top, 

   Whitegate, Siddal, Salterhebble, Skircoat Green, Long Wood, Scar Bottom, and Pye Nest. 

Just like last year, it's taken a bit of a while to get to my late season Urban Circular plan, as all those schemes between the Colne and Calder just kept on coming, leaving us with only a small sliver of the year left for us to tilt at the last long trail of the year, returning to Saturday walking at the conditions don't look favourable for either day of the weekend, and aiming for an early start as the changeable conditions on the Pennine fringe could easily take a turn at any point after we've laid down our start line at just after 9.00am at Sowerby Bridge station. Thus we depart from the north entrance, onto Holmes Road and immediately head for the Calder crossing between the mill sites at the valley floor, and head up the ginnel that drops us out onto the A58 Wharf Street, which is crossed by the pub on the corner, across from Christ Church as we join Tuel Lane, the short A6139 as it presses its way uphill out of the valley, over the deep lock 3/4 on the Rochdale canal and on past the Lidl store and the tower blocks that loom over the townlet. It's a stiff climb, as is well known in the valley, and there's going to be about 200m of it to do as we aim ourselves to the west of Halifax, on among the terraces and the old school which sit above the blocks of flats as we press on upward, meeting more than one false summit on the lane with frankly inadequate pavements as we rise up, past the Waiters Arms inn to meet the A646 Burnley Road, which has been the northern boundary to our field for the year so far, beyond which a suburban ribbon strings itself along the rising Blackwall Lane. We land in countryside proper as we meet Water Hill Lane, which continues the climb, giving us looks up and down the Calder valley as well as a look back up the Ryburn to the south, as gloom and the hiss of low cloud starts to blanket the scenery, while we still have an upward trajectory to trace as we head up, around the cricket field and  towards Warley Town, a still rural village beyond the reach of the town to the east, which has cottages with fine views on its lower half, ahead of the shaded passage around past Cliff Hill house and the Grange, with the main street, as such beyond. Here we find the Maypole inn, the chapel, and the drinking fountain in the middle of a small picturesque idyll that is really on for the scrapbook, with Warley Town Lane offering us our way onward, past the well concealed suburban accumulation to the village's north, and into the fields by the remote club grounds of Halifax Vandals RUFC, below the westernmost extremity of Halifax, the Norton Tower estate, perched above the tree and moorland clad edge of Camp End.

The Huddersfield Circular 12/10/19

15.9 miles, from Lockwood, via Crosland Moor, Milnsbridge, Golcar, Leymoor, Longwood, 

 Quarmby, Oakes, Lindley, Birkby, Fartown, Woodhouse Hill, Sheepridge, Deighton, Dalton, 

  Waterloo, Greenside, Almondbury, Castle Hill, Newsome, and Lockwood Scar.

The Autumn weather for this trip looks a bit more favourable than that which we've seen over the last couple, while still feeling far removed from the Summer that we still had in the air only three weeks ago, and before the season stats to grip hard, we ought to get the next Urban Circular off the slate, as Huddersfield has been waiting for it for far too long, and we'll start this trip from Lockwood station, one of the town's few suburban stations and the last one on the Penistone Line that has still to be visited, despite having passed though it about 20 times over the course of the year. So we alight at 9.15am (having enjoyed an all too brief ride out on a 158 Super Sprinter unit, meaning that the days of the 142/144 Pacer units might finally be numbered in West Yorkshire), landing by the station that surely landed her on the hillside betwixt Holme and Colne due to the industrial plant that still operates up here, such as the Prospect Iron Works, which is the first thing we meet past the station yard, and also the Park Works, operated by Santasalo nowadays but once home to the other factory of David Brown of Meltham, which we can locate up Park Road to the northwest, at the top of Yew Hill, next to St Barnabas's, the parish church of Crosland Moor. So despite having started out at a previously un-traced location, we are soon enough in familiar territory, exiting the suburbs at the hilltop and coming across Blackmoorfoot Road at the Lane Ends corner, and start off down Park Road West, which leads us down among the high terraces that enjoy a fine view over the Colne Valley, which is looking a lot more inviting than it did a week ago, giving us a fine view or two before we descend down from the bank to Manchester Road. Cross the A62 and pace it up to the Factory Lane corner, where we descend again, to make proper acquaintance of Milnsbridge, which takes us by the long flank of Union Mill and the neighbouring Socialist club, before we emerge onto Whiteley Street, where we are led over the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, and can look over to the enduring block of mills that sit to the east of the village, and also up to Longwood viaduct, carrying the railway up the valley to Standedge tunnel and beyond, with Longwood Tower and St Mark's church rising on the high side, off to the north. That's where our circular route ought to be heading directly, past the Four Horseshoes and up Market Street, over the Colne and under the viaduct, but before we get to the Commercial mill corner, the feeling that we ought to visit Golcar takes hold, and thus we split left onto Scar Lane by Aldi, to set off on the long drag that will add an extra couple of miles and some extra elevation to the day, keeping to the shady side of the lane as far as the Royal inn.

The Wakefield Circular 30/03/19

12.6 miles, via Sandals Meadow, Calder Island, The Thornes Cut, Lupset Pond, 

 Horbury Fields, Benton Park, Lupset Fields, Roundwood Park, Silkwood Park, 

  Alverthorpe, Wrenthorpe Park, Red Hall, Newton Hill, Pinderfields, City Fields, 

   East Moor Fields, and Agbrigg. 

My March week off work gets spent Down Country, and deliberately features no walking plans of any kind, which feels unprecedented and certainly marks a break with six years of tradition, but I travelled with the full intent of making myself useful by aiding Mum in sorting through many of Dad's effects, and over the course of five days we made really good progress, filling up eight bags of clothes for charity shops and getting about two thirds of the way through imposing order on the garage where chaos has been allowed to reign for too long. We can now be happy to know exactly what we still have by way of tools and DIY equipment now, before we decide what we actually need to keep, and thus have to return to that pile with purpose in the future, and also along the way, in between fitting in three meals out, we made a trip out to Nottingham to score a pair of CD towers from an old hippy, which ought to keep my storage space viable for a good few years more (someone in this conversation clearly isn't getting into streaming media any time soon). Then we get to travelling back to Morley with furniture in tow, to get my storage reorganised and a whole lot of dust lifted and hoovered away, and then as the weekend comes along, My Mum can travel up to Skipton to pay a day's visit to her lifelong friend from her college days, and I can return to the trail to walk relatively locally, pulling a trip off the reserve list to make it feel like rather too much of my early season wandering has been focussed on the city of Wakefield. So away, finally, to start my first urban circular trip in two years, which ought to give me a whole bunch of fresh perspectives on this city that really has had an unusually large amount of attention lavished on it in this early season going, arriving at Sandal & Agbrigg station under gloomy skies and in the grip of low temperatures, departing at 9.40am, heading down to Agbrigg Road and setting off west for a clockwise circuit. Pass among the Victorian town houses and rural outliers to cross the A61 Barnsley Road and head up Pinfold Lane past the local school and suburban back gardens, getting a feeling that we are repeating my 2014 route as we land on Castle Road, but we don't head on towards the castle again, but instead join the Castle Road West track, which leads around the southern edges of the Portobello estate and around the northern edge of Sandal Meadows, site of the Battle of Wakefield, where Richard, Duke of York, met his ignominious end on 30th December 1460, firing up the most dynamic three months of the Wars of the Roses, which ultimately led to the downfall of the Lancastrian monarchy.

The Leicester Circular 29/03/17

17.5 miles, via Humberstone Heights, Northfields, Rushey Mead, Belgrave, Abbey,
 New Parks, Western Park, Braunstone Park, Rowley Fields, Aylestone, Knighton Fields,
  South Knighton, Stoneygate, Horston Hill, & Crown Hills.

The end of March is time to go Down Country to see My Parents and to help out around their house for a few days, and having already done city circulars in Leeds and Bradford, doing one on the city of my births seems like a good plan whilst I'm here, as does seeking out the remnants of the Leicester Corporation Tramways, long lost to history, grown between 1874 and 1927, electrified in 1904 and closed down from 1933 to 1949, a rough plot the termini of which gives me a tour of some 17 miles. So, a more modestly sized city than those of West Yorkshire gives a circuit that is much longer, but this will take in a lot of suburbia as well as the limits of the Victorian - Edwardian city, and this will be the best opportunity to put in a significantly long distance down before the bright and warm days of late Spring arrive, and thus we steel ourselves for a long day, starting out at The Terminus on Uppingham Road by the 1934 tram shelter, our constant local companion, and set out in search of the other remaining shelters about the city as well as the end point of every other line on the city's major arteries. Head off anti-clockwise for a change, pushing up the suburban lane of Humberstone Drive, between the suburbia that grew on the Humberstone Hall site and the council estates to the west, heading in the direction of Humberstone village but pulling away at the Thurmaston Lane corner and noting that the grounds of the Towers Hospital, the former lunatic asylum, has been completely redeveloped residentially, dropping a wholly new settlement into the local landscape, which I'll call Humberstone Heights, after the local golf course. Join Gipsy Lane for the westward push, looking into the new suburbia and noting that most of the old hospital buildings have endured, sure to get an executive makeover in the future, for all those who'd wish to put up with the local ghosts, and than its on, over the A6030 link road that took decades to arrive, and on into the district of Northfields, where council houses and terraces face each other at quite a remove from the city, as well as containing The Salutation Inn, one of the most infamously rough pubs in the locality. Then we pass below the Midland Mainline under the low bridge that still seems to attracts regular collisions with wayward high vehicles, and on to the Catherine Street corner, often pronounced incorrectly by non locals, and home to the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple, which has such an elaborate makeover that you'd never believe that it used to be a factory.

The Bradford Circular 10/02/17

10.3 miles, from Dudley Hill, via the A6177 Ring Road (& Bierley, Staygate, Southfield,
 Great Horton, Lidget Green, Girlington, Manningham, Queens Road, Undercliffe,
  Bradford Moor, Laisterdyke & Cutler Heights).

I often joke with Leeds folk about how little they seem to know of Bradford, how they will only travel there for a specific reason, finding that it's never somewhere that they would pass through casually, but the truth is I know very little of the city either, unfamiliar with most of it geography and history, even after 5 years of walking in West Yorkshire. Compare the fact that my Leeds Circular trail crossed 19 different routes through that City, when today's trip around Bradford will cross over only two, with more than three quarters of the City being completely virgin territory to me, so it's fortunate that we have the A6177 ring road to guide us on a 9+ mile circuit, on much older roads than you'd expect around the suburban periphery of the city. Start out from the A650 at Dudley Hill after 10.20am, and it would have been earlier if the #427 bus hadn't done a dawdling act, and the quickest route to the A6177 is along Rook Lane, which quickly illustrates the main aesthetic problem I have with Bradford, all that well-weathered stonework that composes 90+% of the architecture of the city just looks so grey, a particularly unwelcoming appearance under the dull skies which seem to permanently hang in this quarter. Soon enough we are upon Rooley Lane to join the clockwise path of the Ring Road, keen to get to the inside track of the dual carriageway that might offer elevated views towards the city, and soon we are across by the ASDA store opposite St John's Bierley, and we are on familiar territory so soon, above Bowling Cemetery and pressing onwards past the YBS groups offices and the old New Hall farm on the opposite side, looking ripe for a makeover. Soon catch a distant sight of the Sport Centre that the uneducated eye could mistake for the more modest Odsal stadium, and then land at the top of the M606 at Staithgate Roundabout, where a vista open up to show just how high above the city we are, which ought to shed any failure to remember that Bradford lives in a valley with many hills around it. The dual carriageway continues, past the Cedar Court hotel and into the more outer suburban lands around Mayo Avenue, which also has a branch of Matalan and Morrisons, Bradford's greatest gift to British Commerce, and then we tangle up with the A641 Manchester Road, the red route into the city from the motorway and the southwest, where making a foot crossing is very confusing and needlessly difficult.

The Leeds Circular 08/02/17

10.4 miles, from Burley Park, via Hyde Park, Woodhouse, Buslingthorpe, Sheepscar, Harehills, East End Park, Cross Green, Hunslet, Beeston, Holbeck, New Wortley & Armley.

So Season 6 gets underway, whilst I'm not in work for the week and under skies that suggest the weather forecasts are kinda approximate at the moment, and it seems odd that it has taken me so many years to conceive and plot a circular walk around the City of Leeds, suggestive that only after blazing so many trails across the urban landscape do I now feel confident enough to visit so many of its Victorian - Edwardian suburbs in one go. Thus we start out from Burley Park station, on the Harrogate line, my station of choice for most of the 11 years from 1996 to 2007, to make a circuit of the city, hopeful for a good tempo to relax the legs and to keep ahead of the drizzle and penetrating cold, setting off after 10am behind the Co-op an striking up Cardigan Road past Our Lady of Lourdes church and the many large houses that were far too good and too big for student land. Strike along Victoria Road, marking the boundary between the upscale 19th century suburbia towards Headingley and the lower scale terraces of Hyde Park, and in this corner you do wonder if the exodus of students to apartment land will free up some of this district for proper living once again, because this is a fate it surely didn't deserve. It seems that the Leeds Girls School has gone from its old sire, getting some midscale urban redevelopment in its place, with only its oldest building remaining and in dire need of a makeover, and then its up to Hyde Park Corner and its pair of churches and awful pub, to make a way over the A660 and into the sketchier corner of student land in Woodhouse, always looking like the slightly forgotten corner of the University Quarter, where enough actual residents have remained to keep the prominent school active among its terraces. The aspect changes as we slip down Melville Road past later residential developments and into the industrial mix in the Meanwood Valley, where the enduring woods will not be enjoyed as we cross Meanwood Road by The Primrose and head over Meanwood Beck and up Buslingthorpe Lane, which along with its mill are the only notable features of this quasi district, where a good view towards the city would come on a clearer day, and it still seems to have actual industry up here too, as well as more traffic than the narrow and twisty lane really needs.