Low Moor to Shipley (Alpine Version) 22/04/17

14.4 miles, via Wyke New Road Side, Royds Hall, Shelf, Queensbury, Mountain, Thornton,
 Stoney Lane, Sandy Lane, Noon Nick, Moorhead, and Saltaire.

So after the last stretch, two extra days of recovery were needed as my chest cold lingered horribly, and the short post Easter week ended up being only two days of work long, with all of it being toil, and thus a wiser man would have stayed home for the weekend, but the weather looked decent and my walking spirit still wants to make the most of the Spring days, so we are back to the trail with the lungs and legs still feeling less than 100%. An early start on the day isn't an option when Low Moor station is a complicated location to travel to, and so we resume our long loop around Bradford by setting course for Shipley again, but this time aiming for the hills to the west and our first major excursion over Alpine Bradford in a few years, and our first non-urban excursion of the year, departing at 10.05am and aiming ourselves off down the Spen Valley Greenway to get back to the circuit started last weekend. This involves noting that the most singular building in the Transperience complex has gone, demolished to enlarge the freight distribution depot, and also finding the plaque installed to commemorate the munitions works explosion of 21st August 1916 which killed 40 people, a useful reminder of the civilian casualties of the First World war that are still not fully acknowledged in the popular consciousness. This track leads us to Oakenshaw tunnel where we depart the Greenway to push up back to Wyke Lane and head into the green fields and onto the path to the west, rising up to Fearnley Farm and then splitting off to Wilson Road, which is partly un-adopted to prevent it being a rat run between Oakenshaw and Wyke, and as it rises above the rough fields and common land that used to be occupied by the chemical and munitions works, we get a visual confirmation that Low Moor is one of those rare enduring bastions of heavy industry. Soon we meet the outer edges of Wyke's suburban outspill, followed down to the B6379 Huddersfield Road, and then we get an older sort of face to High Fernley Road, leading us on to the A641 Woodside Road which illustrates that this quarter, New Road Side, seems to have two main roads running through it.

Leeds to Low Moor 17/04/17

11.2 miles, via Holbeck, New Wortley, Upper Wortley, Tong, Westgate Hill, Birkenshaw,
 East Bierley, Cliff Hollins, and Oakenshaw.

The long Easter weekend nearly turned into a complete washout, after promising such a good start with social beveraging in Hebden Bridge and a visit to Batley Mill on the return trip to invest in new boots from Mountain Warehouse (pair #6 not being needed just yet, and will this be introduced in due course), with Saturday's trip then being lost to a heavy chest cold and Sunday needing a refocussing of my energy to get myself going on Easter Monday morning. So plans are revised down extensively, and I convince myself that I feel fit enough for a 4 hour burn, starting my trail from Leeds at 9.05am just so we might get an early finish and plenty of recovery time afterwards, setting a course to the southwest as it is the sole remaining trajectory out of Leeds that hasn't been explored all that much, leaving the station via the South Entrance to see the morning sunshine falling on Granary Wharf. Pass over the canal junction and around the old canal warehouse that is still my favourite industrial building in the city, heading west along Water Lane and next to the Hol Beck, still adoring the industrial heritage of the district and pointing my camera at buildings already photographed a dozen times, heading on past Tower Works and onto Globe Road and it's only once we've passed under the high railway bridges do I remember that this wasn't the way I wanted to travel today. Not going to turn back to pace Springwell Road instead, pressing on to Whitehall Road to pass the Central Viaduct, head under the railway again and past the walled off passage to the old Holbeck stations, and also the railway goods shed that has failed to catch my attention so far. It turns out that my route of choice was a non-starter anyway, as the Sutton Street foot tunnel, the old access point to Holbeck High Level station, has been fenced off due to demolition work going on around the Polestar Petty printworks, so that way will have to have another day, and we press on to Spence Lane and onto the A643 to pass under the railway for a final time and loop around onto the footbridge that rises above the Armley Gyratory, dropping us down by the gasometer at the top of Wellington Road.

Low Moor to Shipley 08/04/17

13.6 miles, via Bierley, Dudley Hill, Holme Wood, Tyersal, Laisterdyke, Thornbury, Fagley,
 Ravenscliffe, Eccleshill Bank, Thorpe Edge, Idle & Thackley.

Low Moor station finally arrives on the WY Metro network to open up transport possibilities in the south of Bradford and at the top of the Spen Valley, and I'll be there to meet it on the first Saturday of operation, along with hardly any other passengers, but that's largely due to the railwaymen's strike that has truncated services and landed me here for a 10.25am start, an hour later than I'd have liked on a what promises to be a very warm day indeed. So we immediately join the top of the Spen Valley Greenway, below the Cleckheaton Road bridge, and among the buildings of Transperience, the infamous museum of Public Transport that proved to be one of the worst financial debacles of the 1990s, the tram sheds visible off to the south with the auditorium and tram stand still in situ off to the north. The Greenway path leads north alongside the railway and the former site of the original L&YR station and engine shed, closed in 1965, onwards into the Kingsmark industrial estate and up to the half of the footbridge that once reached its way across Low Moor junction, where the GNR branch to Dudley Hill once had its southern end, a line that only operated from 1893 to 1918 and might thus be one of the most forgotten lines in West Yorkshire. Nothing can be seen of it as we rise along the roadside to junction 2 of the M606, even as we follow the alignment exactly, passing through the Euroway industrial estate and departing Merrydale Road along the cycleway that carries NCN Route 66 off towards Bowling Park, shadowing the line up towards Tanhouse farm and also getting sight of the former estate of Bierley Hall along the way. Our railway search proper starts as we meet the outer suburban edge of Bierley and take a few road corners to find the infilled plate girder bridge by Brogden House farm, and then keep to the countryside roads as we pace up Spen View Lane to find the narrow path that leads between farm buildings and fields to the extant section of embankment that is accessible to the walker, despite the underbridges at the access point and at the long lost Scales Lane being missing, and the sole extant cattle creep below the suburban houses of Meadowcroft Rise is sadly inaccessible from atop the formation.

Cross Gates to Bradford 01/04/17

14 miles, via Killingbeck, Osmandthorpe, East End Park, Burmantofts, Leeds city centre,
 Armley, Upper Armley, Bramley, Stanningley, New Pudsey, Thornbury & Barkerend.

Back Up Country for the weekend and My first Fool's Day walk since I attempted to walk from Halifax to Keighley in Arctic conditions, and there will be no such craziness on this occasion, though the weather doesn't seem to know which season it is supposed to be, so it looks like its going to test out all of them in a single day. Leeds has suffered too much neglect whilst our focus has been on Bradford, and whilst it's my intention to burn some more trails around West Leeds in 2017, it looks like East Leeds might not get much of a look in, so let's do at least one side to side trip on this city via the town centre, something that I haven't done before, and aim to fill in a York Road shaped hole on my experience map. So to the red brick wonder of Cross Gates station as the morning weather promises little, pushing up to the main road for a 9.35am start, and noting that The Station has had a makeover and that there are many more ways of getting to the other side of the Ring Road once past the Crossgates shopping centre, even though our trajectory towards the gated traffic island and Crossgates Road is ultimately the same as the last two trips out of here. Westwards is our path today, down this most suburban of dual carriageways, pressing on to the Burger King junction with York Road, and on to meet the perimeter wall of Seacroft Hospital, site of occasional working exile and of quite a lot of active ongoing medical capacity, despite its diminished size from the original scale of the old Isolation Hospital, a sunnier day would demand pictures of what's left of it. I'm pretty sure housing will be in its future as the Leeds THT looks to dispense of the valuable lands to fund further development of the city site, and it seems that residential development is already coming to the fields around it as a new road has been cut into them from the A64 opposite Killingbeck RC cemetery. The walk to the city feels like it ought to be downhill all the way, and it is past the Asda and B&Q complex and Paddy's Crossing, to the Killingbeck towers and the beck itself that separates the older and newer suburbs, but there are still rises to come, over the throat of Selby Road and the wacky traffic signalling below the railway bridge, and up between the top edge of the Osmandthorpe estate, and below the lower edge of Gipton, passing the unloved, and closed, Dog and Gun, and the matching police station and fire stations at the bottom of Gipton Approach.

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.

Headingley to Thornton 25/03/17

12.7 miles, via Kirkstall, Bramley Moorside, Intake, Farsley, Woodhall Hills, Thornbury,
 New Leeds, Bradford city centre, Brown Royd, Four Lane Ends, Fairweather Green,
  Leaventhorpe, & Hill Top.

First weekend of Spring proper, and the last day of GMT, and the sun is out, promising a day of wall to wall sunshine and the hottest last weekend of March since that sunburnt day in Mallerstang five years ago, the sort of day that probably deserves better than another city trail, but after spending a month moaning about the lack of good weather in Bradford, it makes sense to see it when the day is going to be about as bright as it can possibly be. So, the cross town trip starts out from West Leeds once again, starting out from Headingley station on the Harrogate line at 9.40am, and it's a mystery how I've never travelled from here in my walking days, or found ,much reason to use it in the preceding decades, probably something to do with it being not very convenient for its namesake, and it's got a station building to admire too, one of the best examples of the NER's domestic styling. It's a short walk downhill, on the B6157 Kirkstall Lane to land us in the heart of Kirkstall, much more convenient for the station, and soon cross two old tracks on Morris Lane and the A65 Abbey Road, passing the drinking fountain and war memorial on the way down to Bridge Road, home to the former hotel with the excess of windows (still seeking an occupant), and the Kirkstall Bridge retail park, which is celebrating a year of business as we speak. This leads us to Bridge Mill and it's neighbour the Bridge Inn, and the path across the Aire on Kirkstall Bridge itself, also over the railway where the MR's original Kirkstall station once lived (closed in the 1960s when Headingley was favoured for retention), and then we hit Broad Lane, leading us up the Kirkstall Brewery flats, owned by the Metropolitan University ('Leeds Carnegie' be damned, I say), not actually the home of the currently operational Kirkstall Brewery, but idyllically placed by the Leeds & Liverpool canal, the bridge over which we cross.
 

Morley to Saltaire 18/03/17

12.4 miles, via Gildersome Street, Adwalton, Drighlington, Westgate Hill, Tong Street,
 Dudley Hill, East Bowling, Bradford city centre, Manningham, Frizinghall, & Shipley.

No need for an early start when the first longer walk of the year starts from your home town, so rising can start at an unhurried pace and there's no pressure to get the bags gathered quickly, as the start line isn't too far away and an hour of the day hasn't been burned with travelling as we arrive at Morley Town Hall for a 9.40am jump off, to walk cross Bradford again and head south on a path that initially seems counterintuitive. The main issue with walking in Morley is finding a unique path that hasn't been walked before, so it's good to find that there is still at least one major road in the borough that hasn't already been tramped, and that's High Street, initially accessed behind the New Pavilion theatre and rising in a mostly upscale residential fashion to the B6127 island and then on, below the bridge abutment that is the last physical remnant of the GNR's Morley Top station, and onwards through a landscape of enduring industrial mills and terraces on cobbled lanes. It seems to be named High because of elevation, rather than importance, and leads us out to the A650 Wakefield - Bradford turnpike, and our path turns to the northwest at the Stump Cross Inn, the roadside marker itself being long lost, and this is a section of Britannia Road that hasn't had much occasion to be travelled in all my years in Morley, with the Cross Keys, the Mermaid fish restaurant and the Asda superstore having all gone unvisited in the last decade. Pass the Halfway House, and the B6123 before we pace more of the unseen turnpike before passing St Andrew's church and the way out from Dartmouth park and joining the path of Bruntcliffe Road that has been frequently travelled, where many establishments seem to claim a 27 in their names, and the path stays familiar as we hit Bruntcliffe crossroads and press on past the Toby carvery and onto Wakefield Road over the M621. It's the frustration of travelling that the motorway provides such an obstruction and limits my choice of routes, but here we go past the Gildersome Spur industrial estate and onwards to Gildersome Street and the island of Junction 27 again, to finally find a fresh path on the other side of the A62 Gelderd Road as we meet the dual carriageway stub left behind as Bradford Road was cut off and isolated by the construction of the A650 Drighlington bypass.