Only three rounds in, it feels like 2022 has gotten off to a bit of a slow start, but as I've got some spare days of annual leave to burn, we can hope to get back on track by pushing the walking agenda through a couple of long weekends, while incidentally landing on the last Saturday that hasn't had its date available to walk since I first set out in 2012, and it's with those thoughts ringing in my head that we return to the Leeds - Hull line for another jump off, at Micklefield (where I've never actually finished a trek) alighting at an inconveniently late 10.35am, thanks to losing a train connection along the way. Aiming for the Five Towns once again, our path takes us from the Old Great North Road, southwesterly, away from the mining settlement of New Micklefield, along Pit Lane, where the new suburbia continues to develop, past the memorial to the miners of Peckfield Colliery, and its overgrown site beyond, and down the rural lane to the cluster of cottages associated to the nearby Peckfield farm, before we are sent onto the green bridleway though the level fields of Peckfield Common, and around the landfill site which is gradually consuming the former quarry below the village. There's a feeling of altitude to be gained under the morning sun as the farm tracks beyond lead us down to the A63, just west of Warren House farm, where we join the footway to trace its side east for a distance, leading us over the 'Roman' Ridge Road, the A656, and past the Peckfield farm produce store before hanging a left turn onto the bridleway by Limekiln farm, which takes us south, past the Goodcomb Place cottages and in site of the old Ledston Luck pithead on the way over to Kippax, which looks like its suburban spread has continued to the north since we were last here. A footpath squeezes us in, past the new development and the earlier arrival, downhill across Sandgate Drive and between many back gardens before we are spilled out onto Gibson Lane, where we rise up past the allotment gardens and Ash Tree primary school before taking a right turn onto the footpath that leads past the school playing fields on the way over the graveyards that surround St Mary's church at the top of Manor Garth Hill, passing directly through the churchyard before descending Church Lane beyond.
Monday, 28 February 2022
Micklefield to Normanton 26/02/22
Sunday, 20 February 2022
Cross Gates to Allerton Bywater 19/02/22
As we alight on Saturday walking for 2022, already two weeks overdue incidentally, we find ourselves in the wake of a couple of North Atlantic storms, Eunice and the already forgotten Dudley, which gave the UK a proper battering over the preceding days, but as the weekend landed, a strange sort of calmness seems to have settled in, making the day seem far more approachable that might have been expected, and that's the mood we'll take with us as we set course for the first of a bunch of visits to the so-called Five Towns of the county's eastern quarter, riding out to Cross Gates for a start after 10am. We rise from the brick-clad bowl of the railway station to Station Road and set off to the southeast as the A6120 Ring Road Halton makes its course out of the bottom right corner of Leeds, penetrating its way between the housing estates of Austhorpe and Whitkirk on a generally uphill track, passing the LDS church before landing on the Selby Road traffic island and starting the push out of the city past the retail park at Colton Common and the tangle of traffic at the interchange at the top of Bullerthorpe Road. Approaching the M1, the Thorpe Park development is passed, still expanding its commercial developments all the way up to Manston and Penda's fields as the spread of the city eastwards continues, coupled to the building of the new eastern relief road, which are left in our wake as we pass around Junction 46 and over the motorway to find countryside beyond, with the A63 taking us past warren House farm and into the last hamlet of the greater city at Swillington Common, with the Providence Place terraces still forming some curious outliers before passage across the Selby Road dual carriageway proposes its own set of problems. Split off the main road to rise southwards with Swillington Lane, where the very last suburban ribbon follows as uphill, all east facing with back gardens to absorb the afternoon sunshine, which we aren't seeing any of as we come up to the Leeds Lane corner where we shift easterly, finding plenty of evidence of the recent rainfalls in the road and fields as we look north to the spread of Garforth, cresting over the early day's summit among the fields and hedgerows on the way over to the A642 Wakefield Road.
Thursday, 10 February 2022
Garforth to Sandal 09/02/22
Swillington, Swillington Hall, Swilington Bridge, Woodlesford, Oulton, Royds Green,
If we're still doing midweek walking, that must mean that my original NIW week planning didn't come together, as I've been forced out of the weekends by the rotten February weather, and my intent to be elsewhere got rearranged by having My Mum come to visit instead, but despite that, the sun seems to want to shine on our parade as we continue building the framework to hang 2022's season upon, this time riding out to Garforth for a 9.35am start alighting at East Garforth, as all the stations on this line to Selby ought to be used this year. Once off the overly long footbridge, our way starts west along Green Lane, noting that suburbanisation has claimed all of the upper end of the old railway line down to Castleford, before Ninelands Lane is passed over by The Podger, and Church Lane is met to lead us through the old settlement of Church Garforth, with St Mary's looming over it, which in turn leads us to the bottom of Main Street, where the shopping drag is transited to land on Barley Hill Road, passing among the colliery terraces of the village before meeting the tennis courts and bowling greens. Turn abruptly into the suburbia of West Garforth with Poplar Avenue, and snake among the undulating plots of semis and bungalows via Kingsway, Westbourne Grove and Ringway in order to be propelled out onto the A642 Wakefield Road, just north of the traffic island in order to take this transport artery all the way to its namesake source, which means matching previously seen footways as we start over the A63 and head uphill to the south, past the Holiday inn and the Royal Mail office and into the fields beyond. It's a fine rise, with the sunshine illuminating the spread of Garforth behind us, the rise of the hills around Kippax to the east, and a sole look towards East Leeds before hit the rise up to the road crest by Mount Pleasant farm by the crest, the only feature of not up here aside from the picnic area and the quarry, where the Leeds Country Way almost got us lost, ahead of a switch of pavements and us running into Swillington village, past the polymer factory, the crescent of colliery vintage houses and the partly blackened St Mary's parish church on the corner.
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Leeds to Wakefield 07/02/22
Brevity is the theoretical theme for the blog as we move into Season #11, keeping the writing abbreviated as we move through and beyond the southeastern quarter of West Yorkshire, starting out by giving the year a framework to be hung upon, starting with s god handful of road treks, starting by travelling from Leeds to Wakefield via a novel route, alighting onto an almost pleasant Winter morning and leaving the railway station at 9.35am, out of the south entrance and making a way our via the brick arched vault of Dark Neville Street, which has somehow never featured before. From Neville Street, it's over the Aire via Victoria Bridge and on down Victoria Road,along the edge of the Holbeck Urban Village and the historical Camp Field, Making a way around the traffic islands above the M621 and heading over the top of Dewsbury Road, to join Jack Lane, passing over the old railways and the locomotive works of Hunslet at Pottery Field to meet the A61 South Accommodation Road, which is crossed as we meet the suburbs of modern Hunslet. The Oval is followed, between Morrisons and the local playing fields, to meet the sentinel spire of St Mary's church, where Balm Road is joined, taking us over the railway by the freightliner depot and uphill through Hunslet Carr, meeting the Bile Beans sign ahead of passage under the M621 and starting the climb of Belle Isle Road, rising with the wide boulevard through the vintage council estate and passing across the middle of the Circus as we go. The city view retreats behind us as we rise up the long lane to land at the same latitude as the Middleton estate, passing over the end of the local Ring Road as Throstle Nest Road and Sharp Lane take us into the suburban band beyond, forming the outer edge of the city, before briefly passing into the countryside to pass over the M1, before we land on the edge of Robin Hood, where the A61 Leeds Road is met, to continue due south.
Sunday, 30 January 2022
Out of The Dark Season, and Onward!
In all my walking years, I cannot recall a Dark Season which has passed as rapidly as this last one did, seemingly come and gone in about half the time that they'd normally take, and that has to be in part due to effectively going to ground completely after the end of 2021's open season, taking a well earned rest that rapidly turned into an extended period of isolation - hibernation as the risks posed by the Omicron wave of the Covid pandemic washed over ahead of Christmas, when all focus fell upon having a normal sort of Festive Season before we embarked on 2022's journey. I can't place how we managed to get January to shift through so quickly though, as it's always the month of the year that feels like it's over six weeks long, but this one has flushed through in no time too, come and gone rapidly after getting in our necessary weekend of social interaction at its start while toiling through a busy month at the hospital which never gave me the opportunity to feel bored, with the sunshine returning in the evenings with almost indecent haste, all combining to make our passage from Samhain to Imbolc, via the festivities of Yule, almost bizarrely short. Maybe it helps to find distractions to pass the time away, and becoming a moon watcher in 2022 has helped with that, as I've never quite been familiar with its phases and location in the sky through its orbits, and this has been a particularly good month for watching it wax and wane, awhile taking an interest in seeing it in its crescent and gibbous forms, revealing it cratered features and many mares when contrasted in shadow, around the appearance of January's full moon, the Wolf Moon, which I can only hope every howled at on the evening of the 17th. Now having a decent idea of where to look for it in the mornings and evenings, that can be fitted in around a renewed engagement with a bit of astronomy, an interest of mine that has become very minor over the the last decade, and the month has also been spent spying Jupiter in the evenings during the early going, while chasing Venus in the dawning skies later on, both repeating the reality-altering experiences of my youth when I first regarded them with binoculars, namely spotting the former's system of Galilean moons across the vastness of space, and seeing the latter resolve as a crescent showing it as a planet, and not just a bright star in the morning sky.
Sunday, 2 January 2022
The Conclusions of 2021
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| Wrapping the 2021 Season at Shipley railway station. |
As 2021 slips into history, we again find ourselves in the moment of reflection, looking back at the end of (almost) a whole decade of walking around the West Riding of Yorkshire, and beyond, and being mildly amazed of how much we've seen and learned across the course of those years, how a few months of useful exercise back in 2012 have become no less than an active career of travelling on foot, seeing more sights and pacing more miles than I ever would have thought possible, while again pondering the annual question of What Have We Learned in 2021? Honestly, most of the take away from my tenth season of walking amounts to 2021 has been an extremely frustrating year, as a simple extraction of achievements from the list of targets that I posted last January would make it look like this year has been a significant success in light of the ongoing pandemic conditions, a more reflective regard would have things appear very differently. Indeed, my local aims in the early season came together very well, getting down plenty of miles in the circuits from home during the third national lockdown, before expanding the season in April while I waited for travel restrictions to be lifted and the effects of vaccination against Covid-19 to take hold, getting in my local multi-part trial before then busting it open wide in May, starting out my long ruin of trails between Calderdale and Airedale and getting in the cross-country trail, in the form of the Bronte Way, which I had promised myself. Summer then saw us being mostly successful in pushing my experience field out to the northwest from Calderdale, over the high moors in that corner and making ourselves acquainted with the Boulsworth Hill massif and the lay of the East Lancs valley, before keeping the legs going through the autumn's dour months to check off most of the unseen paths in the vicinity of the Calderdale - Bradford high moors and the most notable towns of their boroughs, while pressing ourselves past 500 miles on the year, which was always my stated goal, and achieving the 5,000 miles before I'm Fifty target with considerable ease, with almost three and half years to spare.
Saturday, 4 December 2021
Pandemic Thoughts: November 2021
The Following is For Reference Only, the 2021 Summary will follow in four weeks' time.
Another month starts with our attention having wandered away from Covid for a while, instead taking interest in the COP26 intergovernmental conference on Climate Change, with a small amount of hope that after nearly two years of health crisis conditions around the globe, world leaders might actually start to take the existential threat of the climate crisis just as seriously, but despite what feel like weeks of discussions little seems to come out of it, aside from a non-binding agreement to phase out coal usage, which hasn't been signed by the remaining major coal consuming economies. It's a horrible realisation to make, that those who would govern all of us have little real interest in long term planning for the benefit of future generations, setting targets to be met by 2050, long after any of them will have any stake in the future well-being of the world, but we really shouldn't be surprised, as we ought to be aware that as soon as challenges to the enduring problems of contemporary economics are faced, the wagons are circled in an attempt to protect the status quo, and after all this is the 26th such conference on the matter, and all the previous meetings have failed to create binding agreements and actions. So we have one less reason to feel hopeful after all that, and instead reflect on where the Pandemic is leading us as we transition out of the light half of Autumn and into the Dark Season, and despite having a few days of infections spiking above 50,000 per day, a renewed surge in the rate doesn't come to pass, and the familiar sort of numbers continue throughout the month, apparently fired most prominently among family groups, and with the under 12s being the most harshly affected group for the first time, showing that circulation among the un-vaccinated is still the major issue. It can all look like that Covid is becoming socially normalized, and the risk of infection has been allowed to become 'just one of those things' that people catch, with a panel scientists speculating that even in a best-case scenario, it could very plausibly be 2023 before Covid becomes a background disease, among the mix of regular ailments suffered by the general populace, while bad scenarios could have it lasting another five years, with social counter measures and annual booster vaccinations being a regular feature for some time to come.