Take a day out of my schedule when Thursday of my bonus week comes along, because there's a lot of housework that needs attention after too many days of it getting neglected whilst I was elsewhere, and during my rest day, the weather seems to have settled into another of those sessions of unseasonal warmth that a friend of mine calls 'False Spring', giving you the impression that winter has ended early when it will soon return as a month or more of it still remains to go. Nonetheless, sunshine and blue skies abound as we return to Wakefield to complete the final leg of the local triangle that I'd planned for this week, arriving later than planned as my train needed a repair job before it set off for Kirkgate station, and we don't get off the platforms until after 10.20 am, because this place still suffers the problem of having to walk an ungodly distance to get off it when arriving on a southbound train. So north-westwards and homeward will be the order of the day, pacing off up Monk Street among the many flats blocks on a course for the town centre, still noting that the building that we have to walk under by the A61 island is still derelict, but the subway down through the roundabout to Kirkgate proper has gone and we can now burn across it at street level, a welcome development to make the station seem that bit less isolated and unfriendly. The east end of the town centre arrives as we pace up Kirkgate, among some of the more low rent stores of the town, in that shadow of that trio of residential tower blocks with their stepped sides and pitched roofs that are a bit of a local design classic, shifting away from the parades of eateries and taverns as we join Westmorland Street and head up towards the open public square at the junction of Union Street and Bull Ring, pacing along with the spire of the cathedral looming large over the rooftops to the south. Northgate itself will be our route out of town, just to the north of the Town and County Halls, which both peek above the roofs of the diminishing shops and offices along this lane, which gradually turn to runs of imposing townhouses as the city centre ends and we settle onto the A61 as we shift through the Victorian suburbia and meet the rather upscale district of St John's.
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| Kirkgate and its Towers, Wakefield. |
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| Westmorland Street and the looming Cathedral, Wakefield. |
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| Northgate's Georgian Terraces, Wakefield. |
This route then leads us in between the Queen Elizabeth Grammar school, with its Gothick-y façade that fancies itself as a Cambridge College, and the former Clayton Hospital which is slipping into severe dereliction since it closed in 2012, with little apparent hope for redemption for a site that dates back to the 1780s, despite offering a prime residential or commercial site in one of the most desirable comers of the town, sitting as it does just down the road from St John's Square, this city's hidden well concealed Georgian Gem. The change of names to Leeds Road shifts us into a landscape of terraces and semis beyond the city proper and it would be all to easy to follow signs for the A650 as we start to leave town, but have to remember that that particular designation isn't assigned to Bradford Road anymore, so we switch roads as the A61 heads towards Leeds and we shift downhill slightly to join the suburban lane with the council works depot on the corner. Straightforward passage through suburbia will be the order of the next mile or so, offering zero indication that a colliery and a major railway junction used to reside hereabouts, pacing on and noting that the semis along here were developed with very little by way of order as the styles and ages vary from plot to plot all the way to the strange dip and kink in the road by the Royal Spice restaurant where Wakefield kinda ends as we cross Snow Hill beck and cross into the suburbs of Wrenthorpe. Not that the variations in vintage really change, though there is quite a bit more from the last 40 years or so, including a few esoteric dream houses dropped on cheap plots about the place as the road dives under the railway line up to Leeds, which I've travelled both over and under a good few times on trains down to Sheffield and buses to Wakefield, soon meeting the whitewashed terraces that would suggest the old centre of this village that grew with the local collieries, all gone from the landscape now. Pass the Wheel Inn and come up on the Potovens Land corner, getting a brief moment of anxiety when it seems that Declan's has shut down but thankfully they haven't and are just keeping their fantastic array of bric-a-brac indoors at the moment, and then we rise towards the exit from Greater Wakefield, though urban development continues to expand on the northern edge of the town, where an estate called Wren Green sits newly built, with a name that suggests two degrees of family nomenclature to myself as if it were suggesting further that this is the place I ought to retire to.
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| Clayton Hospital, not long for this world? Wakefield. |
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| Joining Bradford Road, Wakefield |
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| Royal Spice at the Wakefield - Wrenthorpe boundary. |
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| The whitewashed terraces of Wrenthorpe. |
Out into the fields we go as the road rises to make its passage over the contemporary A650 dual carriageway, shifting away from Melbourne House and its little industrial estate before looping around to meet Carr Gate, which seems to amount to more than just the Malt Shovel Inn and the old Methodist chapel as we regain the broken stub of Bradford Road as our passage through here on the Wakefield Way somehow managed to hide the suburban closes that have secreted themselves from view between the main road and the garden centre, which we have to make our way around to make our passage over the M1. Then it's back into Leeds district, meeting the bottom edge of East Ardsley where the A650 and Bradford Road combine, and we pull up this shortcut route to Morley from many trips back from Down Country, feeling it strange that it's taken me so long to get onto the pavements of Royston Hill as they elevate us up to the Bay Horse, where the Leeds Country Way once brought us. So past half way on the trip and we can already feel close to home, even though there's a couple more hours to go despite us being in the southern council ward of Morley's pair, pressing on amongst the stone fronted terraces and later arrivals, taking note of the carpet warehouse in the former Primitive Methodists chapel and the HR company in the very old looking former pub, whilst also feeling cheated that St Michael's church sits far enough from the road to not be straightforwardly visible as we pass. Slip out of the village beyond the leafy close of houses at its western edge, meeting some open fields that I must have missed on every previous passage this way, before colliding with the semis and terraces at the outer edge of greater Tingley, which I'd always mentally attached to its neighbour to the east, and the focal point of interest here is the Country Baskets cash and carry in the old factory-cum-mill building, where the best face needs to be seen from the south side of the road in front of the building suppliers and indoor golf facility, before we set off among the many council houses that sit out here, as if the land was cheap when Leeds City council got its house building hat on. It's worth switching back onto the northern side of the road when some open fields become available, as we can look over towards the distant Middleton estate and the towers of Cottingley Hall, where we were walking at the tail end of last year, and also to look up close at the house and farm at Blackgates, recently used as a pub but now boarded up with signage still advertising 'WRSLS' and 'To the Trains', rather incomprehensibly.
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| The former chapel, Carr Gate. |
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| The former chapel, East Ardsley. |
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| Country Baskets, Tingley. |
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| Blackgates House and farm. |
I love the fact that the neighbouring estate and school have adopted the name of Black Gates, which appeals to the Tolkien fan in me, feeling that it mildly crazy that the only time I passed this way before was in 2014, and we can also look to the towers and chimneys of Morley from here at the end of Thorpe Lane before we head deep into Tingley proper, displaying side roads of terraces of a vintage that I'd never previously acknowledged, feeling the real benefit of getting some new revelations of local knowledge as we go. The A650 spreads to form the dual carriageway on the way to the Tingley Common roundabout, and picking the shortest possible route around it has us heading to the southern side of it, passing the memorial to the Halifax bomber crash of 1944 as we go and not heading up to find the trip pillar at Tingley Hall this time, instead braving the narrow footway that leads to the crossing of the A653 Dewsbury Road. It seem that Tingley's distinctive White Bear inn has been demolished after many years of disuse, leaving a prime plot for anyone who could live with the constant roar of traffic noise as the A650 leads us on, behind the suburbs and the grounds of Woodkirk academy as we rise to pass over the M62, with nothing on the ground betraying the presence of a former railway junction about here before we head on towards Morley past the AvailableCar.com yard, the Village hotel & Spa, and the offices of Hermes, the delivery company with no vans. We could set a beeline for home from here, as these are lanes we have seen before and I'm hungry for my lunch, but as we run into Morley, new paths need to be sought as we pass the long red brick walls of Beacon Works and the stone houses that surround it, landing at the Tingley Mills island to close the local triangle that this week has drawn, using the sunny weather to get a look at the best face of the freshly redeveloped factory site, and get temptation in my nostrils as we pass the Tingley Bar fish restaurant. Press on with a new route as Britannia Road peels off to the south of the town, following its previously unwalked pavement on among the villas terraces and semis as far as the Stump Cross on the High Street corner where an alley path leads us into the anonymous estate of 1990s houses beyond it, a route we'd only need to take if something truly incongruous sat hereabouts.
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| Tingley's under-acknowledged face. |
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| Tingley Common intersection, and the absent White Bear. |
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| Arriving in Morley by Beacon Works. |
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| Tingley Mills looking all freshened up. |
Which it does of course, as one of the vents of Morley tunnel sits among the semis on Alden Avenue, larger than a house and displaying all the worries of the railway engineers of the 1840s that sending steam trains underground might asphyxiate the passengers, seemingly unnoticed by the residents and only of interest to a tourist like myself, who'll need all of his wits to navigate his way to Elvaston Road and out of this urban landscape that makes no sense at all via Hanley Road. This lands us on Chartists Way, slap bang in the middle of the GNR Morley Top railway station site, with the road running right through it and the station itself being lost beneath industrial units, but still hiding enough of itself to satisfy the curious visitor like myself, the most obvious being the #2 Goods Shed at the western end, which still endures with its identity completely intact as the local branch of ATS Euromaster, using its interior and many doors to good effect for vehicle repairs. Also enduring, to the east, is the exterior retaining wall of the station site, with new flats sitting above it, as is the station house at the bottom of Great Northern Street, in a completely different style form the neighbouring stone terraces, where the residents surely don't welcome passing oddballs with a camera, who finally moves on to locate the Sportsman Inn, one of the famous local hostelries that I'd never managed to place in my decade plus living in this town. Onwards over Fountain Street and up Oddfellow Street by the one Methodist chapel and on to Wesley Street to soon find the other, splitting off to finally visit the Beryl Burton gardens, where scaffolding unfortunately obscures the mural in tribute to one Britain's greatest cyclists, and thence we return to Queen Street and the shopping throng, but don't conclude the day at the Town Hall as usual, as my lunch plan needs to be fulfilled, thus taking us onward to Scatcherd Park and the Cenotaph Gardens, and thus to Queen's Promenade and Bright Street. We are again seeking the stone causeway that once lead from the former block of terraces that got mostly replaced by bungalows, and this time find it, behind the tree surgeons on Brighton Avenue, pacing its full length down to Morley Hole, to land us right next to Hillycroft Fisheries and that's the perfect place to wrap this bonus week off with a fattening treat of F'n'C for my lunch, all done at 1.45pm with the feeling that I've managed to learn a lot without straying too far from home.
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