Heckmondwike, Westfield, Popely Fields, Gomersal, Swincliffe, Birkenshaw, Tong Street,
Pit Hill, Holme, Black Carr wood, The Bank, Tyersal embankment, Greenside tunnel,
Pudsey (Windmill Hill, Chapeltown & Lowtown), and Swinnow Moor.
After a few weekends away, we get back on Saturday walking and just as well, as it's the fifth one in February as our Leap Year day makes itself available for the first time during my walking career, and I ought to have an ambitious trip planned for such an auspicious occasion, but the weather projections have proved so wildly inconsistent, I not feeling brave at all, indeed, I'm only getting out because this opportunity won't be repeated until 2048, when I'll be 73 and will probably have run short of walking ambition and available paths. So to Ravensthorpe we ride, departing the station at 10.15am, using the line of the Calder for another jump off, setting off down Ravensthorpe Road again, among the parades of semis and industrial plants, spotting a rare appearance of a 144 Pacer unit in the wild as it passes on the Wakefield line before we touch the corner of Thornhill Lees and find our fresh course northwards for the day, joining Forge Lane by the Filltex factory and spot a bridge to nowhere as we pass over it, which once allowed rail access to the Thornhill Ironworks which once filled the derelict sit to the east. Cross the channel of the C&HN and move to pass under the railway where a mass of metalwork carries the lines overhead, at a remarkable width as we land between the former Thornhill station and junction, moving on towards Dewsbury in the direction of Ratcliffe Mills and Holy Innocents church, before we take a sharp left to cross the Calder with the B6117 via Cleggford Bridge, with the river looking about as high as its capacity allows, and head along Thornhill Road past the imposing bulk of Dewbury Mills. There's rather a lot of suburban growth on this low patch in the loop of the Calder, ahead of the river's runoff channel, which we first met in 2012 and definitely looks like it had floodwaters flowing though it in the last month, which used to be a canal in its original incarnation, and we'll spy its house before passing though the industrial band beyond where we rise to pass under the mainline railway, where TPE's 802 Nova units provide new spotting opportunities, and Fall Lane rises further beyond to land us on the A644 Huddersfield Road by Ravens Lodge house. Cross to ascend Temple Road, between St Paulinus RC school and the Boothroyd Primary academy, arriving on Cemetery Road above the graveyard and mortuary chapels, and just across from Crow Nest Park, Dewsbury's best green space, with trees boldly surrounding its perimeter and the imposing, and eponymous, house dominating its centre, and after a glum looking opening to the trip, as we arrive above the Spen Valley, I allow myself to speculate that we might actually have a nice day on our hands as we continue to press north.
Pass below Dewsbury's crematorium and above the various estates that spread down the valley side as far as the railway that's now the Spen Valley Greenway, with the elevation offering us a view across to Mirfield as we pass into Dewsbury Moor, where urban growth has spread down to the side of Heckmondwike Road to former the outer edge of the town along here, which we met last year on our way down among the flats off Knowles Hill Road, still sitting relatively high above the valley side as we pass the Dewsbury Moor House and Lighthouse Tannery sites. Transition into Heckmondwike with an upstream reveal, and then decline with the road, with a front of suburban sprawl filling the eastern side all the way down to where we meet the passage of the former L&NWR Leeds New Lines, where the Ringway path still hasn't made its way into the deep and wide cutting that reaches to the north after 8 years, possibly because a residential development plan has put its future in jeopardy, which is damned shame, frankly. The we carry on with Walkley Lane into the town, one of those unclaimed stretches from my earliest days on the trails, taking us past the maltkiln buildings, the Olympic garage ghost sign and the old chapel before we land on some quantified paths as we cross Railway Street, up from the former Heckmondwike Central station and opposite the Masonic Hall, and make our way along Market Street to the junction by the fountain clock, where the Dandy Lion inn is the town's boldest statement in glazed tiles. Cross the A638 Westgate by The Green and the town bus stand, passing the throng around the Lidl and its attached shopping centre as we join Northgate to press out of the other side of the town, detouring onto the narrow and culturally surpassed Cook Lane, to rise past the industrial site to pass over the Heckmondwike cutting via the westernmost of its seven bridges, rejoining the B6117 at the start of New North Road by the Old Hall, where Joseph Priestley, noted natural philosopher and religious radical, spent some years of his formative youth in the mid 18th century, a site that has been a pub and restaurant until recently but seems to be doing no business at all presently, which is another shame.
Suburbia stretches beyond, and its a mighty sort of rise to come as we press with the lane uphill and out of the Spen Valley, progressing steeply up among the semis but never getting a good view back into the morning sunshine, coming on brightly enough to make us feel over-dressed for the occasion again, and we don't see anything of particular vintage as we progress through the residential quarter of Westfields, where we cross the A62 where the new and old Leeds Roads diverge, with our way forward gaining a new identity as it becomes the A651 Oxford Road. Pop out of the top of greater Heckmondwike into the green space by the parish boundary marker and the toll bar cottage, and then immediately get greeted in Gomersal, which will stretch on to fill the roadside for the next half hour or so, though I could easily be convinced that it's actually three villages that have melded together over the years, as its southernmost portion, which we'll call Popely Fields due to the name on the old OS map, has a distinct industrial core on its hillside location, where foundry and mill site still do business around the California Inn, while also being a spot for some elevated suburbia too, which creeps in around the older stone houses that stretch up to the village cricket field. The Hill Top portion lies beyond, where we cross the A643 by the Co-ops and the Sainsburys store that could qualify this place as a town, and tie ourselves up with a old path or three as we carry on the decline of the lane, past the still well-concealed Pollard Hall, the now-closed Gomersal Red House Museum, the disused village school, and the prime frontages of the public hall in old Mechanics Institute, and the Grove URC which give the village a proper sense of scale. There's also a tunnel still to seek somewhere below our feet, in the vicinity of Gomersal Hall, where its walls force us off a pavement that's far too narrow, to pass the old pub that's now a funeral parlour and on into a landscape of larger villas among the suburbia, where West House still retains all of its grounds and Springfield House is in the process of losing theirs, with the village coming to an end by the merging A652, the section of Bradford Road that runs past Oakwell Hall that has yet to be visited, with a clear landscape break arriving as we cross over the M62, not really that far away from home as the crow flies.
Across the motorway we meet the bottom edge of Birkenshaw at Swincliffe, which might only have one old house amongst its suburban spread, where it feels like we've met the furthest extent of greater Bradford despite the fact that there's still quite a lot of Kirklees to the north of here, and the A651 leads us up the Halfway House junction with the A58 Whitehall Road, which I'll guess is midway between Leeds and Halifax, which is also the home to the headquarters of West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue services, with its monument to the firefighters killed in the 1916 Low Moor munitions works explosion of 1916 rising prominently over the traffic island. Break here for a watering as we're still going hard on the trail without lunch, and then move on to meet the main core of Birkenshaw, where St Paul's church stands to its south by the old village schools and the ever-expanding suburb, ahead of the main drag of stores by the new Co-op and the George IV Inn, where the Kirklees Way brought us through towards Town Street in 2014, and the old Co-op store is now a flash restaurant that's in keeping with the village, which expands on to the north, past the Methodist Chapel and on a rise through the Moorlands suburb towards a crest that feel like we are soon to be upon a watershed. Bradford Road leads us to the edge of the wild field of Tong Moor, where the GNR line from Ardsley to Laisterdyke once burrowed under the lane, with both ends of this short tunnel (or long bridge?) still visible as we lead in to the merging point with the A650, which is much further along than expected, despite all the times that I've ridden the bus up here, meeting the Calder-Aire hilltop as we land on the Tong Street corner, and the actual edge of Bradford district, by Tong Cemetery and across the way from the Tong Leadership Academy. After a long time on the main roads, we slip off into the suburbs of Tong Street on the declining Denbrook Road, with a surrounding of 1950s semis gradually shifting into a landscape that's a lot more 1970s before we land on Holme Road where stone terrace remnants endure down the hill from the Holme Wood state and across from Pit Hill park, a reminder of the coal industry that once occupied this landscape where residential growth creeps still into the valley that forms the Leeds and Bradford hinterland, where the centre of the former can be glimpsed down the Pudsey Beck valley, by the eagle-eyed.
We'll trace the edge of the estate as Holme Lane leads us around past the Ryecroft and Raikes Hall equestrian farms on the level fields that look like they could invite future westward growth of the city, where we can look over the valley to Pudsey on its hill top and to Tong Hall away to the south, noting that the newest closes of houses on the estate don't have a road facing aspect, which makes them easy to ignore beyond their enclosing hedges, convincing you that there's actually a lot more countryside out here, a feeling enhanced as Holme Farm arrives at the roadside. Split off from the estate perimeter as Ned Lane descends down to meet the hamlet of Holme, which seems like it's been deliberately hidden away from the modern world, even more concealed that nearby the tower blocks that can only be seen when relatively up close, and as we rise away up from bottoming out at Holme Beck, the day glums over and almost brings on the hailstorm that the weather forecast promised, but only results in slatey skies and a chilly breeze coming over as we rise up to Holme Bank farm for a reverse view over the estate and this enduring rural corner that cannot be seen unless you deliberately seek it out. Pass a proper flooded country lane and a field of miniature ponies as we rise to the hill crest, where we are welcomed onto the permissive bridleway into Black Carr Wood, by the 185m tertiary trig pillar, and the going is immediately a bit soft as we trace the exposed path westwards before diving into the ancient woods that sit above the eponymous beck, with the ground getting very sticky indeed, almost defeating my lightweight boots on more than one occasion as the winter sunshine arrive to illuminate the array of bare trees. It's a path that other have come out to trace on this auspicious date, and as the weather has turned out better than we could have dared to hope, and we steeply descend the path as it leads downhill to the crossing of the The Syke, shortly ahead of the footbridge that takes us over Tyersal beck, where the combining streams make a whole lot of noise in its concealed little maelstrom, and we'll touch base with the Leeds Country Way as we land in Leeds district, tracing its route upstream in the shadow of The Bank, the woodland fringed hillside edge which forms most of the southern boundary of Pudsey, this time making the correct call on the choice of path routes uphill, following the roughly cobbled track as it leads above the quarry workings that we accidentally explored back in 2012.
Having avoided the equestrian party on the path, we arrive at the level of the former railway, the much lamented GNR Pudsey Loop Line, and while we regarded its engineering at a remove back when we lacked exploration boldness in my earliest walking days, there's no such qualms to be had now, as we land on the trackbed and set off west along the top of Tyersal embankment, getting only occasional views that suggest its vast height and bulk as we follow the well trammeled path atop it, walking to the broken bridge on Tyersal Lane above Black Hey farm, where the drop down from the edge of the abutments is precipitous. Retrace the path to where we joined to wander into the cutting beyond the overbridge to pick a way through the fallen trees and the burgeoning streams to look up close at the western portal of Greenside Tunnel, which looms large in dressed stone and runs 563m under the town and is almost see-throughable, and despite being out of use since 1964, it looks like it might have a future as the infilling of its eastern approach has been suspended and a greenway campaign is underway to get it revived for public use, which is grand news when the the shenanigans that are going on at Queensbury are considered. Having had my fill of the relics of Victorian enterprise, we return to the path, ascending with the LCW path up to onto Pudsey's hillside, to land on Smalewell Road by the Fox & Grapes inn, proving that Windmill Hill is one of those corners where my walking routes like to converge, and we set course for the town centre by rising into the suburbia of New Occupation Road and Alexandra Road, where the 20th century suburbs arrived in a big way to subsume it into a barely distinct satellite of Leeds. Land on the Uppermoor lane, and follow it down to the Commercial Inn, where we follow the section that hadn't been traced on the paths that previously came this way, linking the western end of the Chapeltown road to the eastern end by the Golden Lion, the former Conservative club and the War Memorial, where we pause to absorb the fact that this immense cenotaph still managed to omit over 100 names of servicemen from the borough who died in the First World War, and then we move on, past the sentinel that is the parish church of St Lawrence.
The eastwards trajectory leads us away from where all our previous paths had converged, on down Church Lane as it passes the top end of Pudsey park and the Masonic Hall to meet the top end of the town's main street, which has the Sainsbury's in the old cinema and the futuristic bus station toward its top end, with the Town Hall, and its distinct Scottish Baronial stylings, placed at the corner of Robin Lane, with Lowtown continuing the run downhill, offering the temptation of the Wetherby Whaler in amongst its stores and the makings of a decent sort of pub crawl that runs from the Butcher's Arms at the top to the Mason's Arms at the bottom. Land on the site of the former Pudsey Lowtown station, with the infilled bridge still in situ below the road, and despite having traced the line back in 2014 there turns out to be a section that I missed, running through a pair of vacant lots to the north of the road, which have somehow remained undeveloped for half a century while preserving a partially buried, three-arched occupation bridge between them, its purpose uncertain even when regarded on maps a century old, and that's a fun little remnant to find in the town, especially as the alignment to the north of Mount Pleasant Road has been utterly obliterated. Detour done, our forward progress is resumed as we return to Lowtown via Lane End, where a distinctly rural flavour still lingers in this suburb, to get back onto the last leg as Swinnow Road splits off, rising slightly as it goes past the Britannia inn, the last country pub on the lane, and the imposing properties of Swinnow Grange and House before settling into the run through the estate that has grown over the top of Swinnow Moor, with the central location of the estate still being a matter of conjecture as we track past the local primary school and the Co-op and the church of Christ the Saviour on the Swinnow Road corner. There's more of an old country lane down here as we track down to the outer ring road crossing, with the Barnleigh Club occupying a farmstead site sitting in the shadow of the looming trio of the Rycroft Towers, up from the A6110 in its deep cutting, with an odd and unused flight of steps leading down into it, and then it's uphill as we get dangerously close to digging into Leeds proper as we head up past Morrisons and the new housing that has been developed to be convenient for Bramley station, which we find beyond the trio of low railway bridges, landing the trip's end at 3.25pm in not the most auspicious of surroundings, but the middle day turned out just fine in the end, concluding the busiest February of my walking career so far by a long shot.
Let's hope we can get out on the next Leap Day Saturday and do this all again in 2048, eh?
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4335.2 miles
2020 Total: 68.7 miles
Up Country Total: 3872.2 miles
Solo Total: 4021 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2929 miles
Next Up: Matching today's trajectory pretty closely as we march into March.
After a few weekends away, we get back on Saturday walking and just as well, as it's the fifth one in February as our Leap Year day makes itself available for the first time during my walking career, and I ought to have an ambitious trip planned for such an auspicious occasion, but the weather projections have proved so wildly inconsistent, I not feeling brave at all, indeed, I'm only getting out because this opportunity won't be repeated until 2048, when I'll be 73 and will probably have run short of walking ambition and available paths. So to Ravensthorpe we ride, departing the station at 10.15am, using the line of the Calder for another jump off, setting off down Ravensthorpe Road again, among the parades of semis and industrial plants, spotting a rare appearance of a 144 Pacer unit in the wild as it passes on the Wakefield line before we touch the corner of Thornhill Lees and find our fresh course northwards for the day, joining Forge Lane by the Filltex factory and spot a bridge to nowhere as we pass over it, which once allowed rail access to the Thornhill Ironworks which once filled the derelict sit to the east. Cross the channel of the C&HN and move to pass under the railway where a mass of metalwork carries the lines overhead, at a remarkable width as we land between the former Thornhill station and junction, moving on towards Dewsbury in the direction of Ratcliffe Mills and Holy Innocents church, before we take a sharp left to cross the Calder with the B6117 via Cleggford Bridge, with the river looking about as high as its capacity allows, and head along Thornhill Road past the imposing bulk of Dewbury Mills. There's rather a lot of suburban growth on this low patch in the loop of the Calder, ahead of the river's runoff channel, which we first met in 2012 and definitely looks like it had floodwaters flowing though it in the last month, which used to be a canal in its original incarnation, and we'll spy its house before passing though the industrial band beyond where we rise to pass under the mainline railway, where TPE's 802 Nova units provide new spotting opportunities, and Fall Lane rises further beyond to land us on the A644 Huddersfield Road by Ravens Lodge house. Cross to ascend Temple Road, between St Paulinus RC school and the Boothroyd Primary academy, arriving on Cemetery Road above the graveyard and mortuary chapels, and just across from Crow Nest Park, Dewsbury's best green space, with trees boldly surrounding its perimeter and the imposing, and eponymous, house dominating its centre, and after a glum looking opening to the trip, as we arrive above the Spen Valley, I allow myself to speculate that we might actually have a nice day on our hands as we continue to press north.
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| The hidden Thornhill Ironwooks bridge, Forge Lane. |
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| Dewsbury Mills, Thornhill Road. |
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| Fall Lane and its railway bridge. |
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| Crow Nest House and Park, Dewsbury. |
Pass below Dewsbury's crematorium and above the various estates that spread down the valley side as far as the railway that's now the Spen Valley Greenway, with the elevation offering us a view across to Mirfield as we pass into Dewsbury Moor, where urban growth has spread down to the side of Heckmondwike Road to former the outer edge of the town along here, which we met last year on our way down among the flats off Knowles Hill Road, still sitting relatively high above the valley side as we pass the Dewsbury Moor House and Lighthouse Tannery sites. Transition into Heckmondwike with an upstream reveal, and then decline with the road, with a front of suburban sprawl filling the eastern side all the way down to where we meet the passage of the former L&NWR Leeds New Lines, where the Ringway path still hasn't made its way into the deep and wide cutting that reaches to the north after 8 years, possibly because a residential development plan has put its future in jeopardy, which is damned shame, frankly. The we carry on with Walkley Lane into the town, one of those unclaimed stretches from my earliest days on the trails, taking us past the maltkiln buildings, the Olympic garage ghost sign and the old chapel before we land on some quantified paths as we cross Railway Street, up from the former Heckmondwike Central station and opposite the Masonic Hall, and make our way along Market Street to the junction by the fountain clock, where the Dandy Lion inn is the town's boldest statement in glazed tiles. Cross the A638 Westgate by The Green and the town bus stand, passing the throng around the Lidl and its attached shopping centre as we join Northgate to press out of the other side of the town, detouring onto the narrow and culturally surpassed Cook Lane, to rise past the industrial site to pass over the Heckmondwike cutting via the westernmost of its seven bridges, rejoining the B6117 at the start of New North Road by the Old Hall, where Joseph Priestley, noted natural philosopher and religious radical, spent some years of his formative youth in the mid 18th century, a site that has been a pub and restaurant until recently but seems to be doing no business at all presently, which is another shame.
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| Heckmondwike Road, Dewsbury Moor. |
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| Heckmondwike deep cutting on the Leeds New Lines (former). |
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| Market Street, Heckmondwike. |
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| Heckmondwike Old Hall, New North Road. |
Suburbia stretches beyond, and its a mighty sort of rise to come as we press with the lane uphill and out of the Spen Valley, progressing steeply up among the semis but never getting a good view back into the morning sunshine, coming on brightly enough to make us feel over-dressed for the occasion again, and we don't see anything of particular vintage as we progress through the residential quarter of Westfields, where we cross the A62 where the new and old Leeds Roads diverge, with our way forward gaining a new identity as it becomes the A651 Oxford Road. Pop out of the top of greater Heckmondwike into the green space by the parish boundary marker and the toll bar cottage, and then immediately get greeted in Gomersal, which will stretch on to fill the roadside for the next half hour or so, though I could easily be convinced that it's actually three villages that have melded together over the years, as its southernmost portion, which we'll call Popely Fields due to the name on the old OS map, has a distinct industrial core on its hillside location, where foundry and mill site still do business around the California Inn, while also being a spot for some elevated suburbia too, which creeps in around the older stone houses that stretch up to the village cricket field. The Hill Top portion lies beyond, where we cross the A643 by the Co-ops and the Sainsburys store that could qualify this place as a town, and tie ourselves up with a old path or three as we carry on the decline of the lane, past the still well-concealed Pollard Hall, the now-closed Gomersal Red House Museum, the disused village school, and the prime frontages of the public hall in old Mechanics Institute, and the Grove URC which give the village a proper sense of scale. There's also a tunnel still to seek somewhere below our feet, in the vicinity of Gomersal Hall, where its walls force us off a pavement that's far too narrow, to pass the old pub that's now a funeral parlour and on into a landscape of larger villas among the suburbia, where West House still retains all of its grounds and Springfield House is in the process of losing theirs, with the village coming to an end by the merging A652, the section of Bradford Road that runs past Oakwell Hall that has yet to be visited, with a clear landscape break arriving as we cross over the M62, not really that far away from home as the crow flies.
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| The suburban limit of Heckmondwike, Oxford Road. |
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| Gomersal Hill Top. |
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| The Public Hall / Mechanics Institute, Gomersal. |
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| West House, Gomersal. |
Across the motorway we meet the bottom edge of Birkenshaw at Swincliffe, which might only have one old house amongst its suburban spread, where it feels like we've met the furthest extent of greater Bradford despite the fact that there's still quite a lot of Kirklees to the north of here, and the A651 leads us up the Halfway House junction with the A58 Whitehall Road, which I'll guess is midway between Leeds and Halifax, which is also the home to the headquarters of West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue services, with its monument to the firefighters killed in the 1916 Low Moor munitions works explosion of 1916 rising prominently over the traffic island. Break here for a watering as we're still going hard on the trail without lunch, and then move on to meet the main core of Birkenshaw, where St Paul's church stands to its south by the old village schools and the ever-expanding suburb, ahead of the main drag of stores by the new Co-op and the George IV Inn, where the Kirklees Way brought us through towards Town Street in 2014, and the old Co-op store is now a flash restaurant that's in keeping with the village, which expands on to the north, past the Methodist Chapel and on a rise through the Moorlands suburb towards a crest that feel like we are soon to be upon a watershed. Bradford Road leads us to the edge of the wild field of Tong Moor, where the GNR line from Ardsley to Laisterdyke once burrowed under the lane, with both ends of this short tunnel (or long bridge?) still visible as we lead in to the merging point with the A650, which is much further along than expected, despite all the times that I've ridden the bus up here, meeting the Calder-Aire hilltop as we land on the Tong Street corner, and the actual edge of Bradford district, by Tong Cemetery and across the way from the Tong Leadership Academy. After a long time on the main roads, we slip off into the suburbs of Tong Street on the declining Denbrook Road, with a surrounding of 1950s semis gradually shifting into a landscape that's a lot more 1970s before we land on Holme Road where stone terrace remnants endure down the hill from the Holme Wood state and across from Pit Hill park, a reminder of the coal industry that once occupied this landscape where residential growth creeps still into the valley that forms the Leeds and Bradford hinterland, where the centre of the former can be glimpsed down the Pudsey Beck valley, by the eagle-eyed.
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| The Firefighters Memorial at the Halfway House Junction. |
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| St Paul's church and the old village school, Birkenshaw. |
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| Hard to tell where Kirklees ends and Bradford starts on the Birkenshaw - Tong Street boundary. |
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| Pit Hill park preserves the mining heritage around the Holme Wood estate. |
We'll trace the edge of the estate as Holme Lane leads us around past the Ryecroft and Raikes Hall equestrian farms on the level fields that look like they could invite future westward growth of the city, where we can look over the valley to Pudsey on its hill top and to Tong Hall away to the south, noting that the newest closes of houses on the estate don't have a road facing aspect, which makes them easy to ignore beyond their enclosing hedges, convincing you that there's actually a lot more countryside out here, a feeling enhanced as Holme Farm arrives at the roadside. Split off from the estate perimeter as Ned Lane descends down to meet the hamlet of Holme, which seems like it's been deliberately hidden away from the modern world, even more concealed that nearby the tower blocks that can only be seen when relatively up close, and as we rise away up from bottoming out at Holme Beck, the day glums over and almost brings on the hailstorm that the weather forecast promised, but only results in slatey skies and a chilly breeze coming over as we rise up to Holme Bank farm for a reverse view over the estate and this enduring rural corner that cannot be seen unless you deliberately seek it out. Pass a proper flooded country lane and a field of miniature ponies as we rise to the hill crest, where we are welcomed onto the permissive bridleway into Black Carr Wood, by the 185m tertiary trig pillar, and the going is immediately a bit soft as we trace the exposed path westwards before diving into the ancient woods that sit above the eponymous beck, with the ground getting very sticky indeed, almost defeating my lightweight boots on more than one occasion as the winter sunshine arrive to illuminate the array of bare trees. It's a path that other have come out to trace on this auspicious date, and as the weather has turned out better than we could have dared to hope, and we steeply descend the path as it leads downhill to the crossing of the The Syke, shortly ahead of the footbridge that takes us over Tyersal beck, where the combining streams make a whole lot of noise in its concealed little maelstrom, and we'll touch base with the Leeds Country Way as we land in Leeds district, tracing its route upstream in the shadow of The Bank, the woodland fringed hillside edge which forms most of the southern boundary of Pudsey, this time making the correct call on the choice of path routes uphill, following the roughly cobbled track as it leads above the quarry workings that we accidentally explored back in 2012.
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| Holme farm, Holme Lane. |
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| A Bucolic feel above the Holme Wood estate. |
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| Black Carr Wood, and its sticky bridleway. |
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| The Merging Becks below The Bank. |
Having avoided the equestrian party on the path, we arrive at the level of the former railway, the much lamented GNR Pudsey Loop Line, and while we regarded its engineering at a remove back when we lacked exploration boldness in my earliest walking days, there's no such qualms to be had now, as we land on the trackbed and set off west along the top of Tyersal embankment, getting only occasional views that suggest its vast height and bulk as we follow the well trammeled path atop it, walking to the broken bridge on Tyersal Lane above Black Hey farm, where the drop down from the edge of the abutments is precipitous. Retrace the path to where we joined to wander into the cutting beyond the overbridge to pick a way through the fallen trees and the burgeoning streams to look up close at the western portal of Greenside Tunnel, which looms large in dressed stone and runs 563m under the town and is almost see-throughable, and despite being out of use since 1964, it looks like it might have a future as the infilling of its eastern approach has been suspended and a greenway campaign is underway to get it revived for public use, which is grand news when the the shenanigans that are going on at Queensbury are considered. Having had my fill of the relics of Victorian enterprise, we return to the path, ascending with the LCW path up to onto Pudsey's hillside, to land on Smalewell Road by the Fox & Grapes inn, proving that Windmill Hill is one of those corners where my walking routes like to converge, and we set course for the town centre by rising into the suburbia of New Occupation Road and Alexandra Road, where the 20th century suburbs arrived in a big way to subsume it into a barely distinct satellite of Leeds. Land on the Uppermoor lane, and follow it down to the Commercial Inn, where we follow the section that hadn't been traced on the paths that previously came this way, linking the western end of the Chapeltown road to the eastern end by the Golden Lion, the former Conservative club and the War Memorial, where we pause to absorb the fact that this immense cenotaph still managed to omit over 100 names of servicemen from the borough who died in the First World War, and then we move on, past the sentinel that is the parish church of St Lawrence.
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| Atop the Tyersal Embankment, the largest in the country? |
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| The bridge abutments of the Pudsey Loop Line on Tyersal Lane. |
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| Pudsey Greenside Tunnel, west portal. |
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| On Windmill Hill, Pudsey, once again. |
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| The previously untraced stretch of Chapeltown, Pudsey. |
The eastwards trajectory leads us away from where all our previous paths had converged, on down Church Lane as it passes the top end of Pudsey park and the Masonic Hall to meet the top end of the town's main street, which has the Sainsbury's in the old cinema and the futuristic bus station toward its top end, with the Town Hall, and its distinct Scottish Baronial stylings, placed at the corner of Robin Lane, with Lowtown continuing the run downhill, offering the temptation of the Wetherby Whaler in amongst its stores and the makings of a decent sort of pub crawl that runs from the Butcher's Arms at the top to the Mason's Arms at the bottom. Land on the site of the former Pudsey Lowtown station, with the infilled bridge still in situ below the road, and despite having traced the line back in 2014 there turns out to be a section that I missed, running through a pair of vacant lots to the north of the road, which have somehow remained undeveloped for half a century while preserving a partially buried, three-arched occupation bridge between them, its purpose uncertain even when regarded on maps a century old, and that's a fun little remnant to find in the town, especially as the alignment to the north of Mount Pleasant Road has been utterly obliterated. Detour done, our forward progress is resumed as we return to Lowtown via Lane End, where a distinctly rural flavour still lingers in this suburb, to get back onto the last leg as Swinnow Road splits off, rising slightly as it goes past the Britannia inn, the last country pub on the lane, and the imposing properties of Swinnow Grange and House before settling into the run through the estate that has grown over the top of Swinnow Moor, with the central location of the estate still being a matter of conjecture as we track past the local primary school and the Co-op and the church of Christ the Saviour on the Swinnow Road corner. There's more of an old country lane down here as we track down to the outer ring road crossing, with the Barnleigh Club occupying a farmstead site sitting in the shadow of the looming trio of the Rycroft Towers, up from the A6110 in its deep cutting, with an odd and unused flight of steps leading down into it, and then it's uphill as we get dangerously close to digging into Leeds proper as we head up past Morrisons and the new housing that has been developed to be convenient for Bramley station, which we find beyond the trio of low railway bridges, landing the trip's end at 3.25pm in not the most auspicious of surroundings, but the middle day turned out just fine in the end, concluding the busiest February of my walking career so far by a long shot.
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| Church Lane, at the top of Pudsey's main street. |
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| The hidden bridge on the former Loop Line, Pudsey Lowtown. |
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| Swinnow House on the Swinnow Moor boundary. |
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| The Leeds Ring Road, and the Rycroft Towers. |
Let's hope we can get out on the next Leap Day Saturday and do this all again in 2048, eh?
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4335.2 miles
2020 Total: 68.7 miles
Up Country Total: 3872.2 miles
Solo Total: 4021 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2929 miles
Next Up: Matching today's trajectory pretty closely as we march into March.
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