At last we land on my next week off, and it's been a proper long haul to get here, and quite the roller-coaster of emotions to due to the health crisis and the national lockdown which we have been compelled to traverse, landing on 10 days of being NIW with so much relief, as a regular seven week spell of work can be hard to get through, a stretch like this has proved to be interminable, with time ceasing to have much meaning despite my working weeks having about as much shape as normal, and now I can look to a stretch of getting my head turned back towards normal after experiencing all the stresses that came my way over the preceding days. Interestingly, speaking to one of the departmental supervisors last week, she told me that she was cancelling all here leave for a long as the lockdown lasted as she couldn't face being stuck at home and completely out of circulation during her time off, and that's completely the opposite for me, glad to get away from it and have time completely to myself before having to face what comes with an eased lockdown and the working throngs starting to return to the city. As exercise rules have now been relaxed, going out for more than an hour at a time is now possible, and I could travel further afield if I had an independent transport option, but I don't and public transport use is still discouraged, not that I'd be taking just yet anyway as I'm convinced this lockdown easing has come at least a month too early, and thus I'll be looking towards some circular routes about my resident town, as Morley's lanes and fields haven't seen too much action over the last few years. So the plotting head goes on to find routes that offer a bit more than the sub-3 mile circuits that have been my route for most of the last couple of months and might keep me occupied locally until I feel emboldened, or am permitted, to ride away further from home and back towards where I wanted to be in my 2020 season and I've gotten a good local selection to keep me going, even if few of the passages will prove to be particularly novel. But before we get going with that, I'd just like to share a little more of the new lockdown hobby that I've fired over the last couple of weeks, namely going for a train-spot or three thanks to discovering the live train tracker at rail-record.co.uk, which has informed me of the movement of TPE Class 68s across the Pennines to the Siemens depot at York, which I can thus catch as they run light through Morley, taking their pictures and sharing them here as I have no shame at all about resuming a passion that I had as a child, an action that I'm sure would have delighted My Dad, no end.
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'Resolution', 'Brutus' & 'Splendid' on the York-bound
0Z68 from Manchester Longsight. 19/05/20 |
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'Destroyer', 'Lord President' & 'Courageous' on the York-bound
079C from Crewe Gresty Bridge. 21/05/20 |
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'Courageous' & 'Destroyer' on the Crewe-bound
086D from York Siemens Transit Depot. 21/05/20 |
So, we get back to walking, after a fashion at least, as while Lockdown is still theoretically in force, we've gotten ourselves permission to use much more time to exercise, and so we start some tentative steps back into the routine of regular walking, and as this was my holiday week, I'll be trying to get 20+ miles in to show willing, with three loops around Morley being my initial plan, starting early on Tuesday morning, ahead of the hot spell that we are told is due to sit on the later spell of the week, getting going on my circuit at 9.05am from Morley Hole, the sign-ed point in the town that's more convenient than the Town Hall. Start by rising up the A643 past Morley Victoria primary school and Stubley Farm Mews before slipping down Bank Street with it's raked terraces and high retaining walls, and carrying on down Brunswick Street to Morley Bottoms, where the burgeoning bar culture in competition to The Royal inn has been hiatus for a couple of months now, and then we set a course out of town by joining Station Road, where all the colours of early Spring on the recreation grounds have now passed. Onward past the mills that have just started to resume their businesses, and tag up with the Social Distancing Circuit route as it leads us down to Morley station and onwards down Valley Road, below the bank that looms above the old town gasworks site, where small remnants of the coal tramways from Morley Main colliery still endure on the hillside, carrying on the meet the path that slips around the Valley Mills site, which has been well used by the locals during lockdown, evidenced by how well its odd damp patches have been covered and traversed. Drop out by the footbridge and the enduring memorial garden, and pass over the railway, to the north side, where the culverted Cotton Mill Beck can be heard burbling below the ground, and the path that really doesn't access the mill sit can be followed as it slips up the hill rise between Daisy Hill and Broad Oaks, rising to the crest to follow the lane through the farm, where the scaffolding business is back in action, traversing the yard to meet the path that arrows directly downhill towards the Cottingley Hall estate, aimed to pass under the railway via the cattle creep that lost its rural purpose many years ago.
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| Bank Street and its terraces and walls. |
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| Station Road and its Mills. |
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| The track from Valley Mills to Broad Oaks. |
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| The path towards Millshaw and Cottingley. |
Join the path that traverses its way down from the White Rose Centre and around the back of the Millshaw business park, dropping down below the rising railway embankment and behind the DHL depot and the Alliance Health Care factory before we are dropped out on the Millshaw playing fields, which we traverse to meet the A643 again, below the long derelict building that somehow got a residential makeover, and cross the meet Old Road by the motor garage, heading up to meet the bottom edge of Churwell below its looming viaduct, one of the hardest to photograph railway structures to be found anywhere. Beyond proud and old farmhouse of Churwell Grange, we follow New Village Way as it leads through Churwell's new village, naturally, the apron of Lego-looking houses that have grown around it's southern edge, not my sort of landscape by any means, and its many closes continue to grown with the Westwood park development now completed, and the site of Snittles farm looks like its next on the suburban slate, as its buildings have gone, demolished and literally ground to dust, as if its plots and equestrian grazing fields have more value as just another close or two in the future. Our well-trodden route leads us under the M621, and our turn back towards the town is made by departing the rights of way and instead rising to the trackbed of the L&NWR's New Leeds Line, as there's surely no one around to stop me, and pacing along the length of its vast embankment, away from the site of Farnley Junction, and on between the A62 and the motorway, high above the fields and the Jewish cemeteries, admiring the vastness of the construction that had only a 65 year working life before we arrive above the bridge over the track up to Rooms farm. We return to ground level here and follow the path as it leads up towards the motorway, away from the farm workshops and the yappy guard dogs, offering a view of the Leeds city centre horizon to the east before we pass back under the M621, and follow the Smools Lane path as it leads us into the Churwell Urban Nature reserve, which I'm glad to see is still attracting the parents and toddlers despite the circumstances, to enjoy some outdoor times among the dipping pools, sensory gardens and bird hides that it offers.
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| Churwell Viaduct in almost full effect. |
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| Snittles Farm, Churwell, has gone forever. |
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| Atop the Leeds New Line embankment. |
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| The view to Leeds from Rooms. |
The paths here lead us into Churwell's Urban Woods, where the tracks through Daffil woods have brought us a few times before, but beyond Westwood Side we enter the long finger of Clark Spring Woods, which is new below our feet and offers the suburban estate around another green lung and a stretch of ancient woodland that has survived both phases of urbanisation out here to create an ideal space to entertain the local small ones, or exercise the legs of elders, complete with a miniature railway and a log-built assault course below the canopy of trees, along the cleft of Clark Spring beck. So praise is due to the developers who didn't carve this up, to culvert the stream or render it into interesting garden features, instead leaving behind an almost entirely accessible route for all the locals to enjoy, a rough half mile long in the heart of suburbia, which is departed at its tight south end as we are spilled out onto Rooms Lane, which is briefly traversed before we enter Springfield Mill park, also well used for socially distanced exercise and meet-ups, which is crossed as we seek the most well concealed section of the day's trek. This leads us along Hargreaves Close and Springfield Road, among the sort of suburbia that is just that bit too ostentatious and busy looking, to seek the footpath link from Lister Walk to Springfield Avenue, landing us on the edge of the Ingles estate by The Arkle inn, the Morley pub that I'd never been able to put a location to, and now that it's been found it looks like it hasn't done any business in a while, and our south-westwards tack among the council houses leads us on, to pass over Ingle Avenue and down Deanfield Avenue to the B6126 Asquith Avenue. This could be our route to the finish line, but we'll instead cross it to pass among the bungalows on its south side, via a grassy space that looks like a road was plotted for it but was never built, which leads us to the end of Asquith Drive and on to Nepshaw Lane, where the suburban edge faces the Phoenix Scout camp site and playing fields, and we are lead back to old Morley among its terraces to the corner where the Dartmouth Arms once stood at Morley Hole, where our first trek of more than 75 minutes in two month ends at 10.55am, having hardly pushed the envelope too far, but with a nicely refreshed perspective on my town having encountered a dozen old routes along the way.
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| Clark Springs Wood, Churwell. |
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| Springfield Mill Park. |
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| The Arkle, the Ingles estate. |
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| Nepshaw Lane and the closing loop. |
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4400.3 miles
2020 Total: 133.8 miles
Up Country Total: 3937.3 miles
Solo Total: 4086.1 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2994.1 miles
Next Up: More Holiday Walking, in Central Morley, with another milestone due.
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