Mytholm, Hebden Bridge, Hawksclough, Mythholmroyd, Brearley, Luddenden Foot, Friendly, Causeway Head, Cote Hill, Granny Hill, and King Cross.
After so many weeks of complaining about this season's weather, it actually looks like Summer might have an End of note, which is nice to consider as the morning shadows lengthen and the early chills set in, indeed rising with the lark to travel start to feel a trifle unnecessary when the days are taking to some time to warm through, but when a long trip is in the offing, it seems wise to still make best use of the day, and having finally made this year's triumphant arrival in Lancashire, it's already time to get out of it, via possibly the lowest impact trans-Pennine route in this quarter, with my light boots donned for a welcome change. So it's ride the rails out to Littleborough for an 8.30am alight, setting a northbound course that immediately has little for me to do with regards navigation, giving us a raw mileage sort of day after the more complicated moorland walks prior to it, departing the station yard to Railway Street and crossing over the modest River Roch as we go, turning onto the A58 Halifax Road by the imposing Wheatsheaf inn and passing the snow and ice alert signage for the high road passages, right by Holy Trinity parish church, just ahead of the turn onto the A6033 Todmorden Road, which has us done with corners for a while. It's upstream with the Roch that we are headed, along the same passage as the canal and the railway, though the depth of the valley is hidden by the low rises of terraces and industrial units stretched along the roadside, offering us little to indicate that the South Pennines and the Rossendale Moors loom large to either side of us, though the climb does start to feel more pronounced as we head on, as we pass into the urban hamlet of Gale, with its Fair View terrace perched over the roadside and the fields starting to angle steeply beyond. Once past the Grove dyeworks redevelopment, and in the vicinity of nearby Calderbrook, whose stray terraces and village school sit by the roadside, we've risen high enough to get a dramatic sort of location around, revealing the cloud brushed hills to the east and looking across the valley to the imposing and derelict Rock Nook cotton mill, sat above the railway as it starts its gouge through the hills, with the aqueduct containing the Roch running above the cutting while doubling as a canal flood run-off. The main point of engineering interest is found beyond, across from the Sladen Wood cotton mill, namely the L&YR's 1.6 mile long Summit Tunnel of 1841, presenting quite the dramatic image with its southern portal, still in regular use despite the petrol train fire that closed it for much of 1985 (giving it a record of the World's longest when constructed, and site of possibly the largest underground transport fire too), a length which we will be tracing as we head on, through the hamlet of Summit, the last such settlement in this corner Greater Manchester, which is looking pleasing and stoney at the roadside as we pass through.
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| Holy Trinity church, Littleborough. |
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| The Fair View terrace, Gale. |
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| Rock Nook Mills, and the Roch aqueduct. |
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Summit Tunnel, the South Portal.
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We've been in the business of setting a new boundary to our field walking experience on our way uphill, and at the top of the run of terraces we meet the Summit inn, at the apogee of our explore out this way down the Rochdale canal path back in 2012, shifting the border to the southwest after less than 2 miles, while beyond which we've got a half mile or so to retrace, pacing on to the road summit, which a run of incongruous semis runs across, though I'm none too sure if that's where the English Watershed also lies, in the cleft between the River Roch and the Walsden Water headwaters, rather than on a dynamic hilltop. So we decline with the lane, following the canal's summit pound as to traverses its own cutting through the much larger natural one, soon meeting the West Yorkshire - Greater Manchester boundary, and the transition onto Rochdale Road while the wisdom of our early start is tested as the chill early morning brings an foreseen wash of rain overhead, weather I'd hoped to avoid, but on the way past the Steanor Bottom toll house and the Warland Gate terrace we have enough trees by the roadside to offer shelter as we meet the end of the last trip this way, observing that the Bird i' th' Hand inn is now a private residence, rather better than the sad sight is presented in 2012, but spoiling the long pub crawl potential of the valley. The new border resumes as we carry on west of the canal, soon getting Walsden Water arriving at the roadside, already a substantial stream when less than a mile old, keeping us company as we pass the Riverside playing fields and sports club, occupying the only available level fields in the area, where the Canada Geese have free reign, ahead of us landing in hamlet that seems to go un-named where there's more residential substances than many of the notional locations I've encounter this year, clustered around the north portal of Summit Tunnel. Beyond the former Sun inn, we meet the proper outer edge of urban upper Calderdale, as we land in Bottoms, just as the sunshine bursts through to give some relief to the early day chill, as the valley widens out enough to accommodate a proper settlement or two, as the sunshine illuminates the Waggon & Horse inn and the impressive ghost sign at the bottom edge of the village, ahead of a proper run of shops on the main street ahead of the Bottoms Mills and the Gordon Riggs garden centre, the major commercial enterprises in this corner, below the gouge of Ramsden clough in the hillside to the west. We're getting back into familiar territory here too, passing Walsden's cricket club, home to our beer festival visit of many moons ago, with the road, river and rails soon tangling up as we pass over both as below our shifting pavements, getting a look down the line from the skew bridge to Winterbuttlee tunnel, and back up to the wide pounds on the canal as we run into Walsden proper, among the semis and terraces and somewhere far below the path we traced down here from the eastern hills last month.
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The Summit inn at 2012's walking apex.
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| The Rochdale Canal's summit pound, at the Yorks-Lancs border. |
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The rising Walsden Water at Warland gate.
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| The Waggon & Horse inn, with sunshine, Bottoms. |
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| Winterbuttlee Tunnel, south of Walsden. |
Once we've had sight of the spire of St Peter's piercing the valley sky, we're soon back onto this year's familiar corners, landing by the Hollins Mill complex and keeping to Rochdale Road as it swings past the Methodist chapel and a short terrace with the drunkest looking front walls imaginable, and leads us on past Walsden station, the village school and a group of streamside bungalows that look like prefabs, ahead of the suburban run squeezing itself into the narrow band of flat land at the valley floor, ahead of the terraces resuming, by the Knowlwood mills. Pass over the canal, and back within our experience field, with the ongoing channel forming the oldest part of our boundary, at over 8 years vintage, as our route takes us alongside the long passage of Gauxholme viaduct, rising across the throat of the Dulesgate water side valley that threads the A681 road over to Bacup and Rossendale, the only junction of note along this stretch, by which the Three valleys brewery resides, beyond which we settle onto the narrow pavement as it traces the side of Walsden water, running below the Methodist chapel and the village school. That illustrates just how tight the valley can get here, even as we approach Todmorden, with flat blocks obscuring the ornate railway bridge over the canal, ahead of us gaining some more space to accommodate transverse terraces but not really enough to fit pavements on both side of the A6033, just ahead of us landing in familiar locales again past the mill that was actually an old fire station, and the Morrisons superstore crammed in by the heavily managed channel of Walsden water, as we meet the shop fronts of Salford, where the Calderdale Way brought us in 2012, too. That means the main town can only be just around the corner, across the Longfield Road corner and over the canal by the guillotine lock, where the Golden Lion inn has revived as part of the town's burgeoning bar culture, a correct development prediction from a few years back that I'd like to claim, and our first notable crowds of folks out shopping are encountered as we come around to the parish church of St Mary and the town hall, and they don't need to be lingered among as we take a right onto the A646 Halifax Road, our first junction in a while and only the fourth of the trip so far. Scurry on through the flat section of town where the terraces and industry filled the valley floor between the canal and river, the latter having been mostly replaced by commercial enterprises and a branch of Lidl these days, with the Hippodrome theatre being the other focus point of interest amongst it all, as we are drawn on, noting that Der Street looks like someone had an imagination failure while naming it, before we cross over our previous path into town, and also the River Calder via Stansfield Bridge and into the suburb of Millwood.
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| Walsden Methodist chapel and the 'Drunk' terrace. |
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Gauxholme Viaduct.
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Salford's High Street, Todmorden.
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St Mary's parish church, Todmorden.
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Halifax Road, Todmorden.
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Uphill we head, below the flat blocks on the rising lane side, which is a natural expectation when on a downstream walk, and getting a feeling of how the town grew down into the Calder valley, and then back up its high sides again as we work our way out amongst its outliers, looking up to St Paul's church at Cross Stone on the high north side and into the wrinkles up to the high apron to the south, and passing the local bus depot and Castle Hill primary school, plus a whole range of terraces at the towns western end, with our new road, the A646, feeling a whole lot busier than the A6033, as it forms the red route through the valley. The long space over to Hebden Bridge is thus entered, much longer than the mind thinks it is, where every terrace seems to have a mill and a notional identity as an independent hamlet, though the first of these, Lobb Mill is at least distinctive thanks to its high chimney and dramatic setting as the canal passes through it, where the urban spread of the town reaches its absolute limit as river, road, canal and railway cram absurdly close together to crowd the valley base, with the latter carried overhead via Lobb Mill viaduct, and the former sneaking underground. Press on, with greenery covering most of the scene, while the weather coming in behind us can't seem to make up its mind about its quality, so elevenses aren't taken at the Rodwell picnic site as we need more substantial shelter in the event of rain, passing the perched Burgey house and noting that the roads heading off to the sout seem to be taking all sorts of angles and twists to get up to the villages away to the south, confirming my belief in the lack of wisdom of living up there, in Harvelin Park and its peculiar ilk, eventually running up by the mill complexes at Spring Side, where a bus shelter offers enough coverage for a snack break away from a passing rain shower. Spot the Drax BinLiner empties train heading up the valley at aright old pace, far too quickly to be photographed, as we resume, with it keeping mostly dry as we press on, noting that substantial roads off to the north are hard to come by down here too, with the signage welcoming us to Eastwood, possibly the largest hamlet on this stretch, though it still appears to be only one terrace deep, with a fine view revealed over the Bridgeholme cricket field, which advertises Stoodley Pike's deceptive apparent proximity to the south, up the last available wooded clough in that direction. It's easy to think that there used to more to this settlement than endures today, as a number of terraces have gone with the passing of the mills, with so much future country retreat potential squandered, and it once had a railway station on the line above, the station hotel of which is now the Masonic Hall, surely the smallest place with its own lodge in the county, beyond which we find the non-conformist burial ground and another squeezing of the habitable valley floor by the looming wooded banks, ahead of the shortest railway viaduct ever, and the aforementioned station's access ramps and retaining walls.
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St Paul's Cross Stone, above Tod's eastern end.
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Lobb Mill viaduct.
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Burgey House, Spring Side.
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Stoodley Pike, above Bridgeholme Cricket Club.
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Eastwood's Station Hotel - Masonic Lodge.
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Living in the terraces ahead of the Knowl End farm produce factory and the Self Storage facility in another tall mill building, must be an interesting experience, with road and rails at the front, and canal and river out back, potentially feeling cramped at the bottom of the valley and just a short way upstream from the sewage farm at Sandbeds, which brings all kinds of stink to its associated hamlet, sat as it is by possibly the only notable crossing point on the valley, where both the Pennine Way and Bridleway dive down through the valley via the Callis bridges, a spot that affords us our best riverside views of the Calder. As the high wooded banks compress the valley again, we meet the next hamlet along, past the former Callis Mill complex, which is Charlestown, which starts to feel like the outer edge of Hebden Bridge, which still sits some way beyond the coming kinks of the valley still, but there's an interest point along here, beyond the former general store and Woodman Inn, and that's on the railway line above where a fatal derailment occurred on the curve in June 1912, which eventually resulted in the realignment of the railway to be less potentially dangerous, some years later. Terraces sit at the roadside as the valley narrows further with the river briefly slipping under the road, with it feeling like there's barely space to contain all four corridors along with the residences, so it comes as no surprise as there's much shuffling of routes as we go on, most notably as we land at Calderside, where the railway goes from the northernmost passage across the valley to its southern side, while the river disappears again, culverted below the road, and its path under the viaduct. Some short residential side roads indicate that the valley opens up beyond, while drawing us closer to town, the proximity of which can be noted as we catch sight of the Stubbing Wharf inn at the canalside, well known as the last pub in Hebden Bridge at this western end, while by which the riverside shows little indictaion of the flood works that have grown around Mytholmroyd, while to the north the bottom of Colden Clough opens up, with its steep wooded banks looming over the parish church of St John at Mytholm, and we pass around the turning loop on the road ahead of coming across the outspill of Colden Water, between the first road corners of note in a while, up to Blackshaw Head and Heptonstall. The town takes full effect beyond, rolling with the contours as the road rises as far from the Calder as it can manage, as the terrced and residentail front are soon replaced as we come down onto Market Street, the main shopping drag that has filled with lunchtime shoppers, and it's good to see folk out to do their bit for the local businesses in this most independently minded of towns, though it's a bigger crowd than I'm happy to be among as we make slowed progress onwards, feeling like I've never actually paced this pavement among the proud Victorian frontages, despite all my prior visits around here.
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| Callis Bridges, Sandbed. |
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| The former general store and Woodman Inn, Charlestown. |
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| The valley crossing viaduct at Calderside. |
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| St John's Mytholm, below Colden Clough. |
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Market Street, Hebden Bridge.
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It's too bust around to ponder lunch-breaking around here, and the last of the early day's weather is also shaking itself out as we come across the throat of Heden Water and the expanding valleys to the north, hurrying on past my favoured haunts in the town, The Old Gate, Rim Nam Thai and Vocation, and onwards past the Picture House and the rise to the view over the canal as it curves around Calder Holmes park and Crossley Mill, and the road rises to untangle the A646 and A6033 by the Machpelah Terrace, and carrying on with the former as it leads us past the top of Station Road, just about tying up the loose ends on my season of trails into Calderdale. The stretch of Burnley road beyond the town seems to barely have space to accommodate a footway as it perches on its bank above the canal, which is rather unfortunate as it also has to double as Hebden Bridge's car park for all those who might want to visit from further afield, stretched out for a distance along what ought to have been counted as the last mile or so from my season finale in 2012, back from the pub to Mytholmroyd, but which somehow went uncounted until now, finding that's there's really very little to separate the settlements as the signage welcomes you on either side of Falling Royd bridge, as the canal passes below. The pathway here stil shows signs of silt that was dumped by the most recent round of Calder flood, while the passage of time since we past passed this way is indicated by the fact that the clog mill by Carr Lane bridge has been demolished, having never had its redevelopment potential fulfilled, leaving a gap in the local horizon ahead of us settling in by the riverside once more, before we head on alongside the river in its already deep channel, moving on towards Hawksclough and it bridge. That gets back inside out Mytholmroyd bubble paths, carrying on by the completed flood walls in front on the long terraces opposite, and behind the White Houses block on the 'wrong' side of the road, which seems like a century old development mistake, ahead of landing in the village by the school, and tangling up with rebuilding works at Caldene Bridge once again, which are still moving on after our first observations three months ago. Arrive at the Mytholmroyd Bridge corner, and its benches in good time for lunch, having realised that I've been absolutely motoring for the first four hours of the day, a testament to some pavement walking and donning the lighter boots for the occasion, and with feeding and watering done, the warmth of the afternoon sunshine takes over as we set course for the finish line, heading out past St Michael's church and Russell Dean's furniture store, and over the canal as the road reclaims northernmost billing down the valley, a status that it will not relinquish.
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The Rochdale canal at Calder Holme park.
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The A646 Burnley Road.
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The Calder by the absent Clog Mill.
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The Calder by the White Houses terrace.
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Mytholmroyd Bridge.
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The suburban and industrial spread of Mytholmroyd to the west seems to have gone unacknowledged across all my visits out here, reveling that it's much bigger settlement than might be credited, which is perhaps why the station car park is getting wildly enlarged at present, and the semis and bungalows stretch out to the older Brier Hey, Filed House and Ewood Gate houses, with the spread of the Caldene Business park matching it along the way to Moderna Bridge, while all on this side of the valley enjoy a view over to Scout Scar and Wood, and it's seemingly endless landslip issues. This high side of the valley, up towards Midgley is still in need of a probing, and the landscape downstream has to be reabsorbed as my memories of my tracing of the canal path in my very yearly walking career up here are sketchy in the extreme, and thus the sights to Brearley Chapel and bridge are recalled from more recent tours, before we come past the Brearley House lodges and the only substantial part of the settlement by the roadside itself, the terrace with the Grove Inn as it main feature, which I figure as having been out of business and not redeveloped in all my 14+ years of regularly travelling this way. The downstream path has drawn us some way up the valley side, away from the unruly river, which allows for some expansive upstream views beyond the tree cover as we progress, ahead of the kinks of the valley which focus our attention on trying to make sense of the sights to the south east, and finding that the southern side of the Calder doesn't reveal its secrets from this aspect as we trace a way around past the Stoney Spring and Upper Foot farmsteads, pondering the proximity of greater Halifax as we gain the outliers of Luddenden Foot creeping down to the roadside. We are also right by the canal path, mere metres away below the road, but hidden from view as we pass by, landing at the bottom of Luddenden Dean, by pubs abandoned and contemporary, where the secondary settlement at the mouth of the side valley seems to have grown over the years to be more substantial than its near neighbour to the north, with the road beyond starting its long climb out of the valley, with the village stretching out along it in a very narrow ribbon as we ascend past its old Co-op store, long terrace and canalside warehouse. The most familiar sight of Luddendenfoot for any traveller up and down the valley, is of course the former Congregational chapel on the high angle of the road, with its Georgian stylings and prominent clock tower, sitting at the bottom of a run of larger terraced houses and across from the village school, beyond which we've risen high enough to get a good look over the valley, locating ourselves opposite Bolderclough and just downstream from Sowerby, as the main road starts to comprehensively abandon the idea of following the valley floor, aiming up towards Halifax, instead.
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Scout Scar and Wood, Above Mytholmroyd's industrial fringe.
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| The Grove Inn terrace, Brearley. |
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| The downstream Calder, looking towards Sowerby. |
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Luddenden Foot's crossroads.
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The former Chapel, Luddenden Foot.
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We can effectively meet the greater town's boundary as we meet the Warley Wood estate above the road, as there will be an urban component to the walk for its remaining miles, as the main road now starts to drift uphill taking around the top of Sowerby bridge's spread up the valley side, with the views to the mouth of the Ryburn being largely obscured by rooftops, though the looks to Crow Hill and Norland Moor are good enough as we drift into Friendly, passing the Copper Cow and the White Horse inn among all the retailers that name themselves in the politest sort of way, in a sort of opposition to all those in Skipton that call themselves Craven. Heading east and now far enough removed from the low valley side to have substantial urbanisation on both sides of the road, we pass the top of Tuel Lane, the steep road up from Sowerby Bridge, and our route starts to wander along its rising path around the higher edge of the valley, away from the settlement below and around past the Causeway Head terrace blocks, entering a green sort of space that is nonetheless littered by the spread of suburbia from the town above, while still providing further evidence that everywhere in Halifax is uphill. There's a feeling that there would be a grand view of the mouth of the Upper Calder up here if you could just locate the sightline to find it, but it cannot be found as we come around to the corner at Cote Hill, by the Peacock inn and just downhill from St John's Warley, where the estates on the high side of the lane, spread to the west of town, creep down to the roadside, shedding all that remains of the rural feel of our walk, as the Burnley Road takes on a direct and purposeful route up toward the Calder - Hebble watershed. It would be easy, pressing up here, to lose context of the Calder valley as we push away from it, as the lane conceals its location well, so instead of focusing too much attention forwards, and forgetting to look to the south, to view the horizon beyond the rooftops which gives us sight straight up the Ryburn valley to the high ranges at its upper end, where we were just last week, which makes you appreciate why suburbanisation spreads like it does, as all those residential lanes we can't see below us have some variant of the views we've enjoyed over the last hour or so. The sentinel of this town, Wainhouse Tower soon looms up on the immediate horizon as we ascend our way up Granny Hill, as the signage welcomes us to Halifax for the third time, and for the first time in a long while we have to make a route choice as the converging Burnley and Rochdale Roads tangle up at King Cross, and after so long on the A646 we switch back onto the A58 route, only the fifth corner that we've had to negotiate on the trip, and nearly 11 miles on from our last one in Todmorden.
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Ascending through Friendly.
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Entering the greenish space above Causeway Head
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| The terrace corner at Cote Hill. |
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Ascending Granny Hill into Halifax.
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| The Burnley - Rochdale road junction, and Wainhouse Tower, King Cross. |
We don't get straight onto Aachen Way though, as the modern bypass road doesn't make for the most interesting of walks, instead slipping onto the original route of King Cross Road, an urban shopping parade that does its thing for the locals that live in the blocks to the north and west of it, whilst not being blighted by the traffic that once passed through, where the spire of St Paul's church stands in parkland still, separated from its demolished body, and a pub offers the eternal question that our family has pondered, was there a King Willim IV? Land on the A58 proper as it angles itself to the north of Halifax town centre, following it downhill among a string of terrace ends and one exceptionally long terrace, ahead of meeting West House, People's Park and the Joseph Crossley's Almshouses, before we pass around St Mary's RC school and splitting off the bypass road as it joins the elevated sections of Burdock Way, joining West Parade to direct us into town, via corner #6 on the day, already feeling like we've entered a forgotten corner due to an absence of traffic and people. It's definitely a curious sort of urban lane, as it has both factories and warehouses on its upper reach, some with an interesting re-use or two, with some old or downscale dwellings scattered amongst, before we pass the Irish Centre and the Memorial Hall and descend onto Blackwall, which has entirely different character, with Georgian terraces raked behind the old Holy Trinity church, and the old courthouse and police station sit empty, awaiting a redevelopment opportunity coming their way. Bottom out on Trinity Road, over which the huge and modernist complex of the Halifax Building Society offices loom, now operated as part of the Lloyds banking group, but still providing a major reason for why the town's named travelled nationally, beyond which the town centre lies, with us crossing Commercial Street to meet Ward's End by the Victoria Theatre, marking our seventh and final junction on the day as we skirt the bottom of the shopping district, which seems light on shoppers thanks to the continuing local lockdown in the borough. Then it's down hill on the final stretch, across Southgate and Union Street and below the Piece Hall as Horton Street leads us down to the Church Street crossing and into the lowest part of the Hebble valley that we'll be seeing today, looking acrosss to the flour mill, the Nestle factory and the Eureka complex before arriving at the station at 3.05am, and managing to land in the dead zone between all the viable trains that might take me homewards, but because I'm earlier than expected rather than being late, having ripped up 18 miles in just 6hrs 35mins, a bonkers pace that has me happy regardless, as it's always good to be able to get a turn of speed up, while also crossing counties, on the edge of the late season.
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| King Cross Road. |
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The Long Terrace by the A58.
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Trinity Terrace, Blackwall.
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The Lloyds Bank - Halifax BS Offices.
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| Halifax old station, as well illuminated as it'll ever be. |
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4630.7 miles
2020 Total: 364.2 miles
Up Country Total: 4167.7 miles
Solo Total: 4304.1 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 3224.2 miles
Next Up: West Yorkshire, and England's, Longest Road Climb, and a Trans-Pennine route too.
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