Having done the walk over the Aire - Calder transition between Halifax and Bradford last weekend, it would seem to make sense to approach today's excursion as going back the way we came so as to vary things up a bit, but instead we'll be doing a repeat of start and finish points on consecutive weekends because I've had the road walk up the side of the Holmfield valley tagged as an ascent option since I first rode the bus up to Queensbury, and also because we have weather forecast to come on from the southwest all day, and I have no intention at all of walking into the teeth of that over the latter half of our trip. Dampness is already heavy in the air and thick on the ground as we alight in Halifax at 9.30am, seeking another fresh route to the north as we leave the Station compound and head up Horton Street once again, this time making our turn onto Market Street, taking us between the Piece Hall and the Westgate Arcade, and on between the Borough Market and the Woolshops centre, along with making another pass the Duke of Wellington's Regiment memorial before heading out onto Northgate, in the direction of the Broad Street centre and the bus station, which is finally in the grip of a remodelling to replace the 1980s styled pavilions, the last such in the county. Heading towards North Bridge, we turn onto Bowling Dyke to pass below it and the A58 flyovers to meet the crossing over Hebble Brook at the throat of Dean Clough, and tramp the pavements of Old Lane to meet the snicket that was famously photographed by Bill Brandt in 1937, where we'll rise up the steep and slippery cobbles to pass over the old GNR line between North Bridge station and Old Lane tunnel, both hidden by overgrowth in the cutting, and thence up the valley side on more setts to arrive on the side of the A647 Haley Hill, high above the valley side already, below the looming towers blocks on the Range Lane corner. The main road leads us up the valley's periphery, past the perched Lidl store and up to All Souls Haley Hill, the towering and spired pile that might be Sir George Gilbert Scott's crowning achievement in his speciality of Victorian Gothic revival churches, which lies below Ackroyd Park, home to the Bankfield museum and once home to Edward Ackroyd, the local employer and benefactor who developed the industrial suburb of Ackroydon in the 1860s which lies along the side of the rising road, a place to take a proper visual interest in on a nicer day than this one.
Sunday 31 October 2021
Halifax to Bradford (again) 30/10/21
Sunday 24 October 2021
Halifax to Bradford 23/10/21
Having finally done with trips out of the Calder valley last week, the late season centre of gravity seems to have shifted back towards Halifax, just like it did last year, as if it holds an appeal for this point in the annual cycle, and it's also time to approach some mileage that we missed out on a few weeks back and to get onto the untraced trajectory in the county that had meant to be on the slate for the end of 2020, while getting to it finally provides a ride from Bradford on the Grand Central train to London King's Cross too, ticking the Class 180s off the list of unridden traction on West Yorkshire services. We alight in Halifax at 9am, just as the morning sun is rising above the hills to the east, and even though our destination is off to the north-east, our early going will be wholly westwards once we're away from the station and Square Road, picking a route that takes us up the steps that leads to the carpark and main street of the Woolshops centre, then up the old commercial street of the same name to make another encounter with the Duke of Wellington Regiment's memorial, before crossing Market Street to get some wholly variable town centre flavours from our passages up Russell Street and Cheapside. We pass through the banking district again, and taje George Street up to the crossing of the A629 Cow Green, before we join Bull Green taking us out of the town centre and in the direction of the Calderdale roads before we shift onto the rising urban slab by Hopwood Hall, and get a real variation of the urban qualities as we pass under the A58 Burdock Way with Hopwood Lane, passing through the terraces around Royds Mill ahead of the greenery taking over around Peoples Park, the old municipal library and museum and the Crossley Almshouses. Old Halifax sure is a land of contrasts, and unrelenting hills too as we press on west, with the quality of the bands of 19th century development almost seeming to have been plotted randomly, as we pass on over Queen's Road and come up behind the plot of St Paul's station once again, noting its distance from the town but it convenience for the biscuit factories that still operate on both sides of the road, an enduring feature of industry in the landscape of Gibraltar, on these slopes above the Hebble valley, where the King Cross Social Club's sports field needs extensive retaining walls on two sides to keep it level.
Sunday 17 October 2021
Sowerby Bridge to Low Moor 16/10/21
Going into the final turns of the season, the good news is that I haven't gone lame, and it feels like my hip pains are not going to come on at a pace that will interrupt my concluding stretch of walking for 2021, though the difficulties are still like to be forthcoming, not least from the fact that the residual warmth of the earl Autumn has now passed, and we'll have to hope to keep ourselves from chilling down too much by sticking to some more urban environments as we make our final start out from Calderdale proper, where so much of this year has been spent. Alighting at Sowerby Bridge station at 9.05am, we've got possibly the last of the un-traced Lost Railways of West Yorkshire in our sights, namely the Halifax High Level line, but we're down here in the river valley, and it's up there in the western reaches of the town, and thus we've a lot of ascent to make to get there, which means striking east to get no sight of the valley town at all as Holmes Road and Mearclough Road lead us along the riverside and below the rise of the railway line, passing the remaining fragments of industry still enduring, in order to make our passage over the Calder and the C&HN canal via Sladen Bridges. Rise with Canal Road to the passage over the A6026 Wakefield Road, and then get the climb going in no uncertain terms as we join Washer Lane, passing through the small urban enclave at its Bottom, before we start the sharp rise straight up the valley side, doing the reverse passage along my trans-Pennine trail from 2015 but getting a wholly different sort of perspective thanks to going up rather than down, and being in mid October rather than late July, as we pass into the terraced landscape clinging to the hillside around the Wainhouse Tavern and its eponymous tower. Our path beyond then gets extremely technical as it appears that a right of way has endured right up the hill, despite having been broken by the construction of the old turnpike roads, and being accommodated on slippery runs of cobbles between tight walls and up flights of steps, to really get the burn going as we rise relentlessly, from Darcey Hey Lane and over the A58 Rochdale Road and the A646 Burnley Road to land us upon Granny Hill, apparently level with Norland Moor across the valley, on the southwestern corner of Halifax.
Sunday 10 October 2021
Halifax to Keighley 09/10/21
I've complained about my joint pains, most notably in my right hip, in my year summaries for the last couple of seasons, though it seems to have been tinnitus and a bad case of brain fog that have blighted the last few months, getting in the way of my rest and play (but not work, oddly) with frustrating regularity, but as we meet what should be the last long trip of 2021, the pain I've long endured has suddenly shifted from annoying to troubling, as if my hip joint is suddenly starting to grind on itself, adding another frustrating wrinkle to the late season going. Anyways, we're Airedale bound again as we alight in Halifax, deep in the Hebble valley, after 9.15am, immediately seeking another fresh route across the town centre as we cross to the rise of Horton Street, following to it to its very top and refusing the initial pair of northbound street options, and eventually making the turn onto Commercial Street by the Victoria Theatre, which takes us through the town's banking district, home to the Victorian era home of the Halifax Permanent Building Society, among many others, as well as the town'd outsize GPO too. This landscape persists until Waterhouse Street dumps us on the passage over Broad Street, behind the Town Hall, where our route takes us around the side of the eponymous Plaza betwixt the Vue Cinema and the Premier Inn to seek the way thorough the back streets beyond to take us under the flyovers of the A58 Burdock Way and around the Crib Lane car parks to find the end of Corporation Street to leads us into the former mill landscape of Dean Clough, initially passing the G and K mills before descending down into the company of the many carpet factories at the valley floor. Follow Lee Bridge Road up to the 1904 Cean Clough inn, as the flyover of the A629 shoots its way across the Hebble valley and into the Holmfield branch, and we'll stay with the passage upstream with Lee Bank road for a while, as beyond the mills we can spy the stub of Lee Bank viaduct on the old GNR line projecting out of the greenery on the eastern edge, where it switched sides on its northbound passage beyond Old Lane tunnel, and further up by the recycling centre we can find the retaining walls of the railway on the western side of the valley, upon which the contemporary roadway now sits.
Sunday 3 October 2021
Hebden Bridge to Queensbury 02/10/21
Dimmin Dale), Luddenden Dean, Low Bridge, Warley Moor (Height Edge, Sleepy Lowe Flat,
& Rocking Stone Flat), Cold Edge, Hunter Hill, Stod Fold, Lower Brockholes, Illingworth,
Bradshaw, Raggalds, Mountain and Hill Top (abandoned en route to Bradford).
After ten years of doing this, I really ought to have learned by now to not necessarily trust my weather eye when trying to predict the weather for the Pennines from my regular haunts in greater Leeds, as this past week had me observing all the changeable weather patterns of early Autumn from my vantage point at Seacroft Hospital and figured that a white cloud day projected for Saturday couldn't be more challenging than the passage of sunshine and showers that had covered the five days that preceded it, a display of climate naivete that's completely in keeping with 2021's experience. Our ride out to Hebden Bridge for our fifth and final embarkation of the year has us doubting the weather quality for the day, already grey and drizzly before we're off the train for a start ahead of 9.15am, already happy that we chose to graduate up to a long sleeved jacket before we headed out, and the rain's already coming on as we pass over the Calder and the Rochdale Canal, and make our way across the Burnley Road to the Machpelah terrace and the road towards Keighley, turning northeast as we meet the steep flight of steps that elevates us rapidly up to the raked terraces of Birchcliffe. It'd be a challenging ascent even in warmer temperatures, and as we hit the top, the reach of Marlborough Terrace continues at a similar sort of pitch, as if this town built its urban sprawl without real consideration for how practical it might be as we're elevated high above the combining valleys on the troublingly slick cobbles, passing above the rooftops and looking back to Heptonstall across the way before we join Sandy Gate, shadowing the fall of the Nut Clough as we press on northeasterly, above the tree line and into the rural apron of fields above. It's a slog up this damp tarmac, doing the ascent of the regular 150m of Calderdale ascent and then some as we push away from the clough edge to Lane Ends Lane, getting the fine view of all the amalgamating channels around Hebden Bridge as we press uphill, taking us to the south of Chiserley village, and its nearby companions to the north in Wadsworth and Old Town, almost grazing the settlement as we pass the Hare & Hounds inn by the high lane junction, and join Popples Lane beyond, accessing the farmsteads on the high marginal lands.