Low Moor to Shipley 08/11/21

10.4 miles via Moor Top, Wibsey Slack, Wibsey Park, Haycliffe Hill, Low Green, Horton Park, 

 Dirk Hill, Shearbridge, Croft Street, Eastbrook, Stott Hill, Canal Wharf, Canal Road, 

  Bolton Woods, Dumb Mill Place, Crag End, Windhill, and Gallows Bridge. 

We shall not have a glum finale to 2021's walking year, as I'll be spending my end of season / birthday week off work Up Country for a change, which opens up the opportunity to pick up some of the shorter trips that dropped from the schedule, which could have plausibly numbered three thanks to a decent weather projection, but as I've actually got plans of necessary things to do while My Mum visits (taking another chance for her to get away from home for a bit), means that I'll only get in one, which is fine, as I've still got a lost canal to seek and one more railway station in mid-Airedale to visit. So our finale transit of greater Bradford starts at Low Moor at 9.15am under a wash of Autumnal sunshine, marking this out as the only trip of the year in this direction that hasn't started in Kirklees or Calderdale, as we move out to Cleckheaton Road to start as track to the kinda northwest, taking us past the terraced blocks that I'm pretty sure were built to service the former railway shed, rather than the ironworks, noting that it's still solidly industrial here as we press past the eastern perimeter of the Solenis chemical works and the Rhenus Logistics distribution depot, bounded by the ditch containing the river Spen. At the Brighouse Road corner, we pass through the Memorial Gardens and cross Common Road to join Netherlands Avenue, where the rise up towards the watershed ridge starts in earnest, with most our our usual miles of preamble having been shed thanks to a much closer start than usual, and this suburban boulevard lead us up to the crossing of the A649 Huddersfield Road, where we have to ponder if it feels familiar at all (almost forgotten since featuring on 2020's pre-pandemic season opener, it seems) and thence its on uphill, through Bradford's south-facing suburbia on this once-leafy boulevard. Meet Halifax Road, right by the tram tracks, and it's not even 48 hours since we were last passing this way, as we continue our fresh trajectory to the northwest, crossing to St Paul's Avenue to rise on through the suburban band, before meeting a real situation of dueling churches and schools, as St Winifrede's RC establishments occupy sites on both sides of the road as if they were trying to crowd out those of the CofE at St Paul's, the parish church of Wibsey and Buttershaw, urban boroughs which spread out to both sides of us up here. 

Halifax to Frizinghall 06/11/21

13.4 miles, via Old Bank, Stump Cross, Northowram, Stone Chair, Shelf Hall, Shelf, Beck Hill /   Royds Woodside, Buttershaw Mills, Odsal Top, Staygate, Goose Hill, Cutler Heights, Tyersal,      Thornbury, Moorside, Undercliffe / Eccleshill,  Five Lane Ends, Bolton Hall, and Bolton Woods.

As we lapse into the season of GMT and reach the final walking weekend of the year, we again find ourselves travelling out to Halifax, which seems to have quite unintentionally become our late season launching pad, like how Hebden Bridge took a similar status in the middle season, mostly because we've found a few new trajectories and un-traced paths heading out from it during our closing phase of route planning, and we had better get them down now, as we don't have plans to be burning any more trails in this quarter over the next few years. So it's off the Grand Central KGX express again for a 9am start, hoping that the glum weather will hold off a second time as we start out, aware of the lost hour of daylight as we start another trek to the northeast, descending away from the station down to Church Street, passing around the old railway goods yard and past the Ring O' Bells inn and Halifax Minster before passing over the hidden Hebble below Lower Kirkgate as we pass the decaying coal drops and the projections of the lost and contemporary railway viaducts before starting our path out of the valley, up Bank Bottom past the Matalan store on the Clarks Bridge mills site. This leads us up to the bottom of Old Bank, the forgotten old road into the valley which provides a testing ascent on steep and slick cobbles, rising us on through the trees on the Beacon Hill side as we pass above the views over the town, to be regarded for one last time before we head up through the cover of foliage to Beacon Hill Road and the flight of steps up to Godley Branch Road, which leads us to the A58 Godley Road, where the footway is joined again as we pass under Godley Bridge and enter the cutting that digs through the hilltop beyond. It's out third trek along here in this direction over the last two seasons, an odd choice when we still haven't seen Shibden Hall up close, just off our path to the southeast as we cut across Shibden Dale at the roadside, where there's been just enough leaf shedding going on to afford us the approximation of a view upstream into this hidden valley before we arrive at Stump Cross again, passing its inn and tall terraces on the corner before coming past the toll house and join the new turnpike to take us on our way, rising with the A6036 Bradford Road as it elevates us up the valley side, though not quite as sharply as the old road does.