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. 

Cleckheaton Road, Low Moor.

Netherlands Avenue, Moor Top.

St Paul's church and school, Wibsey/Buttershaw?

We detour off the road to pass through a pre-urban knot of cottages via a ginnel and the un-adopted Slack Bottom Road around the Buttershaw Lane WMC and the Gaping Goose inn, which leads us into the suburban borough of Wibsey Slack, evidently spread wide on the high level top of the watershed ridge, and not immediately presenting a dynamic reason to travel this way along Reevylands Drive, until we cross Reevy Road and are presented with a gable wall sized ghost sign that advertises the Bradford Empire theatre and its twice nightly performances. We meet Wibsey Park Road beyond, and we are lead into the park again, taking us around the other side of the duckpond this time, and up past the memorial fountain and the bowling greens to bring us out onto Beacon Road as it sends us west, showing up some of the features which give a flavour of Wibsey village before the city of Bradford consumed it, while we seek our turn beyond the Horse & Groom inn, joining Enfield Drive to enter the high suburbia of semis, and there's no good reason to come this way either, aside from the fact that family friends lived in the close off to the west through the first decades of my life, and it's a location that I want to retrieve from my memories. With that done, we need to make track through this landscape that would not get walked otherwise, tacking north and northeast to head towards the city, along Fairway and Poplar Drive, while confirming Moor Road as path yet to be taken as we come up to the stray farmsteads and cottages of Haycliffe Hill, where the suburbia ends at the edge of the sharp drop of the hillside which runs across south Bradford, and a footpath is joined, down the boundary of the obver-named Black Mountain Millennium Green, where a view is opened out across northwest Bradford, framing Great Horton parish church, Manningham Mills and Idle Hill in the renewed sunshine. That's us over the Aire - Calder watershed for the last time this year, as we come down into the landscape of semis below, descending at a happier gradient as we pass down Southmere Drive, with a much clearer sense of where we're headed as we arrive on Southfield Lane, just ahead of the urban hamlet of Low Green, where a look west reveals another fine ghost sign, gable wall-sized again, just beyond the Fire Brigade inn, before we join Cross Street and take a tour among the haphazardly built rural cottages and terraces that were subsumed as the city swelled.

The Ghost Sign terrace, Reevy Road, Wibsey Slack.

Beacon Lane End, Wibsey.

The view from 'Black Mountain, Haycliffe Hill.

The Ghost Sign, and the Fire Brigade inn, Low Green

We emerge onto the A6177 ring road, and cross Hudson Avenue down from the prominent St Oswald's school and The Ridge medical practice, and are led briefly along Cousen Road into Horton Park, which feels like the proudest one that the city has to offer, with a broad promenading route making its way down among the formal boulevards of mature trees, a good place to exercise limbs and dogs on a Monday morning, and we'll note the petrified tree stump and the ornamental lake a bridge midway down as we take the central avenue down through the proudly illuminated colours of autumn.We'll break at its base, for snack and hot brew on a convenient bench, enjoying the symmetry of ending the season with some park walking, just like we started it, and then its onwards, across Horton Park Road and through the grounds of the medical centre on the site of Little Horton railway station, noting that the Bradford grand mosque remains unfinished as we come out onto All Saints Lane and join the terraced vintage stretch of the city as we need a tiny bit of navigating to join Dirkhill Road, where the long terrace draws us down to a tree lined embankment, which the GNR City Road goods line once penetrated. The bridge remnants can be spied on both sides, above and below, and the trackbed north appears to have a footpath on it towards the nest two roads up, but that will have to wait for our future footfalls as we make our way into the city, resuming the terraced company as we follow the #576 bus route into town, with three different educational establishments filling in the entire southern side of the road as it transitions across Laisteridge Road to Easby Road, getting us into that landscape of middle class Victorian townhouses which are practically too large for the modern world, which now forms Bradford's student land. It's odd that this downhill run through Shearbridge, terminating with Morley Street, is the official route of the A647, keeping away from Great Horton Road before it drops into the tangle of city centre roads by the Queen's Hall concert venue, formerly the city's central baths, and we'll avoid the commercial centre again by turning with Chester Street and Senior Way, passing over the bottom of Little Horton Road and around the tower block that houses both the ice rink and trampoline park, before my progress is delayed by a very polite young Muslim guy who sees my bearded self as an ideal candidate to proselytize to.

Horton Park, Bradford.

The grand mosque, Horton Park Avenue.

Legends spots bar, Easby Road.

The Queen's Hall, Morley Street.

I carry on unconverted (noting that's the second time that I've had that happen to me on my travels), to make the passage across the A641 Manchester Road, past the Covid testing and vaccinating facility and joining Croft Street as it rises up to the south of the city centre, taking us behind the Santander offices and over Interchange station to get us onto the side of the Wakefield Road where the A647 and A650 get tangled up and we can resume the path that the weather forced us to abandon back in May, seeking a path alongside the Shipley-Airedale Road that's harder to find than it ought to be. It's on the east side, as the one by the Vue cinema peters out, and the way up to the junction with Leeds Road seems to have been plotted out to confuse pedestrians, which is why it needed a thorough examination before we approached it, and while we're trying to head north, we actually forced to join the eastbound A647 for a hundred yards or so as the pedestrian crossings are the only safe ways to cross the dual carriageways hereabouts, adding a lot of extra distance before we can cross back over the A650 to get on track by the former Central Baptist chapel, that's now the city's most prominent Sikh Gurdwara. Peckover Street leads us away from the traffic and into the landscape of Victorian warehouse that looks like its having a bit of an urban renaissance, where a number of apartment complexes have been developed, and some street art had been placed, like the armchair and grandfather clock in carved sandstone and the mosaic in nails of local boy David Hockney on opposing corners of Chapel Street, found ahead of crossing Burnett Street and getting the reveal of Bradford Cathedral, positively glowing in the midday sunshine, ahead of passing behind it via Stott Hill. From up here, we can start out explore of the lost Bradford Canal, looking down to where its Hoppy Bridge terminus was once located, in the vicinity of the later and now equally absent Forster Square plaza from 1774 to 1867, before we descend to Bolton Road to pass Napoleon's casino in its Art Deco factory building, behind which the canal channel once ran, which is traced further as we join Wharf Street and wander up to the Kia and Honda dealerships, but seeing nothing of it as the local landscape has been thoroughly rearranged in the century and a half since its initial closure.

Interchange station, from Croft Street.

The former chapel/Gurdwara, Shipley Airedale Road.

Bradford Cathedral.

The view towards Hobby Bridge wharf, from Stott Hill.

The revived Zetland Mill wharf, active from 1872 until the canal's final closure in 1922, was located under the merging A650 and A6181 and there's no suggestion of anything left of it here, aside from the name of Canal Road, but that doesn't mean that its 3+ mile length should be ignored, even if its location is mentally tenuous, at best, and it hard to imagine its necessity for the import of materials to and export of goods from the city in the industrial age, though its water supply issues and status as a major health hazard are oddly more conceivable as we tramp up this dry valley, looking across to Valley Parade stadium on the west side. Considering the channel's passage behind the King's Gates and Valley Court business parks, home to the Pakistan Consulate and many car dealerships, to find a proper remnant we have to rise with King's Road as it ascends the east side of the valley, taking us slightly off route but revealing the remains of of the bridge that passed over the canal, the northern half of which is still in situ, infilled below its arch with the canal passage still visible on the ground beyond, snaking behind the gasworks enclosure, where the gasometers are being dismantled after more than a century of service. Our route the carries on with the A6037 among many more car showrooms, taking us under the A6177 Queen's Road bridge, which is much older than you'd think, housing Canal Road under the left of its three arches, and the former canal having flowed beneath the third, while beyond we can sneak up the end of Bolton Road to observe the path of the canal running beyond the infilled bridge, taking a tree lined passage behind the Midland (Railway) Terrace on the main road front, before disappearing behind the Arnold Laver Timberworld to the north, which we'll trace a way in front of. Split off with Stanley Road as it arrives from the north east, rising to pass onto another bridge over the canal, with the alignment obscured by the Grant & Bowman plant to the south, but still accessible from the edge of the King George V memorial playing fields downstream, where its iron span and large void below (clean of evidence of rough sleepers or dossing kids, interestingly) can be regarded, before we join the Route 66 cycleway link, skirting the side of this former sewage works to lead us to Gaisby Road, where we'll go off track to force a look at its overbridge again, from towpath level this time around, and in much drier weather too.

Zetland Mill wharf, somewhere under Canal Road.

The King's Road canal bridge.

The Queen's Road bridge, canal arch on right.

Canal alignment behind Midland Terrace.

The Stanley Road canal bridge.

The Gaisby Road canal bridge.

The alignment might be accessible beyond, via Powell Road and the Bolton Woods junior FC fields, but we'll stick to the cycleway as it does its miniature Calderdale thing, squeezing into the valley floor along with the road, railway, beck and former canal, passing through some relative wildness before meeting the open fields around Dumb Mill Place, with the canal having matched the contemporary route of Poplar Crescent before meeting the Crag End lock flight site, across Poplar Road, now covered by a grassy slope, though the retaining walls at the roadside are still in place, as is a vintage cottage that might be related(?). The hard cycleway takes us below the craggy and wooded edges of the hillside that comes down from Windhill, with us tracing the side of Bradford Beck as it makes an above surface reappearance, or two, through the still not quite autumnally coloured green corridor down to the Briggate Bridge, which spans both watercourses with both stone arch and iron beam, while forming the most visible relic of the canal route to any casual observer, beyond which urban redevelopment has claimed the Midland dye works site by the beck, with the Perseverance mill sit having been also cleared for future waterfront living. The last reach of the cycleway brings us into Shipley, southeast of the railway station, and onto Leeds Road by the still intact GNR Windhill station, where we'll cross over the A657 where the canal passed under it, making sure to check out the vintage retaining walls to the north before we make our way onto Dock Street to regard the fact that the pumping station and lock keeper's cottage are still in place around the site of Lock #1, ahead of where the canal passed under the former and contemporary railways, where all trace of the passage has been erased, since its closure a century ago. There is one last remnant to see though, as a stub of its junction with the Leeds & Liverpool canal is still in water, and only really identifiable if you know what you're looking at, essentially forming a secluded mooring in the vicinity of Shipley's waterfront developments and the enduring industry at Junction Mills, to be regarded from all sides as we return to the major canal's towpath for the first time in a while, tracking west past the Gallows Bridge moorings and over the Bradford Beck aqueduct, as the stream flows away to the nearby River Aire.

Canal Alignment under Poplar Crescent.

Poplar Road walls, and Crag End Locks cottage?

Briggate bridge over canal and Bradford Beck.

Leeds Road canal bridge, Windhill.

Pumping Station and Lock Cottage, Dock Lane.

The Bradford Canal stub, Shipley.

Exploration concluded, it's only a short walk to the finish line from here, over the iron footbridge and out onto A657 Briggate between Kwik Fit and Aldi to make our way to the station beyond, rising up the steps to the north side of the triangle, arriving to conclude the day, and Season #10 of this walking odyssey at 1.30pm, checking off the last station of the middle Airedale group before me make for home, finding that all the electric services are not running anywhere on these lines, and the diesel unit that is literally just arriving, on the S&C service,  has been delayed by over an hour. ~~~ Thus another 70 minutes' worth of extra passengers are Leeds bound as we make our cramped passage down Airedale, which makes my decision for me as to where my 'end of a decade's walking' celebration lunch might be had, at Five Guys on Duncan Street, as I've long been curious as to the claims of them providing 'quality burgers done right', and it turns out that it's fine, their cheeseburger being just what I fancied at the year's end, but absolutely not worth the price, which is so absurdly high that I might be certain that I was charged for two meals, rather than one (No kidding, I've had freshly prepared, waited and sit-down, steak dinners that were cheaper than this ostensibly take out meal, so, I'll have to rate it a 5/10 'would not purchase again' for the record, while also positively noting that I got so many fries that there were enough to make myself a decent chip butty for my tea, to go along with my season concluding beers, several hours later).

Happy End of First Decade of Walking, Everyone!

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 5284.7 miles

2021 Total: 542.6 miles
Up Country Total: 4821.7 miles
Solo Total: 4953.1 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 3882.5 miles

Next Up: Pandemic Thoughts for November, because that's still a thing.