Morley to Apperley Bridge 29/07/23

11.7 miles, via Morley Bottoms, Morley Hole, Dean Wood, Gildersome, Andrew Hill,

 Lumb Bottom, Manor Golf Course, Doles Wood, Tong, Daffels Wood, Bankhouse (Bottom),

  Pudsey (Greenside & Cemetery), Owlcotes Centre, Farsley, The Green, Calverley,

   West Wood, and Calverley Cutting.

It transpires that hurrying back Up Country after my jaunt down to Leicestershire proved to be a complete waste if time as the fourth week of July got lost under an almost constant dousing of rain, keeping me at home to settle into domestic tasks and characteristic bursts of lethargy, as I pondered how we could be experiencing so much gloom, wetness and air temperatures that rarely breach 20C in the UK, when southern Europe is baking, and indeed burning, as a heatwave in excess of 40C has settled in, with us sat protected by the jet stream ensuring that we have the apparently miserable summer while Spain, Italy and especially Greece suffer something much, much worse. July's fifth weekend thus presents us with the first opportunity to drop feet in West Yorkshire for the first time in a literal month, while an almost nice day of weather settles in on Saturday morning as we drop in at Morley station for a 9.30am launch, noting that the new development below has moved on a bit in the last week, gaining steel frame towers to accommodate the new lifts, after building work went rather quiet after the soft opening of a month ago, and the route forward sends us up Station Road again, where the re-roofing of Dartmouth Mill continues at a snails pace still, and the factory-mill opposite the rec seems to have new foundations laid where the demolished lean-to annex once stood. Travel proper gets underway past Morley Bottoms as we rise from Brunswick Street sharply up Bank Street for bit of route variation to find that Victoria Road work is up, opposite the primary school, for some roadworks which are sure to cause come bus shenanigans in the coming days, before we keep things varied with a trot up Nepshaw Lane, the old road that leads to the new suburban enclave at Farm Hill Road, which leads us back to the trail of Asquith Avenue, our unavoidable route over the M621 and through Dean Wood before we shift onto Gilhusum Road to pass again through the industrial estate dominated by the Sainsbury's-Argos depot and Johnson's Hotel Laundry complex. 

Syston to Humberstone 19/07/23

11.1 miles, via Lewin Bridge, Shipley Hill, Ratcliffe Mill, Ratcliffe on the Wreake,

 Thrussington, Rearsby, East Goscote, Queniborough, Syson Grange, Barkby, Barkby Thorpe,

  'Thorpebury in the Limes', Hamilton, Nether Hall, and Humberstone Garden Suburb. 

After our Three Day Weekend, we immediately shift over into our Nine Day Weekend, or early Summer break, which I'm spending Down Country with the intent of getting into the gradual tidy-up and clear-out at Mum's house, which has now entered its fifth year and continues its minimal progress as me get into more yard work than planned, as there are hedges and trees to be trimmed, a lawn to be mown and a lot of weeding and pruning to be done, all of which turn out to be major tasks when we both have only about 90 minutes of active stamina to be working with, and she at least has the excuse of being north of 80, while I'm still trying to toil through the post-Covid experience. The legs can still go though, as seemingly the most enduring power source in my body, and when Mum has a day of church synod business in Nottingham, I have the opportunity to walk in the Old Country again, getting dropped off somewhere that's convenient for her whilst en route, and that transpires to be at The Gate Hangs Well inn, on the old Fosse Way to the north of Syston village on the banks of the river Wreake, where we won't be tilting any further up the Roman Road and up the ridge towards Six Hills among the traffic on the A46, but will instead take a bit of a tour around the other major river valley in Leicestershire before tilting for home, to see how greater Leicester is swelling outwards, far beyond the city's boundaries. So we alight at 9.30, at the northernmost extremity of Syston's parish, and set off north, immediately crossing the river Wreake via Lewin's bridge, and strike into the riverside meadows, where the local cattle are only too happy to usher me on my way away from them, over a drainage ditch and under the A607 via the flood relief passages and into the fields beyond, where big birds in the raptor fashion are disturbed and the ridged and furrowed fields make for some heavy going as we press on to re-join the riverbank, passing below the wooded tumulus of Shipley Hill as we push south of the Soar - Wreake watershed ridge. Heading upstream, we enter the woods along the tightening riverside, which gets us into some dense vegetation and undergrowth as the walkable space diminishes, which gets out boots and trews dampened up nicely while the route finding starts to get a bit speculative, having us feeling rather lost when a fallen tree blocks the path, despite being directly across the reedy channel from Beedles Lake golf course, and it's a fight to get back on track before we find the ROW pulling us away from the river and alongside a concealed farmstead as we are drawn on to Broome Lane, ending our off-roading exploits a step or two away from Ratcliffe corn mill, its cottages and phantom canal bridge.

July's Three Day Weekend 07-09/07/23

Alighting on the second weekend of July, we find that it's a long one, with an extra day booked off so that I might be able to have a weekend at My Sister's place without having to run the gauntlet of Friday commuter traffic, but as they have a situation with My Elder Niece having finished her GCSEs and My Younger Niece having a strike day which coincides with one of the warmest and brightest days in a short while, the opportunity is there for a whole family day out, giving them a plan to travel out from Bolton to Brimham Rocks in their new van, with me meeting them midway along by hopping the train to Skipton as the most practical and least time-consuming of the meet up options. It's relatively shocking to realise than almost 6 years have elapsed since I was last out here on the high north side of Nidderdale, though the landscape abounding on the upper limit of my Field of Walking Experience still seem totally familiar as My Sis ad I take a rather languid stroll around the rock formations and among the wild semi-moorland, while Dr G and the Girls get on with some bouldering in the sunshine, which could barely be counted as a proper walk as we amble about for the better part of three hours, wandering well past the limits of the National Trust site and regularly finding places in the shade to sit and contemplate the landscape and our place in it. I think we might be both feeling our age, as I continue to toil with my Post-Covid Experience and the struggles of balancing it with working life, while she contemplates her daughters on the cusp on actual adulthood and reflects on where she was at a similar time in her life, aided by the rediscovery of her old journals and diaries of the period and her desire to revisit the music and style choices of the very late 1980s, which carries us on a nostalgic wave as we wander and then travel away in the late afternoon, back over the Pennines via the East Lancs valley, at least while we're not trying to talk around the problems of the world that have expanded over the last 7 years. This weekend could easily be counted as an extension of the hiatus in my walking year when Saturday's plans fall apart thanks to a rum turn in the weather, with much more cloud and rain, and much less heat, passing over to prevent our planned jaunt down the green path of the Irwell valley coming to naught, so our travel to the city has four of us travelling to the Manchester Museum instead (without Younger Niece who's already becoming a social firefly), and I'm always going to be game for some natural history presented in an interesting way to fill my afternoon, before we pass another evening with takeout Mexican food, beers and a session in fron of the TV, catching up on the Tour de France and watching 'This is Spinal Tap' and 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' (and if you wish to see me act like a total normie, just observe my reactions to the latter of those, because What is Going On in that Movie!?).

Rumination: Morley Gets A New Station

New Station means Selfies!
at Morley 'New' Station.

After a rough start to the year, we finally managed to get a good turn on the walking year as passed through May and June, but as the midway point on the year arrives, we need to have a rest from the regular weekends on the trail, as we already feel like we've been spreading ourselves rather thin with the efforts of keeping myself going through working and walking in the midst of the post-covid experience and having put a decent wad of miles downs so far, a rest feels overdue, before we refocus ourselves on the task in hand, namely getting a whole 300 (Three Hundred!) miles down on the year, a triumphant sounding amount that's still less than half of what I achieved in 2022. It doesn't mean that we don't have things to talk about though, as there's not been a shortage of things going on locally, even if we're going to have to cast our minds back a bit, which shouldn't be too much of problem considering the usual condition of this blog, to two weekends ago, when the engineering possession through Morley station was only on its second day, and I decided to stay in to dedicate myself to writing and housework on Sunday 18th June, with full anticipation that redevelopment progress was going to be slow and the main activity of the long week would be tidily spread out and thus easily observable on the casual. This turned out to be a poor choice, as when I rose on the early morning on the Monday and progressed down to the station to await the rail replacement bus, we found that a lot of activity had gone on since my passing by on Saturday morning, with the footbridge span removed and the 'up' platform completely dug out, with the rails and ballast on the Manchester-bound side also removed and the alignment partially flooded, (due to rain or the spill out from the concealed stream below) with drainage being apparently installed, which pretty definitively drops the curtain on the old L&NWR Morley Low station after almost 175 years, marking my arrival there on the Friday as the last of the in excess of 6,000 journeys that I must have made via it since arriving in town in 2007.