Pontefract to Wakefield 02/04/22

11.1 miles, via Pontefract Castle, Pontefract Park, Park Hill, North Featherstone, 

 Snydale Villas & Streethouse, Sharlston Common, Brand Hill, Bracken Hill, 

  Heath Common, Belle Vue, Fall Ings, and Wakefield Bridge. 

There's only one day of Walking to be had whilst Down Country, as there's also three days of labour to be done around My Mum's house, and a sudden downturn in the quality of the weather to be contended with before we instead return to this season's regular stomping grounds in search of one of the few remaining trajectories in West Yorkshire that hasn't been traced, which involves installing Pontefract as our probable launch point for trails in many directions for the year, alighting at 9.30am again at Monkhill station, with all of the sunshine of two weeks ago, but none of the heat to go with it. To head westwards, we first fall and rise with Mill Dam Lane, past the Railway inn and the Hope & Anchor to arrive below the bailey of Pontefract castle, tracing it around Beech Hill and Castle Chain to land beneath the keep, and its quatrefoil donjon, before rising to the town up Micklegate and Horsefair, noting just how many tower blocks have been built up the hillside without spoiling the ancient aspect of the town centre beyond the Town Hall, along  Market Place to the Butter Cross and St Giles church, and down Beastfair to the war memorial. Split off Cornmarket by the old Courthouse, and descend off the hill via Sessions House Yard and Colonels Walk, between Haribo factory and Leisure centre to find the way down to the railway, which is passed under via the foot tunnel by the playing fields of Pontefract Collieries FC and the urban enclave that has developed around them, rising past Tanshelf station and over the A639  by the gates to Pontefract Park, joining Park Lane as it propels us along the suburban ribbon at the town's west end, past New College and up Park Hill, arriving below the prominent water tower. Having risen with the B6134 to a modest height, a westward view emerges, to the county's distant southwestern horizon, with Woolley Edge and Emley Moor re-sequenced ahead of it, giving us something to look at across the fields of blooming rapeseed as we work our way along the perimeter of Pontefract Golf Course, offering no views north through the hawthorn hedges until its full length has been passed, revealing the look over Glass Houghton and Castleford, and the look towards Leeds, peeking its highest towers above nearby hills, and showing the Aire-Wharfe watershed ridge bounding the city to its west and east.

Morley Far North Circuit 04/07/20

12.1 miles, from Morley Hole, via Bruntcliffe, Gildersome Spur Ind Est, Gildersome, 

 Moor Head, Cockersdale, Nan Whins Wood, Roker Lane Bottom, Troydale, Green Lane, 

  Farnley Hall Park, Farnley, New Blackpool, Far Royds, Cottingley Hall, Millshaw, 

   White Rose centre, Valley Mills, 'City', Scatcherd Park, and New Brighton. 

It's the top of the year already, and while National Lockdown effectively ends today with the revival of the hospitality industry, freedom to travel by public transport still seems to be formally discouraged, and thus we are still keeping the wandering local, but not for much longer as I'm starting to run out of local circuits to do around Morley, this will be my eighth and I can't envisage any more routes that have a substantial element of fresh paths to pace, so we'll be looking further afield after this weekend, pandemic crisis or not. So we launch ourselves out, as June's queer weather behaviours continue into July, with slatey skies abounding as we start out again from Morley Hole at 9.10am, aiming to the north of town by setting off to the southwest with Bruntcliffe Lane, rising with the course of the A643 past the Fielding and Highcliffe Mill site, and barely getting past Morley cemetery before we tick over the 4,000 miles in the North marker, a mere calculation error away from dropping last weekend, and passed in the least auspicious of surroundings, as we carry on past Bruntcliffe Academy to the Toby carvery and Travelodge at the A650 crossroads. Turn onto the Wakefield Road as it leads out over the M621, following a route that always falls as this way out of town, and a route we are only pacing today so that an unseen path might be paced beyond, taking us up Stone Pits Lane as it traverses the Gildersome Spur business park, and wandering through an industrial estate for fun is what we really should be doing to expand the horizons, meeting the grassy path that tracks north between the yard and depot of Downton distribution before we pass over the embankment of the lost GNR line through Morley, still forming a tree-lined perimeter at its top edge. Beyond, we meet the fields that have been levelled with great purpose for a redevelopment that has stalled, leaving a barren landscape to the west, which has also seen the improvement of the public paths in the area and some major work done at the head of Dean Beck too, though the passage out of Dean Wood must be tenuous now, as we join that route paced in 2016 as we rise up the gravelly track up the A62 Gelderd Road, and on into Gildersome via College Road and its mix of suburbia, where its most interesting feature, Turton Hall, is mostly concealed by trees, new build houses and an ancient brick wall.

Mirfield to Sowerby Bridge 23/02/20

11.6 miles. via Battyeford, Cooper Bridge, Nun Bank Wood, Clifton Wood, Brighouse, 
 Brookfoot, Freeman's Wood, Cromwell Bottom, Binns, Elland Park Wood, Elland Bridge, 
  Elland Wood, Salterhebble, Copley. Long Wood, and Bolton Brow. 

Another weekend in February brings another Atlantic Storm, and thus walking plans get shuffled to the Sunday, which presents a better sort of day weather-wise, which is fortunate as I need to make an early morning trip to the opticians to collect my new specs, and the day also has My Sister and Nieces making the trip over the Pennines for a visit, as their day had been cleared for a mountain biking event that they really didn't fancy in the windy conditions, so we are instead able to burn the day off with a trip around the town and dinner at Trinity Kitchen while having more of the catch up that we didn't complete at Christmas. A day off is also useful for starting to get used to the vari-focal lens in my new glasses, and the art of learning to focus at three different distances, not that I'll be taking them out for a walking trip the following day, as I need the familiarity of my old specs as we seek to trace a route to the edge of Upper Calderdale, in keeping with the proposed theme for the year, and matching a trajectory from 2012 to test the theory that a difference of a mere half mile from a previous path can reveal the world in a completely new way. So to Mirfield we ride, starting late to allow most of the day's rain pass early on, and giving us a short window before the heat loss of winter starts, so we are wrapped up in thermal and windcheater as we alight at 11.20am, setting our course under the railway and along Station Road up to Bull Bridge, to make our base-tough with the Calder & Hebble Navigation before rising to meet the main road up Calderdale, turning onto the A644 Huddersfield Road at the town's heart and setting off west, past the library, the Co-op and St Paul's church. Past the wholly intact buildings of Fold Head mills, and war memorial in Ings Grove park, we are soon slipping out of this most urbane of villages, with a band of industry filling up the strip of land between the road and the River Calder, in the middle of which we find the remains of the L&NWR's Battyeford viaducts on the Leeds New Lines, with a runs of blue brick arches running up to the roadside, and a string of stone arches sitting by the riverbank, easily the most interesting thing to my eyes at this edge of the town, so naturally this is where the last rain cloud of the day passes over to spoil my photography opportunities. The damp gloom doesn't last though, as the sunshine breaks out as we pass on through Battyeford among its roadside cottages below the rising bank to the north, coming upon the side of the Calder beyond the Pear Tree inn, and it's high and thundering after the overnight rains, looking ominous below Wood Lane bridge and keeping its volume up as we pass the band of playing fields on the low bank, with the river showing the most of its agitation as it runs over the weir by the former West Riding flour mills site.

Witton Weavers Way #1 - Witton Park to Dimple 17/07/19

14.9 miles, via Billinge Hill, Yellow Hills, Close farm, Hoghton Bottoms, The Horr, 
 Causeway wood, Sun Mill, Stanworth wood, Red Lea, Abbey Village, Rake Brook reservoir, 
  Roddlesworth reservoirs, Tockholes plantations, Hollinshead Hall, Pasture Houses Hey, 
   Longworth Moor, and Delph Brook plantations.

Long Distance Trail means Selfies!

#1 at Witton Park.

Anyone who's been following my walking career across 7+ years and two blogs will be aware that walking the Witton Weavers Way has been planned for in every walking season I have done, but has never gotten onto the schedule as circumstances have always found me doing something else when I've travelled to the West Pennines to visit My Sister and her family, so as the eighth season presses on to my Summer Jollies, we find good reason to get it off the schedule as My Mum needs to come up country as we three all need to be in one place to get some business sorted with HM Land Registry. That's all sorted at the Fylde office on Tuesday morning, which hopefully resolves all the remaining issues with regards our inheritance of Dad's estate, and then we can shift focus onto tackling this 32 mile circular trail that supposedly celebrates the pre-industrial heritage of this corner of Lancashire, that is actually Blackburn with Darwen's major trail, as Bolton district doesn't actually have one, which My Sister and I will be able to take on while enjoying the flexibility of having two other adults around while My Nieces go through the motions of their last week of school. So onwards, getting driven up from Egerton to Witton Park on the western side of Blackburn in the Parental Taxi, for a start at 9.15am, in alien walking territory but in a corner that's still plenty familiar as this former country estate that has been Blackburn's municipal park since 1946 has been a regular stomping ground for My Sister's family, and the route, starting off past the arena and athletics track, up to the old  pavilion and into Big Cover Wood traces the route of the first walk that I ever took with my Younger Niece, in the late summer of 2008. The rising track is just as testing for the early going as it was then, and I always seem to pant harder when in company, as I'm compelled to walk at someone else's pace, rising to the open fields that give us a look over the southern portion of Blackburn, with Ewood Park stadium obvious, and back to the northern flank of the West Pennine Moors, which this trail will take a while to get to as it loops northwards for a while, pressing uphill past Higher Garden Plantation to the limit of the parkland at Under Billinge Lane and joins the path across the slanted plots on which the woodlands of Billinge Hill stand, though we won't be seeking the summit path this time, but instead hang close to its western perimeter on the sharply rising and sometimes obscure track to seek the route westwards.