Morley to Bretton Park 07/10/23

12.9 miles, via Levisham Park, Burn Knolls, Birks, Woodkirk. Hey Beck, Gawthorpe,

  Ossett Street Side, Ossett, South Ossett, Horbury, Aggingford Hill, Hartley Bank,

   New Scarborough, Netherton, Stock's Moor Common, Bretton Common, West Bretton,

    and The Weston; plus October's Long Weekend. 

The first weekend of October drops us our next long weekend, thanks to extra days of leave purchased from work, falling neatly between my late Summer and end of season breaks, which had been intended to be a few days to relax and stroll a bit, but turned into a four day spell of activity when I found a steam rail tour for the Thursday, the last of the West Coast Railways season, which travelled up the Settle & Carlisle line and neatly dovetailed with the occasion of my Mum's 81st birthday, which allowed me to fulfil a promise that I made the previous year to take her out for a steam train ride for her 80th, so I've got her company for the period, with us taking each other out to celebrate our birthdays. Riding out from Wakefield Westgate, it's not needing a early start despite the descent of Autumn, though our travel window does tighten somewhat thanks to the service running out of York some 45 minutes late, at 10.25am bringing us our rake of vintage BR Mark 1 coaches and topped 'n' tailed diesels that will take us to Leeds for a reversal and then a merry pound up the Aire Valley to gain our steam traction from Hellifield to take us non-stop over the watershed and up the Long Drag of Northern England's premier scenic line, which we haven't seen in far too long, up the Ribble Valley and among the Three Peaks, to Dentdale, over Ais Gill summit and on down the Eden Valley. Somehow, all the time lost early is regained as we reach Carlisle, at 2.15pm, where we can find that it's been the line-appropriate LMS Jubilee 45627 Sierra Leone hauling us (actually 45699 Galatea in disguise, and oddly wearing the number of 45662 Alberta on its cab sides), and there's locomotive manoeuvres to be watched at both ends of the break, which is otherwise only long enough for a stroll from the Citadel to Tullie House museum and back, where we can have brews and cake, and purchase that Hadrian's Wall Path t-shirt that I've been promising myself since failing to find one in 2014. Departing at 4.30pm, with the daylight still strong and the changeable and rather poor weather not really spoiling the trip we re-ride the path homewards, breaking for water and photographs at Appleby before lamenting the lack of audible chuffing from the locomotive and clickety-clacking of the rails as we ascend to Ais Gill again, gradually losing the landscape in the gloom as we come down the Ribble valley and finally finding ourselves in darkness as engines are swapped again at Hellifield, a long break that coincides usefully with teatime, before we run back to homewards in a surprisingly familiar 1980s train fashion, with the jaunt concluding at 9.15pm, a round trip of nearly 11 hours that we both enjoyed immensely, thankfully.

Rumination: Summer Jollies (with Trains, Birds & the Night Skies)

Featuring: Ruswarp to Whitby - 1.5 miles, via the Rail & Riverside Path. 07/09/23

Esk View cottage might be the
 best letting we've scored so far!

Back in May, I pontificated some on the real value of a holiday break away from home, having let the disappointing opening of the year pass away and getting the spirits lifted with a warm week away on the Yorkshire Coast to get my walking year going properly, and three months on from the revivifying benefits of my Spring Jollies, I can tell you that exactly the same benefit can be felt at the End Of Summer, having endured two of the most frustrating months of poor weather, low energy and lacking motivation, heading away from the persistent gloom and changeability that has blighted July and August to be rewarded with the bright and warm week and the universe knew I spiritually needed. It’s another Friday-Friday let that we’re taking, going back to the coastal edge of the North York Moors after Mum expressed an interest in staying in the vicinity of Whitby, and I pulled up a very plausible pair of walks on the moors that got plotted when I was first seeking out rail trails at the start of my walking escapades in 2012, having managed to find a cottage at a significant reduction in price for the week after the end of the schools Summer break, just outside the town in the village of Ruswarp (which is pronounced Ruh-sup, if you were wondering), in a peaceful little idyll of its own, away from the tight streets and general throng of visitors that comes with this most beloved of coastal settlements. Even arriving having passed over moors under the heaviest of damp palls hanging in the air via the A169 does not do anything to temper our enthusiasm that we feel for Esk View cottage, and even on arrival we know that we’ve scored ourselves a gem that will be absolutely ideal for our rest and relaxation needs, amply sized and quietly out of the way at the end of its close, right on the north bank of the river Esk, with its own terrace and directly across from the railway bridge, which means that there will be entertainment to be had, even when settled in at our holiday base, be it on the rails above the water’s surface, or on the banks and their surroundings. 

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.

Rumination: Spring Jollies & Planet Spotting

Blogging with a View, in Scarborough.

Sometimes, the value of a week away from home really cannot be understated and before we press on into the High Season, it's worth pausing for a brief moment to contemplate just how good getting away from it all has been for me at the end of May, completely breaking away from all that's going on in my regular life and work in Leeds, and putting some considerable mental and physical distance between it and me, allowing me to properly unwind after some testing weeks and to allow me to get back into a creative mindset that had almost fallen way to the point of irredeemability, restoring my belief that I will be able to continue pursing the hobbies that I've invested so much into over the last decade. Peace and Quiet is wholly under-rated need in this age of almost constant activity, and we really managed to find that on this break away, keeping away from all the disturbances that you might expect when staying in a seaside town, which we were only just doing, as our let was to be found about three miles out from Scarborough town centre, right on the edge of the Throxenby and Newby estates, and looking over the hillsides of the North Yorkshire Moors, where the River Derwent and Scalby Beck rise, on an urban country lane where there was little traffic to be had outside of commuter hours, allowing us all the silence that we needed to allow us to unwind. Thusly, across all my days off the trail, we had time in the mornings and evening to get busy with catching up on almost two months worth of blogging, which you wouldn't know from the timestamps on these posts, but anyone who's been following me for a while should know that my time-keeping is a complete tissue of lies, and that I work better when away from my own desk, despite it being set up for my needs with an appropriately adjustable chair, leading me to conclude that I do my best work when sat at a dining table with an uncomfortable seat that needs to be padded with random cushions, working in a posture that surely couldn't be doing my back, neck or arm joints any favours. 

Shepley to Clayton West & the Kirklees Light Railway 07/09/19

4.9 miles, via Shelley station, Shelley Woodhouse, Skelmanthorpe, and Cuckoo's Nest, 

 & 1.1 miles from Shelley station to Shepley.

With 2019's Crazy Scheme done and dusted, it's soon time to return Up Country, not least because Mum has another holiday to go on, her third(!) of the year, and despite having enjoyed a week away in the Old Country, with all the hospitality that comes with it, it doesn't really feel like I've had proper Summer Jollies, not least because we didn't have an excursion of any kind while I was away, having filled every day with walking, blogging or yard work, so for this Saturday we'll have our day out, by seeking out the steam railway that hides away in the heart of Kirklees district. So off to Shepley we ride, a step or three away from our recent walking terrain in West Yorkshire, alighting at 9.30am, and setting off east past the station house and former goods shed which takes us onto Station Lane, past the coal drops and down to the railway hotel, now the Cask & Spindle inn, in the shadow of the bridge over Abbey Lane, where we cross the A629 and rise with the narrow lane beyond to the collection of cottages at Shepley Knoll. This is an exclusive feeling corner of the village that's filled with exclusive feeling corners, and here we tangle up with the Kirklees Way route as we trace it back along the shaded High Moor Lane, getting views over to Shelley and the Emley Moor Mast as we go, with the feeling that the morning isn't going to brighten up markedly as we come around to the corner of Yew Tree wood and join the footpath that leads into the fields beyond, up and over a grassy crest and a number of stiles to land us among the docile and sand coloured cows that reside around Hardingley farm. Its driveway leads us to Copley Lane, which we cross, just up from the railway bridges, and join the rough path that leads us up to Upper Ozzings farm (or Ox Springs, if you prefer), where a footpath bridge take us over the Penistone Line, and over to the alignment of the L&YR's Clayton West branch of 1879, where the Kirklees Light Railway's Shelley station terminus now resides, where it's too early to catch a train on the narrow gauge line, and so we'll have to carry on alongside this 3.5 mile branch to its other end, which incidentally never became the former company's mainline to Barnsley. Field paths and an enclosed track take us past Lower Ozzings farm, and up to the towering bridge over Barncliffe Hill road, where we gain a decently surfaced path alongside the tracks of this line that somehow retained a passenger service until 1983, spying the cattle creeps and stream crossings as they pierce the rising embankment, and we plough uphill as the railway dives downwards, soon coming up above the 467m Woodhouse tunnel, the vast cavern of which positively dwarfs the 15 inch gauge line that passes through it.

Bolton Abbey to Embsay & Skipton 17/06/18

A ride on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, 
 plus 3.1 miles, via Haw Park and Skipton Woods.

It's been a while since I did a walk ending on a preserved railway, not since visiting the K&WVR in October 2013, and as I've done more than my fair share of lamenting the passing of the former Midland Railway line of 1888 from Ilkley to Skipton, it makes sense that I should make use of what remains of it while I'm in the vicinity, and it's a good treat for me for Father's Day, if you ignore the lack of children but to factor in the advance of middle age. So to the trains at the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, and I'm lucky that it's a two train day as the 3pm departure from Bolton Abbey station is due to leave and I board with barely enough time to see what is hauling it, though I do know it's a diesel in BR blue, departing the modest distance to the west through a landscape of quarries to the south and views to the flank of Barden Moor to the north, taking this ride in British Railways Mk 1 corridor stock, which I'm old enough to remember still being in use on BR back in the day. Features along the way are the Stoneacre Loop, established in 1991, where we pass the signal box and the steam service heading in the opposite direction, and also Holywell Halt, the line's terminus from 1987, where the Craven Fault can be viewed, as well as the Holy Well, I'd assume, taken in on the 20 minute ride to Embsay which has been the base of the railway's operations since 1979 and publicly operational since 1981, home to its sheds and workshops, and very nicely preserved with many of its original MR features enduring. Disembark to see what's hauling us, a BR English Electric Type 3, 37294, which soon runs around and then takes us back from whence we came, passing the steam service again and thinking it looks like a Caley Tank, before we roll into Bolton Abbey again, where we can have a poke around the site that has been open since 1998 and is now in the midst of having its island platform rebuilt, letting the diesel service depart before we examine the stock parked up here. The line almost has an unparalleled collection of Hunslet and Hudswell Clarke Industrial locomotives, all Leeds built and in various states of viability, including line stalwart Wheldale, parked up and awaiting funding for its revival, and then the steam train arrives, hauled by Taff Vale Railway O2 class 85, actually a Welsh locomotive but Scottish built in 1899 and a real survivor having been in colliery use for over 40 years after withdrawal by the GWR in the 1920s. This visitor from the K&WVR can haul us back on the last train of the day, as I had promised myself a steam train ride, even if we get double headed by the Class 37 for the very last leg as we run into Embsay at 5.40pm feeling like I got my money's worth on my £11 ticket, having fitted in a there and back, and there again into my two and a half hours on the E&BASR.