Headingley to Woodlesford 24/02/18

10.6 miles, via Meanwood, Miles Hill, Potternewton, Harehills, Osmandthorpe,

 Halton West, Skelton Moor, Newsam Green, and Leventhorpe.

The Specs that saw Everything so far

get retired after 11+ years service.

Before we get going again, we have to announce another early season retirement as my other constant companion of the last decade gets replaced, the specs that I got in 2006 finally get an update, and the eyes that have literally seen everything I have over my walking career get renewed, not because my sight is suffering, more that the time has come for something new. So the small and wiry pair that were definitively the best glasses I have ever worn get retired, replaced by the nearest equivalent that I could find in Specsavers as current styles of chunky and plasticy are certainly not my thing, and not costing me a whole lot of coins either, and if the new ones do me right for 11+ years, I'll certainly be a happy camper. And so we move on, due for more Crosstown Traffic in the City of Leeds, as there have been so many trails radiating out from the centre and not enough going from side to side, and so we set out with a two-day circular route in mind, to get in much of North and East Leeds along the way of leg #1, disembarking at Headingly station at 10.40am, starting late and hopeful that the winter sunshine will offset the low temperature and persistent easterly wind, with the day warming through a bit as we go. So eastwards we head, from this charmingly domestic station in the suburbs, past the railway cottages and setting course along Kirkstall Lane for the village centre, among the suburban spread, but noting the large Victorian houses of Oakfield and St Ann's Tower that stand on either side of the railway line and the Queenswood Drive junction before we run into the terraces that student land is still just about clinging onto. The looming mass of Headingley stadium, home of Yorkshire CCC and not enough England Test matches, appears on the horizon, looking much larger now that the Carnegie pavilion rises above the Len Hutton gates, and it's telling that my detachment from cricket is so bad that the last time I came here was in the days when Twenty20 was a fun diversion rather than a scourge on the modern game.

Cottingley to Leeds 17/02/18

10.8 miles, via Beeston, Middleton, Belle Isle, Hunslet, Knostrop, and Richmond Hill.

As is happens, there were no options for new trails to be burned in Lancs when I spent last weekend with My Sister, largely due to the weather being persistently unpleasant, and with her having a lot of work to do thanks to her change of career path, but I do come away with plans for three days of walks for future visits, and also with a new cookbook, all about the art of sandwiches. Thus February is already on at a pace when we rejoin the trails in the city of Leeds, and not forcing ourselves out to an early start as we look to a trail across South Leeds, largely due to the fact that we need to start once the worst of the weather has passed, and that I have to run an early morning errand in Morley before we can even consider getting going. So it's only a short ride away to get to the start line at Cottingley station, for a 10.55am start, conveniently placed between the Cottingley Hall estate and Churwell by the footbridge that predated it and surely ensured its location when new in 1988, which we pass over to make acquaintance with the council estate, a resolutely 1970s low rise and pitched roofed affair on this side, entered by the primary school on Dulverton Grove. The distinctive pair of towers rise at its centre, overshadowing the small commercial centre, once home to a pub known to locals the Sphinx due to its pyramidal roof, which houses barely any business nowadays, and we pass to the other side of this small hillside to find the way down, past the church and the somewhat browner houses to Cottingley Drive, once the driveway to the Cottingley Hall farm that named the estate. Drop out onto the A6110 Ring Road and cross over by the Sulzer works and the Drysalters pub, passing the brand new Kia dealership and turning right to hit the steep Crows Nest Road, which ascends sharply as the other back road up onto Beeston's hill, passing over the railway line to Wakefield and Doncaster and the buildings of Crows Nest farm, still looking rural on the edge of the city. The height gain gives us some looks back to the way travelled from Cottingley, and to the hills inhabited by Churwell and Morley, and we can find that contemporary development can fill any available patch of land, as new builds cling onto this hillside, left behind as we ascend to emerge between the Whistlestop Inn and the Beeston primary school and hit Town Street by the turning circle of the bus route terminus, where a fine view to the north can be found, through the greyness.

Kirkstall Forge to Arthington & Bramhope 07/02/18

9.1 miles, via Horsforth Woodside, Horsforth, Cookridge, Breary Marsh, Bramhope,

 Creskeld Hall, Arthington Viaduct, & Arthington Junction.

New Boots! Pair #6b.

Season #7 launches whilst I'm in the midst of an 11 day break from work, taking time out to visit My Parents for a long weekend, and to go see My Sister to catch up on last year, and to also to get this thing started again as we lapse out of the Dark Season, especially as I have new pair of lightweight boots to road test, acquired from Cotton Traders at Batley Mill for not a whole lot of coins, when I wasn't even looking for any, hopefully durable enough to survive me pounding them around the city, whilst my regulars can be reserved for the country trails. So away as Winter sunshine beats down on a Wednesday morning, not starting too early as it's freakishly cold, hopeful that the window of clear skies will last long enough, a familiar risk at this time of year, and so we disembark at Kirkstall Forge at 10.40am, with a trail ready in my mind, plotted as the alternate finale between Aire and Wharfe for 2017, so we shouldn't need maps for this trip. The Kirkstall Forge development still amounts to no more than a single office building, two car parks and a lot of cleared post industrial land, but to seems the first building task was to secure the banks of the River Aire, which bisects the site, to insure the future riverside development doesn't get inundated, and the channel is crossed to follow the new access road up to the A65 Abbey Road, emerging where it crosses Oil Mill Beck. The passage down the wooded clough to the north is the route we will follow, for the third time, by a different route as Hawksworth Road brings suburban living to a ribbon of plots along side the beck and the looming banks of primordial trees, a familiar sight around these parts of Horsforth Woodside, and we soon have risen to meet the Bridge Inn and the mill conversion at the bottom of Butcher Hill, along with the feeling that some points in this city will always be a locus of convergence, where trails from all different directions will meet, cross and disperse. 

Out of the Dark Season & Onwards!

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ70
is my new toy for 2018!

Another Dark Season is traversed, as Imbolc passes and Superbowl weekend arrives, and I mark this by taking an 11 day break from work in order to visit both My Parents and My Sister & her family, and to get the 2018 walking season underway, grateful that the days have finally lengthened so that the perpetual night can recede away for another nine months. Not gonna lie, this has been another tough one, as despite promises to have two months of sociability, I have mostly hibernated, only getting out for the seasonal festivities, and not even getting that much rest as I did as little as possible. Altogether a quarter-year to forget, with 43 feeling like the age when middle aged feelings started to outweigh those of lingering youth, but one not without its positives, the festive portion having been entirely acceptable as a social venture, and it got me gifts that finally allow me to get my new toy up and running, with memory cards, batteries and a new carry case for my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ70 camera coming my way courtesy of My Sister so that my old Fuji Finepix E-900 can finally be retired. It feels like a really snazzy camera on first impressions, but it's probably a price range equivalent a decade or so newer, but having a memory capacity for 5,000 pictures, with the smallest possible memory card, and the ability to do HD video and image retouching makes it feel so much better, but I worry is it as sturdy as the old one, as it feels like it won't survive as many trips to the ground as the old one did. Still, it's something new to adapt to as another season of out of doors exploits comes around, my seventh, and it starts to feel like this might be the make or break season for me, as like many great TV series' or the concept of marriage, seven years feels like as far as you can go before you run the risk of things starting to feel stale and repetitious, or having routine and ennui starting to overtake your life.

The Conclusions of 2017

Wrapping 2017 at Baildon station.

Well, we all made it to 2018, which honestly surprises me after the unfolding stupidity of 2017 is considered, not a worse year than 2016, strangely, but certainly much stupider; much, much stupider. But we are not here to lament geopolitics and all that nonsense, but to instead mark the turn of another year and look back on my sixth walking season and to ponder once again the thought, what did we learn in 2017? Mainly, the reflection point is Despite the stresses, the Season was a success, as most of my walking plans came together for once, and most of the targets set back in February were achieved, despite the loss of impetus in both May and September, and the obvious lack of a Summer holiday to fit in another long distance trail. Setting my sights towards Bradford and Nidderdale turned out to be excellent choices, as both provided illuminations to the local walking territory that had not been expected, as finding a whole previously unseen city on your virtual doorstep provides so many new things to see without having to travel too far, whilst the next valley up from West Yorkshire proved to be a fine location for a break away and much closer than I'd thought it might be when summer's adventuring came around. The relatively tight focus of the year meant that I might not have ventured as afield as I might have planned, but keeping close to the territories around the city of Bradford and in the lands between the Wharfe  and the Nidd meant that a great deal of familiarity of previously alien lands was gained, and I honestly feel all the better for that. So we might have not travelled out over the Bronte Moors or up the higher reaches of Airedale, but in all a lot was gained in this tight focus, unlike the usual problems of not taking time out for rest, and failing to find any time to be sociable on my trails, indeed, I did the entire year solo, which ought to feel like an achievement, until you consider that I didn't get over to tramp in Lancashire with My Sister for a second consecutive year, or to get out with any of my walking friends, which I haven't done in any capacity since 2014 (!), a failure that I seem to lament every year.

Keighley to Baildon 11/11/17

8.9 miles, via Thwaites Brow, Transfield Top, Druid's Altar, Bingley, Eldwick,
 and Baildon Moor, Hill & Bank.

Well, I'm happy to say that we've made it to the final weekend of the 2017 walking season, having had worries that we might not get here after the physical and emotional beating that I've taken over the last few weeks, but my fortitude has held strong and gotten me out every weekend through the fading days of October and November, so my planned finale can run on the day allocated to it, and what's more the sun is expected to shine on it, so let's give Season #6 the ending it deserves. After doing most of the season in Bradford and the lands north of the Wharfe, Airedale seems the most apt place to conclude this year's trekking, midway between the two, and a sub 10 mile day doesn't require the earliest of starts, arriving at Keighley at 10am, to look to the K&WVR platforms and not that they've already been running for an hour by now, and wonder why I've never asked friends of colleagues out for a social occasion on this most lovable of preserved lines. Emerge into the crisp morning, that's going to feel like early evening all day as the sun never gets that high, to take a right turn out from the station, to admire the backdrop of Rombalds Moor before turning onto Dalton Lane to get the flavour of the towns commercial and industrial quarter, where there's still a lot of business going on around Dalton Mill, that large and dynamic structure that really ought to be at the heart of Keighley's civic pride and industrial heritage. The lane leads on, over the River Worth and on to meet Thwaite's Bridge, passing over the railway and the site of a former MR station that the internet seems to have no visual record of at all, before we split left, past the yard with a steam crane in it, to hit the ascent of Thwaite's Brow Road, a steep, cobbled and very minor road that twists sharply up the bank on the south of the Aire, offering a test for the legs and some fine views into the valley as we go up, encountering more descending traffic that I'm honestly happy with as we go. The views are worth the effort, though and the scattered houses of Thwaite's Brow give the road a bit more purpose as it winds on uphill to meet the terminus of the bus that serves it and Long Lee, beyond where the road gets a bit more normal and the houses a bit more suburban and ordered, still not sure why people might be drawn up onto a hillside like this but you start to ponder that once development space runs out down in the valley, up on these hills is the next obvious place to go.

Cottingley to Cottingley 04/11/17

14.7 miles, via Churwell, Beeston Royds, Farnley Moor Side, Nan Whin's Wood,
 Roker Lane Bottom, Pudsey (Littlemoor, Owlcotes & Waterloo), Thornbury, Fagley,
  Eccleshill, Five Lane Ends, Wrose, Windhill, Shipley, Saltaire, and Nab Wood.

First trip out past Samhain / Hallowe'en / Start of GMT, and a pun walk descended on my mind, having located the Cottingley of Fairies fame in Bradford district, and realised that I've never travelled from the Cottingley station on the edge of Leeds, despite it being the nearest station on the line through Morley, and now we are on the edge of the dark season, we can start out early, as we are really starting out at a sensible hour, and so off we go, on one of the rare days when the ride out is shorter than the walk to the station. Start out on the nose of 9am, beginning our circular walk in a linear fashion, and we won't actually be passing through the Cottingley Hall estate, named for the farm long lost beneath it streets, so we won't be getting any closer to its distinctive pair of tower blocks, as we instead drop down through the growth of Lego houses which has attached itself to the bottom of Churwell, and the ongoing path is immediately vague, hidden by new buildings arriving on one of the few green plots left in this quarter. The way under the M621 is eventually found via a detour and finding Snittles Farm hidden away in the space between the motorway and the railway is a surprise, hidden in plain sight as I've never noticed it in 10 years of passing by, before we finally get on our way along the farm access track, onwards past the embankment of the L&NWR Leeds New Line and on to the A62 to pace along between the industrial plants and the Jewish cemeteries. At the entrance drive to Spring End farm we strike into the countryside, for the field walk over Beeston Royds (or Farnley Wood), rising on a path previously tramped with the Cottingley Towers constantly on the horizon behind us, passing through the sheep and horses to meet Wood Lane at the hillside's crest, pressing on westwards and retaking the panorama of views from the top as the lane presses us on towards Wood End farm, which gives more suggestions of former forestry up here. Soon enough run out onto the A58, at the westernmost extremity of New Farnley, though we don't have to follow Whitehall Road for too long as we can switch off onto Walsh Lane at the suburban edge, to pass through Low Moor Side, and High Moor Side, two odd little hamlets associated to but separate from New Farnley. Full of rural charm at the outermost edge of Leeds, with the Lancasterian school room, a Quaker establishment of 1813, being an immediate point of interest and still in use as the community rooms at this quarter, where rural and suburban mix on a small footprint where Back Lane provides our passageway on towards Pudsey.