Runimation: Remember Covid?

 The Following is For Reference Only.

Well, ain't that a Kick in the Stones?

If you've been regarding the world in 2022 with a casual eye, you could easily believe that the Covid-19 pandemic has long since ended, judging how far it has dropped from the public, political and media consciousness over the last year, some might consider it having concluded when HM Government declared the end of all social restrictions in July 2021, while others might have considered it all done after the Omicron wave passed over across the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, and if you paid attention to governmental actions you'd figure it over as attention fell to the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and people choosing to create new problems where they didn't exist previously. The horrible reality is that it's still here, and ongoing with much vigour, maybe not with the deadliness of the initial waves in 2020, but with enough force to still pose a significant health risk to the clinically vulnerable and the un-vaccinated, and to cause problems for healthcare networks worldwide, especially considering that the OG variant is now barely present in the population, while the much more contagious Omicron variant has now gone global, to present everyone with a new transmissible disease, that wasn't around only three years prior, to be afflicted by with the passage of the seasons. Reflecting on the fact the the NHS in the UK still has a backlog of 7 million elective operations to perform, while still needing to work around many internal infection prevention measures, it's very easy to believe that we literally got the bad ending to the pandemic endgame, where the disease wasn't contained by restriction in 2020 after being imposed too late and lifted too early, while prolonged global mobility has ensured that every subsequent variant has had its opportunity to infect the worldwide population, resulting in the situation where the disease is now endemic, and able to afflict and kill thousands every year into the foreseeable future, like an unwanted companion to influenza and tuberculosis, which those in power globally completely failed to prevent.

Moorthorpe to Dodworth 22/10/22

15.6 miles, via Kirkby Bridge, Minsthorpe, Upton Moor, Royd Moor, Low Field, Hemsworth,

 High Field, Vissitt, Barewell Hill, Brierley, Shafton Two Gates, North Field, Shaw Dike Bridge, 

Carlton, Carlton Green, Athersley South, Smithy Hill, Smithies, Honeywell, Greenfoot,

 Old Town, Pogmoor, Gawber, Highham Common, and Lane Side woods.

After the much commented upon hot Summer we had this year, not mush is being made of the hot Autumn we are experiencing, possibly because the weather is a bit up and down and the warm bright days are coinciding with the weekends, but we are again looking at a Saturday that promises to be decent enough to be travelling a distance away from home and putting down 15+ miles on the trail, which is just as well as we have the year's third target to aim for, as the 1,000km marker sits only 6300m distant, and a less inspiring day might have had me reconsidering my walking plans after rising after far too little sleep and with claggy-feeling lungs that feel like the harbinger of something nasty setting in. The last South Yorkshire traversal of the year actually gets going in West Yorkshire's southeastern corner  as we alight at Moorthorpe at 9.25am, and set our initial course away to the northeast, rather counter-intuitively as we negotiate away past the considerable station building to meet the steps up to Minsthorpe Lane, where we'll set off across the S&K line, south of the station junction, and past the top end of Moorthorpe cemetery and on among the vintages of suburbia that have filled in the land between the two local railways, passing over the West Riding Line beyond the Minsthorpe Inn and ahead of the South Elmsall Curves railside path, visited in 2016 before we carry on through the suburbia to bottom out at Kirkby Bridge. It's a rise from there, uphill past the extensive grounds of Minsthorpe Community College and the edge of the suburban spread to meet the Barnsley Oak inn and the northward turn through the old Minsthorpe village to aim ourselves towards Upton, gettins a better impression of the southwestern horizon than we did on our prior visit as we tangle with the A6201 and A638 in the landscape around North Elmsall, before me meet the remains of the H&BR and its old station, where we turn to follow the Doncaster Road to the northwest, but slip away from its verge as a shaded and concealed footpath presents itself, linking together the suburban closes that have grown out from Upton, and almost providing a traffic-free route out to the Common Lane corner. 

Barnsley to Doncaster 15/10/22

17.7 miles, via the Glassworks & Alhambra centres, Measborough Dyke, Hunningley,

 Stairfoot, Ardsley, Wood Lathes, Highfield, Darfield, Millhouses, Cathill Roundabout, 

Billingley Green & Bridge, Highgate, Goldthorpe, Harry Ottley Plantation, Hickleton,

 Marr Moor, Marr, Hills & Holes, Ducker Holt, Scawsby, York Bar, H&BR branch, 

Willow Bridge, Crimpsall, St Mary's bridge, Marsh Gate, North Bridge, Grey Friars, 

Market Place, Christ Church, Civic Quarter and Spring Gardens. 

If passing the 600 miles marker makes for a successful walking season, we're already there having passed it by the width of a conversion error last weekend, for the first time since 2019 after two pandemic blighted seasons, but the reality stands that we still have four weekends to go on the year, with two more mileage targets looking immediately due as a new personal best and the 1,000km barrier should be attainable soon enough, and we've still gotten plenty of miles left on the slate too, as there are still four trips in South Yorkshire plotted, landing somewhat benind schedule thanks to having already done most of my end of season park walks on our various train strike weekends. So we find ourselves in the middle of October, looking to the long route that stitches together the pair of boroughs below West Yorkshire, which might transpire to be my second longest excursion of the year, alighting at Barnsley to depart via the Interchange exit at 9.20am, already adding minutes to the trip before we've even gotten started, emerging onto Midland Street and starting off south, towards the old road junction that's now lost by the retail developments in Barnsley town centre, passing through the May Day Green square to note the first Covid Pandemic memorial that we've seen on our travels, and then make our way through the GlassWorks and the Alhambra shopping centres, before we emerge under the traffic island below the tanglings of the A61 and A628. The left hand path takes us on to the stub end of Doncaster Road and the southeasterly press that will be the feature of most of the day, past the shopping parade and up to the view across to Oakwell stadium as we join the A635, pressing on through Measborough Dyke with its stone terraces surrounding the redbrick church of St Peter & St John, with the bright skies reveling the waning gibbous moon as our companion feature as we drop down meet the A6133 as it merges in below Barnsley cemetery, and then we rise again up Measborough Hill to meet Kendray Hospital at its crest, across the way from the old Oaks Colliery disaster memorial, situated just south of the site of the loss of 361 lives in Decemeber 1866.

Cross Gates to Ossett 08/10/22

15.4 miles, via Graveleythorpe, Halton, Temple Newsam Park (Sycamore Walk, Home Farm,

 Mather Wood, Menagerie Ponds, Little Temple, Wilderness Wood, & Charcoal Wood), 

  Skelton Gate, Skelton Lake, Concrete Bridge, Rothwell Country Park, John O'Gaunts,

   Rothwell, Carlton, Lofthouse, Langley, Lofthouse Colliery Park, Outwood, Brag Lane End,

    Wrenthorpe, Low Laithes, Shepherd Hill, Flushdyke, and Town End.

Return from Down Country with my brain and legs ready to get back into the walking routine, having spent the midweek celebrating My Mum's 80th birthday by organizing an afternoon tea for her church fellowship on the day itself, no small task as it required two days of labour and another of rest before we headed back Up Country with Mum being particularly pleased with how it all unfolded for her, and with that done we can get back into the walking year, still having to work around train strikes which limits my options again, and as we've done the best park walks in Wakefield district, staying much closer to home seem the best option. So we're walking in Leeds again as my ancient Explorer 289 comes out for probably its last hurrah, bussing ourselves out on the #40 to the east of the city to alight at 9.05am on the A6120 opposite the Cross Gates shopping centre and the railway station where we can start our tilt to the southwest, under unseasonably bright skies, with a pronounced autumnal chill in the air as our path takes us away down Green Lane and Cross Green Lane through the suburban quarter of semis to meet the Victorian townlets that grew beyond the city back in the day, meeting the terraces and town houses of Gravelythorpe on the way up past the Leodis inn, and onwards Chapel Street and the transition into Halton. Beyond said chapel, and the Dial House, the prettiest in this corner, we meet the Halton High Street, all of a 1980s redevelopment style that we're thankfully not doing any more, strung along the Selby Road, which we cross to head south, down Irwin Approach behind Lidl and alongside the local recreation grounds to meet Temple Newsam Road, leading us down through the suburbia and into the spread of Temple Newsam park, with our park walk arriving at the start of the day rather than the end, shadowing the perimeter of the golf course and sticking to the shaded pavement below the canopy of autumnal leaves as we are led up to the eastward turn and the reveal of the view back across south Leeds (one of the few places where Morley can be placed in the landscape at a significant remove). Press uphill on a familiar route past the running track and on to the Sycamore Walk to pass through the shade towards the heart of the park, arriving to the north of the Jacobean house complex and meeting the track that leads us down between the stables block and the Home farm, observing just how many folk seem to be out early to make the best of this sunny Autumn morning, and find a park run going on along the track on the fringe of the east lawn, which we'll not tangle with as we press east still, down the side of Mather Wood to the revelation of the wild woods on the rise beyond, where we have a single focused target, to be found beyond the fall of the beck that feeds the Menagerie Ponds.

South Elmsall to Nostell Priory 01/10/22

13.8 miles, via Hacking Hill, Coalpit Fields, Wrangbrook, Barnsdale Tunnel, Shinwell, Upton, 

 Upton Moor, Royd Moor, Badsworth Common, Shepherd's Hill, Ackworth Moor Top, 

Brackenhill, Taylor Wood Cottages, Wragby, and Nostell Park (St Michael's, Nostell Priory

 house, Lower Lake, Obelisk Park, Top Park Wood, Mill Piece, Engine Wood, and East Vista).

My September Nine Day Weekend finally arrives, too late for Summer Jollies and not featuring any Autumn Jollies as midweek is going to be spent with My Mum, to celebrate her 80th birthday, and thus we're left with only the weekends to use as we push for 1,000km in 2022, with our organisation being disrupted further by having renewed strikes on the railways, postponed after the death of HMQE2 and now restored to keep us inside West Yorkshire, which isn't a huge problem as I've had a couple of bus-able plans on my slate for months now, with the idea of walking in the park maintained as we seek out another one deep in the heart of Wakefield district. Thus we ride out on the #425 and #496 to South Elmsall, alighting at the bus stand at 9.45am, after a journey that was almost twice the duration of one on rails (no thanks to Arriva for misplacing a service along the way) and the bright morning sunshine that we had for most of the journey looks like it's not going to endure as we head out, over the railway station and up High Street, with the rain coming on sharply as we hide in the bus shelter by the United Service Club for several minutes, letting it pass before we continue on up Hacking Hill to the estate at the top of the town before Field Lane leads us out above the old quarry remnants and into the landscape dominated by the Next distribution depots. It's a development that's still growing, placing a new facility on the south side of the lane with its own linking bridge overhead, to be regarded with a certain kind of awe at it sheer extent across the plots ahead of the A638, where we land by Cherry Tree farm and the H&BR Wath branch, where our easterly push, away from our apparent destination continues, across the Doncaster Road and onto the dirt track of Coal Pit Lane as the early gloom starts to lift, dropping a rainbow above the Upton Becaon / Walton Wood / Barnsdale ridge as we press on toward the earthworks around the lost Waterfield farm. We can place ourselves on the very edge of Doncaster borough, west of the A1 and Skelbrooke village before we turn north, onto the Wakefield Way route as it strikes along the muddy field boundary down to the sewage farm , where the path up to the cottage by the remains of the H&BR South Yorkshire Junction branch is overgrown and damp, reminding me of just how little interaction I've had with horrible paths across this year, a theme which reoccurs once we've met the driveway and taken the most direct path north, a field walk and green passage that's enough to make me want keep to pavements from now on, which we can do once we've landed on Sleep Hill Lane and drawn ourselves out to and across the A6201 Wrangbrook Lane.

Elsecar to Adwick 24/09/22

16.4 miles, via Stubbin, Jump, Hemingfield, Lund Hill, Tunstall Cross, Everill Gate, Broomhill,

 Marle's Bridge, Cat Hill, Kings Stocks, Billingley, Thurnscoe, Willow Heights, Thurnscoe East, Stotfold, Watchley Crag, Numbered Plantations, Hooton Pagnell, North Field, Hampole Field,

 Hampole, Five Lane Ends, Skellow, Carcroft, and Carcroft Common. 

Autumn arrives and we're already over the total mileage that we managed in 2021, as very few missed walking opportunities, and the extra excursions and exertions of the last few weekends, have us contemplating where this year might be ending up, regarding the very real possibility of hitting a new annual distance total in 2022, and despite making all my measurements in miles and having no functional relationship with its metric replacement, the reality is that we could very easily tilt at 1,000km before the end of my eleventh walking season arrives, the only plausible way to make it to four figures in a year without doing 13 miles twice a week for nine months. That will be our goal as we return to the long trails in South Yorkshire, with a quartet of routes still in mind as we alight at the southwestern extremity of this year's walking field, returning to Elsecar with a northeastern trajectory to pace, starting under the brightness and chill that comes at 9.30am, rising away to head off along Cobcar Street through the terraced enclave of Stubbin, and then downhill into the 20th century estate landscape of Elsecar, finding the footpath that leads us away from Strafford Avenue to meet the path of the incline which rose up the Jump Valley from the canal wharf to Hoyland Silkstone collieries, over which the four-arched Elsecar viaduct carries the railway. The heavily wrinkled landscape of the valley gives our early going some work as we press uphill with Wentworth Road to Jump village, passing the Jump Club and meeting Cemetery Road by the Flying Dutchman inn, taking a right turn to process along by the terraces and semis with a view over the edge of the Knoll Beck valley, where we furtled last weekend, and passing the Hemingfield cenotaph and cemetery as we pass over the railway line again, just south of the short tunnel beyond Wombwell station, and run into Hemingfield village, as the lane declines to pass the Marbrook apartments in the old tavern, with a fine ghost-signed gable adjacent, before coming around to the junction by the Albion Inn. Like everywhere in this corner, the rural, industrial and suburban eras pile up on top of each other, only a short way away from the little colliery site at the valley floor, which seems lost among the tree clad hillsides these days, revealed from School Street and Beech House Road as we press east, making the turn away as we pass between Beech House and Lundhill farms, and find the lane beyond steepening and narrowing as it drops downhill to pass under the A6195 Dearne Valley parkway, passing The Tavern as the lane bottoms out and then rising sharply again up the side of Lund Hill itself, with playing fields perched to one side of us, and the growth of greater Wombwell expanding in the form of the Hillies View estate on the other.

South Elmsall to Doncaster 19/09/22

13.9 miles, via Minsthorpe, Coalpit Fields, Stubb Hall, Top Ings, Hampole, Red House,

 Woodlands, Woodlands Park, Brodsworth Colliery Branch, Castle Hills, Scawthorpe,

  Bentley, Bentley Rise, Willow Bridge, St Mary's Bridge, North Bridge, High Street,

   Civic Quarter, Market Place, and The Rookery. 

As I've already mentioned, traditional patriotism and pageantry is not for me, and I'd honestly rather be at work on the day of HMQE2's funeral, as shutting down many hospital services for the occasion seems like a poor choice when the NHS has 6M+ backlogged admissions to deal with, though trying to run as normal would probably be something of a fool's errand too, when you consider that approximately half the population of the country will be watching the proceedings on TV, and thus the extra bank holiday allows me the opportunity to get out and push the mileage again, on a late Summer day that is a total contrast to the one we had at the weekend. To South Elmsall we ride for an early start, back in West Yorkshire when I had intended to do all my September business in South Yorkshire, alighting at 8.50am, and setting off on a bit of a weird deviation to get us onto the southeasterly trajectory that we had in mind, by pushing uphill on High Street to the corner by Trinity Methodist church before striking along Ash Grove northwesterly though the suburbs and estate houses, above the primary school and leisure centre, on the way across to Minsthorpe Road, where we land by the community college and then press further uphill northeasterly to come up to the Mill Lane crossroads by the Barnsley Oak inn. Suburbia ends beyond as Dale Lane skirts a way around the northern edge of the industrial estate comprised entirely of distribution depots, passing those of Superdrug and ASDA as the Upton Beacon water tower and the Walton Wood mast loiter under the gloom on the northern horizon, we come up to the bottom of the North Elmsall bypass, and join the A638 Doncaster Road as it sets off southeasterly, starting here as there's an inexplicable footway alongside it all the way, processing on as the Wrangbrook junction terrace and the rise of Barnsdale's hill sit across the fields off to the northeast, on the ridge that conceals the flatlands in the east, as we head on by the ever-expanding depot facilities operated by Next. At the end of Field Lane, by Cherry Tree house, we pass over the H&BR Wath branch, where one bridge parapet endures in spite of the extensive road remodelling that has taken place at this junction, and the we're on our way, outside of the Wakefield Way route beyond the cottages at the roadside and soon out of Wakefield district and into Doncaster Borough as bizarre waves form in the clouds before we dive down below Turnpike Plantation, and the South Elmsall quarries, to pass above the Stubbs Hall farm complex, which is most notable for its angling lakes, visible from the railway.