Kirklees Way #2: Birchencliffe to Oakenshaw 09/08/14

Self at Birchencliffe

This is not a particularly original thought, but following circular trails is not usually a good way of getting from A to B and today is not going to be any sort of deviation from that idea, following a long s-curve for 14+ miles when a rapid dash along the M62 would have the whole day done in less than 9 miles. still, we should have learned that it's all about the journey and if I'd wanted to get places quickly I would have taken up jogging by now. It's also good feeling to be back onto the trail on a Saturday, this being my first trip out on the first day of the weekend in four weeks, it makes me feel like I'm getting myself back in order and taking charge of my walking life again, after all I did say that hitting a long trail was the best way to getting yourself focused once more. Also Saturday travel is the way to do it after all, no need to worry about irregular trains or getting stuck at remote bus stops, I can get from my front door to my start point on Halifax Road in just over an hour, and getting an early start means that the ride from Huddersfield today took less time than the trip in the opposite direction a week ago, despite being uphill all the way.

Kirklees Way #2  Birchencliffe to Oakenshaw  14.7 miles

Grimescar Wood

A 9.05am start for another day which projections say should be good but skies suggest constant changeability, and we set off as Yew Tree Road departs the urban greyness of Birchencliffe and soon we are back into the countryside as the road gradually lapses into a track that feels like the 20th century didn't want it as the tarmac surface disappears to be replaced by loose gravel, running toward the bottom of the valley of formed by Grimescar Dike, with dense wood rising on the northern side. Along the southern edge, the suburbs of Huddersfield gradually encroach, as the streets of Prince Royd gradually work their way out until the back gardens butt up against the track, and it seems that the residents are forming opposition to future development in the vicinity as the Thornhill estate, one of the major landowners in the district, seem to be looking to make a quick buck and I'd venture that this is a green space worthy of preservation, as there aren't many between the edge of Huddersfield and the M62. The path doglegs at Reep Hirst farm, and then returns to a completely rural feel, with plenty of dog walkers to suggest urban proximity, eventually dropping to the beck crossing, and then rising into Grimescar wood, on a track that feels as remote as any woodland walk yet experienced. Not that it is far from anywhere, as we soon pop out on Halifax Old Road, where the well-to-do Victorian and Edwardian retreated away from the town, hidden away by a landscape fold, now covered in semis, with Castle hill and the spire of Birkby church rising prominently beyond it. Our ascent continues steeply up South Cross Road, remote enough for use for depositing a stolen ice cream freezer, but still busy enough to have estate cars descending it from seemingly out of nowhere, and once the field walk up to Top of Cowcliffe is found, the view back has the panorama of the Colne valley re-emerging in full force, with Meltham Moor showing its saddle-shaped profile to indicate the distance travelled since leaving Marsden. At the top of the fence, higher still above the town, we meet the outer suburbs of Huddersfield once again, where the houses might have a commanding view from the 200m contour but will probably feel the full force of the weather when it comes on, and only one street needs to be crossed before we continue along the garden boundaries in a straight line due north, until we slip downhill among the plantations of trees which contain the houses.

Fixby Hall

The morning takes on a glum and drizzly aspect as we emerge onto Huddersfield golf course, occupying the former grounds of Fixby Hall, standing off the west and looking like one of the better club houses in the county, and I feel torn bout such a re-use of land for does the golf club represent the relative democratisation of a formerly noble estate, or does it still keep it exclusive in reality? Well, it can't be that exclusive as I'm walking here, on an exposed route between the fairways, where a straight line is cut all the way over to the woods on the northern boundary and a easterly view is had towards Dalton bank, and off to a distant spire and power station which are probably among the standard candles of the county. Beyond Gernhill Wood, we emerge into sunshine once more, an beneath a confusion of junctioning pylons and it takes a few moments to realise that I am supposed to be cutting a path through the field of golden wheat, rather than heading towards the nearby farm along the field boundary. The northward tacking ends as we find ourselves facing into Calderdale once more, looking over to some familiar wooded hills and distant moors, and it seems that Cote lane might be the place to get the best elevated view of Brighouse, the mill and flour silos in the town appearing obviously, and once the view has been taken in, we start east again, passing Upper Cote farm and its dozing cows, heading along one of those footpaths which claims a straight route on the map but the undulating terrain and field boundaries make such progress impossible. Meeting the holly lined path to Lower Cote makes for clearer going, and at the farm the path really does wander in between the cottages and midway down someones driveway before depositing you in the fields again to walk over to yet another suburban edge, this one being the district of Fixby. This looks like an older suburb than the others previously encountered judging by the housing styles and quantities of red brick used, and paths are made alongside the green by the A6107 before we depart to by the Nisa store to seek greenery once more, disappearing into Upper Fell Greave wood. The guide warns us that this wood is a confusing mess of criss-crossing tracks and instincts are to be kept sharp to stay on the right track, and they weren't fibbing about that either, despite the proximity of roads and houses that bound the wood, it would be far to easy to wander at random thinking that you are heading in the right sort of direction. Even among lofty deciduous trees, there's a lot of green leaves low down to scatter the light and confuse you so it's best to keep in sight of the northern edge of the wood, and remember the sun placement and the direction of the sound of traffic and without great difficulty you will soon pop out by the A641 Bradford Road.


Lower Fell Greave Wood

Over the dual carriageway and onto the track where a cat guides the path imperiously, leading onto to find an odd accumulation of buildings opposite a much older farm complex, looking half way between holiday accommodation and cottage hospital, so it makes sense that later research reveals it to be a children's hospice. Woodland walking soon resumes as the path enters Lower Fell Greave wood, which has the completely opposite problem to its predecessor, as this one has no obvious tracks within it, and it's not big enough to get lost in, with suburbia having reached its southern boundary, it does make you wonder why no one has bothered to plant any posts or paint any useful blue Ks on the trees. The path I take probably isn't the most direct but I find the footbridge that I should cross at its north east corner, below an office complex and burgeoning business park that has developed since my E288 was printed, and ill tramp up the gravelly and shaded old lane to meet the A6107 again, and the end of the third leg according to my guide book, the first place that has any useful bus stops for the traveller. I'm doing my own thing, of course, and the track beyond, popular with Bradley's dog walkers, leads towards Shepherds Thorn farm, before taking the path into Bradley Park Golf course, where stripy poles are laid out to guide the walkers, and the right of way has been moved to follow the gravelled tracks used by the golfers. Another bunch of fairways to be negotiated, and after brief interludes with many courses, we are going to be about this one for a while, despite exiting it guided by a wooden putter to follow the boundary track down the edge of the M62, just above Junction 25 and the bridge above the Calder, until the boundary fence of Bradley Park Quarry pushes us eastwards again, and at odd moments the path appears from under the cover of the trees, but more wooden clubs indicate where the golfers would rather have you progress unseen. These carved clubs are an odd public art project, and you wonder if there are enough to complete the full set, and the pair of woods (or drivers?) would make an ideal spot to pause for watering, if it wasn't just that bit too close to a tee and I don't fancy taking a golf ball to the earhole, frankly. Instead I'll stop under the shade of trees at the very eastern edge of the course, where the view down to Cooper Bridge is finally gained, and more than one dog getting walked can take far too much interest in what I might have in my bag, but they don't get a helping of my pizza, though I do receive a quantity of dog slobber in return.

Cooper Bridge Mill & the River Calder

Picking the path through the edge of suburban Bradley has me choosing incorrectly and taking a longer route than is necessary, but the track to Steep Lane is easily found, and lives up to its name too as steps are picked down this grassy and wooded path finally leaving the ridge of high ground as I descend to pace my way along Quarry Road, thankfully free of heavyweight traffic, to meet the stone terraces which cluster around Cooper Bridge mill, also passing over the line that links the lines to Huddersfield and Brighouse. I've observed before that the mill here is one of the better conversions in the county, and has a really dramatic placement parked next to the Calder and just down from the A62, and the houses around mark the last I'll be seeing of the outer edges of Huddersfield, where I seem to have been for quite a while, but my trajectory takes me along the main road, over the river and the C&H navigation, and onward through the empire of sewage farms that has developed in this quarter, for some reason. It's a longer walk by an A-road than any trail really deserves, to be honest but passing beneath the Calderdale line gives us a chance to spot the former entrance to Cooper Bridge railway station, an ornately carved stone arch, now blocked off with a stone wall. Where the road merges with the A644 we meet the Dumb Steeple, a gritstone column where sanctuary could be claimed for the nearby Kirklees Priory, back in Medieval times, but these days it's more renowned as the site of a Luddite meeting in April 1812, preceding an attack on Cartwright's Mill at Rawfolds near Cleckheaton, one of the most notable stories of Kirklees lore. The roads are left behind by the Three Nuns public house, which sounds like the intro to an off-colour joke, and we start the rise through the fields to the north of the Calder, meeting a girl with an overly excitable beagle which she feels might a bit too much for the nearby field of young cows, which are already milling around agitatedly. Our route takes us along the perimeter of the site of Kirklees Priory, from which the district is named, originally Cistercian and dissolved in 1539, and legend claims the grave of Robin Hood within the grounds, nowadays it doesn't show up much of interest among the private parkland, only the cottage of the last tenant of Kirklees Hall (itself hidden from view and actually within Calderdale district). The enclosed track between the golden hay fields that I follow up towards Hartshead has the Colne valley view re-emerging behind me, offering an excellent profile of Dalton Bank and Castle Hill, with us eventually reaching its summit via a mess of holly, bracken and nettles, as the sunshine makes its return to warm the remainder of the day.

St Peter's, Hartshead

At the top of the climb, we find the edge of the village of Hartshead, and along the roadside several villas have been planted to enjoy the excellent viewpoint, which this district seems to have more than its fair share of, again focusing the attention to the southwest, and there's even a bench planted by the roadside to memorialise someone who enjoyed the view, so it's a bit of a shame that it now faces a wall of conifers, recently planted on the rising edge of the hill. Following the lane uphill, we finally start to make our way into a landscape that isn't dominated by the Colne valley, rising to meet the church of St Peter, Hartshead, which has an superb aspect from its relatively low altitude, and this is a good spot to break for lunch and to admire the fabric which is dated back to Norman times, but was mostly remodelled in the Victorian era, and it's not short of history otherwise, notably one Patrick Bronte was curate here in the early 19th century, which explains why the Bronte way comes this way on its strange tour from Birstall to Padishaw. Move on, after the clock strikes 1pm, noting the stocks and mounting block outside the church gate, and also the large family vaults and the heavily overgrown northern side of the churchyard, taking the path between the cottages on Ladywell Lane and striking westwards out over the fields in the direction of the motorway. I won't be making a detour to see the remains of the Walton Cross over ill defined paths, and I do wonder why this Anglo-Saxon pillar wasn't included onto the route with only a small amount of tweaking, instead striking downhill on a tarmac surface to a gas facility and then striding over the M62 just below Hartshead Moor services, crossing with more purpose than on our previous trips last weekend. The path negotiates its way into another golf course, clearly a booming business in these parts, this being Willow Valley club, and we are kept on enclosed tracks with only occasional views across the fairways, and this seems like a better way to make your way around, where you pose little risk of inconveniencing the golfers. The track of Green Lane itself is fair riot of vegetation, bringing on that sweaty sort of humidity at the points when the wind drops, and various views across the course give it the look of a reclaimed colliery site, which my walking literature cannot confirm, but then again I might just be interpolating that into the landscape having encountered so many of them this year, and the next A-road is soon met, the A643, where my guide book tags the end of leg 4, inconveniently distant from the nearest bus stop half a mile down the road in Clifton.


Mineral Tramway, Clifton

Over the wall from the road could take me directly home, and we enter a landscape of sheep and cattle farming, but the guide book is eager to point out the coal industry which used to influence this landscape, in the days of more modest mining enterprises than the major collieries of the 19th century, and the path directs me to the top of a spoil heap, not exactly large but big enough to rise out of the fields distinctively, and having clambered down from there, and almost heading off in the wrong direction, we find an even more interesting relic. What easily could be mistaken for an embankment between fields turns out to be the remains of a mineral tramway, which used to run between various pits in the area down to the canal basin at Brighouse, looking clearly walked on despite the lack of a right of way, but it's impossible to judge its extent or to find much information about, so tracing this lost railway might be a challenge to be done with an old OS map. A field walk leads us to Jay House lane, and encountering my previously made path to Halifax, and some steps are to be retraced as I head uphill along the field wall towards Whitaker Pits wood, and a look back confirms this as on of my favourite viewpoints, where i can get a look deep into three of west Yorkshire's district, and hitting the woodland edge has me pondering how much of the coal workings might be hidden away in the undergrowth and if any trace of the tramway remains here. At least that is the suspicion of colliery origins confirmed to me, and the farmhouse is unusually built in brick as it was constructed a couple of centuries after most of the others in the region, all of which were built in stone. Pits lane takes us up to the A649 at Hartshead Moor Top, the quiet hamlet by the dual carriageway, and the trail leads us down a narrow ginnel to see some of the backs of this most pleasant of country villages, which has really earned its conservation area status, confirming that many places of the beaten track in this county are very nice indeed and you don't have to decamp to the Cotswolds for your expensive country pile. Cross Scholes Lane and take the path down by the unusually ornate Quaker meeting house, looking like a small Anglican chapel, funded by the owner of the sadly unseen Oldfieldnook house in the 1700s, Robert Crosland, one of the county's wealthiest and active Quakers, and our path wanders amid trees and fields to meet the edge of the M62 once again, but we are not heading under it again as we meet Wellands Lane, instead turning uphill towards Scholes.

Oakenshaw Cross

The lane rises and we enter a landscape of bamboo canes and hawthorn hedges, where a small dog has escaped into filed to worry animals, much the the frustration if its owner, rising to the edge of Scholes (one of at least three villages in the county sharing that name) where, from the suburban edge, a look south-eastwards gives us a new hill to regard, the ridge separating the Spen Valley from that of Howley Beck, with Batley parish church atop it, illustrating that we have slipped into a fresh landscape without really noticing. Scholes itself is another village proud of its conservation area status, with very pleasing cottages clustered around the village green, as well a nice conversion job done on Baden Powell hall,.and the Victorian parish church rising above the village thanks to the spire erected upon in in a 1960s style. It would be a good place to break the day, ensuring all six trips on the Way are of roughly equal length, but a bus ride home from here would get a bit too complicated, so I press on down the vergeless Branch Road, descending away from the village toward the A58, and getting site of our destination, with the factories and industrial units of Low Moor and Bierley rising beyond it, still over a mile distant. Across Whitehall Road we hit a farm track that has heavy growth along both sides and for quite a while I feel like we might be walking all the way to Oakenshaw without getting any kind of view at all, but eventually the track opens out and we have the Nufarm chemical works high above the green fields to the west, and the more familiar sight of Cleckheaton golf course to the east, and count 'em too, four feckin' golf courses on today's trail. The embankment of the Spen Valley Greenway emerges as we rise towards Wyke lane, and the track feels like it has suffered a slurry spill, providing bucolic smells and dirty boots for me for the first time in a long while. Arriving at Theaklands farm, i take an interest in peering into the cutting to see the portal of Oakenshaw tunnel, and whilst doing this two small dogs from the farm take loud and violent objection to my presence in their yard, and one of the actually bites me on the ankle, not badly but that terrier is lucky that I am an even tempered soul as I could have easily drop-kicked him onto the old trackbed below. The road leads down toward our finish point, and the ancient  15th century cross designated the village centre still stands in the road centre, providing an obstacle for drivers and an antiquity for the rest of us, and I roll up to finish outside St Andrew's church on Bradford Road at 3.20pm, in time for me to bag the shortest possible bus ride home via Cleckheaton, away from a village that would have sworn fell within Bradford's sphere of influence.

Next on the Slate: The trail wanders ridiculously close to home.


1,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 1233.4 miles
(2014 total: 320.2 miles)

(Up Country Total: 1137.8 miles)
(Solo Total: 1018 miles)
(Declared Total: 1025.2 miles)