The Calder Valley & Birkby Bradley Greenways 07/05/12

Trying to make sense of the National Cycle Network is a frustrating business, as it is being created on a piecemeal basis as Sustrans gain funding and access to necessary lands, so today's stretch is part of the grand scheme of National Route 69 (dude), but it's hard to envisage it as part of a coast-to-coast path when so much of it remains in the planning stages. Even factor in the other sections in West Yorkshire and it's almost impossible to work out how it is all going to fit together, hopefully time and progress will prove my interpretations to be wrong, but for today this is just a stretch from Dewsbury to Huddersfield featuring a viaduct that I hadn't previously heard of!

Active May: Day Two

The Calder Valley & Birkby Bradley Greenways - Dewsbury to Huddersfield.  9.8 miles

Calder Overflow Channel, Dewsbury

A 10.30am start at Dewsbury Station, and time management will be the issue for the day as I completely misjudge the distance of today's walk, more than a mile further than I'd thought. The wander down to the Riverside via Wellington Street and Old Westgate has me realise that I know virtually nothing about this town, and it certainly looks like it might be worth a heritage exploration, though not on May Day bank holiday. The Calder Valley Greenway is met by Mill Street bridge and immediately offers a riverside walk between an uninspiring industrial landscape and a river that can only be glimpsed from behind a wall of foliage. A view worth seeing emerges when the path moves alongside the Calder overflow channel which cuts through a bend of the river, looking like a bypass road which was dug out but never laid. Nicely grassy too, and looking like it hasn't been inundated in a while, which is odd considering how often the Calder goes berserk, it would be worth it to see it in action and there's even a footbridge across its full width at the west end to view it in full effect. Beyond the weir roars in full voice, and the path leads us under the graceful cast iron 1847 arched bridge on the Huddersfield line, and with its twin nearby over the Calder & Hebble canal, I would deem these as the prettiest railway bridges in the county.



Calder Bridge, Ravensthorpe

Onward to see that Calder viaduct is virtually un-photographable from this angle, and the path actually goes through the car park of an industrial unit before it drops us on Huddersfield Road next to the bridge which prominently advertises the Spen Valley Greenway. Retrace steps from a week ago as far as the top of Ravensthorpe goods yard before we swing out west into a stretch of grass and wild plantation to see that the River Spen is really not much more than a brook, even near its confluence, and soon enough we're back into the town for a walk through Ravensthorpe. That's the problem with cycle paths, they need straight and level sections and suburban roads offer this, but not much for the walker, it looks like most other post industrial towns, nice enough on a sunny day, I guess. Holroyd park offers more greenery before we meet our next Railway walk, the lower section of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Mirfield - Low Moor line, projected to be Greenway to connect with the already extent sections but currently only running as far as the A644 outside Mirfield. Feel like one of the local's spaniels has tried to adopt me as I walk along here, and do make note of the ornate gateway which greets the cyclist at Huddersfield Road. You realise that the section you have walked was infilled cutting when you peer across the wall to see where the path is planned to continue and see that the trackbed is some distance below you.


Woodend Road Bridge, Mirfield

Again with road walking, to Mirfield railway station, and I will share everything I know about Mirfield along the way. It is as far as my Metrocard will take me by train without paying, it has an over-sized Victorian parish church, and its where Patrick Stewart is from! It is also closed on a bank holiday and it's under the railway station we go and past the nicely turned out Ledgard Mill development and over Ledgard bridge towards something with resembles path after far too much pavement. Woodend Road leads us to more railway walking, and this is the Mirfield - Newtown branch built by the Midland Railway in 1910 in an attempt to compete with the L&Y and L&NWR, and turned out to be a financial disaster. This section, to Bradley, only remained operational for 27 years before the LMS shut it down but it provides us with nice level path, via a lunch stop at Heaton Lodge to trainspot and meeting a huge party of school-age cyclists near Battyeford. From Helm Lane to Bog Green Lane there's a lot more evidence of infilling going on, and the wooded path seems to have bird boxes and gas vents in equal quantities. Trying to get an impression of the original level is even more confusing as the path ands and careens down the hillside towards Dalton Bank Road, hard to imagine trains having ever run down here.

As the best view of the day comes out, so does the rain and its waterproofs out as we take in the sights of Dalton bank to the left, the Colne Valley opening out with Castle Hill in the distance and Bradley Viaduct dominating the immediate scene. It's pretty amazing that such an imposing structure managed to endure for 70 years, completely unused, and after the lightest of makeovers it can now dominate the valley and be useful in all its 15-arched, blue engineering bricked glory. I think it's safe to say that the Midland Railway had a way with viaducts, and I take time off the path to take pics and yomp through the trees by the River Colne as the rain pounds down. Regret that decision as my knees start to object as I have to walk back up to the path, and cross the viaduct over the river and Huddersfield Broad canal and then via some more twisty cycle paths its over the railway again to the end of the Calder Valley Greenway.


Bradley Viaduct

Dalton Bank Road Bridge

A short walk up to Leeds Road, the A62, and I make the mistake of feeling like I'm on the home stretch, but actually Bradley is quite a distance from the centre of Huddersfield and is really a separate entity rather than a suburb. There's a whole other Greenway to walk anyway, the Birkby Bradley, and the first section of that has the feeling of one of those green spaces laid out for road use and never used (Second use of that analogy in the one article. Weird.), also infilled as the buried bridges at Deighton Road and Whitacre Street indicate. It also feels starngely remote, and there's a lot less housing around that I'd expected, not a path to walk on a dark night for sure, but it's nice to see the local kids are out to cycle it on a very damp afternoon, even if they are pelting down the slopes toward Deighton station with childish abandon. Eventually meet houses at Red Doles, and this is the section which endured as railway for slightly longer, serving the Newtwon Goods depot until 1961, but never turning out to fulfil the grand schemes the Midland Railway had originally planned for it.


Bradford Road Bridge, Huddersfield

Back Honoria Street bridge, Huddersfield

Up the embankment, and infilling covers up much of the cutting beyond, which is a real shame, because we could almost have had a Heckmondwike Cutting version 2.0 down here, the path dips down under six road bridges with half a mile of each other. Mostly plate girder bridges, but the one at Bradford road is massively imposing, and the arched brick bridge at Back Honoria Street is an attractive aberration. Then the path zig-zags down to Willow Lane and the greenway ends, in the rather ill-defined district of Birkby, and beyond is the last sign of the railway in a bridge abutment and a beck crossing, and the depot at Newtown suffered that fate of so many goods yards, it is now home to Matalan and Aldi.

Huddersfield Railway Station

The haul down to the end of the day's walk seem to take forever as my knees have had enough for the day, and Castle Hill again tempts as a future walking prospect, and eventually we come into the town centre, and I can conclude that Huddersfield has probably the most over-stated Railway station in the country with its massive Corinthian portico and colonnade in a modest provincial town. Neither Leeds, Bradford or Sheffield ever had a station quite like it! Successfully mis-timed my arrival though, 2.35pm which misses my train home by that much, but thankfully bank holidays don't affect the rail services, and creative ticket purchase and train travel gets me home within the hour!


1,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 114.5 miles