Castleford to Aberford 01/03/14

So, first 40th birthday bash of the year on 21st February went down well, despite being on a Friday evening and me enduring an odyssey of almost 2 hours to get from Morley to the Leeds Irish Centre, where I had oddly never previously been in my 20+ years up country. LT got a pretty good showing, with a healthy turnout from work occupying one corner of the hall, and a good time was had by all (cliched, but true), for there was chatter and food, dancing and silliness, tears and laughter, and booze, lots and lots of booze. Plus an amount of flexibility to the 1am late license that allowed for a much later finish than was expected, and even then a couple of us ended up going back to my supervisor's house to not stop drinking until 4am, and after that we mostly failed to sleep on the sofa before Saturday morning rolled around and we snuck off early once public transport got going again. Stumbling my way through Garforth on a bright and chill morning had me saddened that such a good day was going to be wasted, but I'm much more cheered by a heavy dose of the random element being dropped into my day, so return home knowing that the whole weekend is going to be lost as I try to get my hangover shifted and my sleeping pattern back in order.

And then, one week on, as March means serious business, Railway Walking...

Castleford to Aberford, via the NER branch and the Fly Line  11.1 miles


Castleford Viaduct

Railway walking dropped off last year after my snow choked venture across Alpine Bradford, so that needs to be rectified by getting in two different lines in a single day, starting with the 1878 NER branch from Castleford to Garforth, which means a 9.55am start at Castleford station, where the already spartan fixtures of this blighted halt have been demolished, hopefully as part of a regeneration scheme, because otherwise this place really is bidding to be the most depressing railway station in the county. Still, a sunny morning allows the town to put its good face on, and I admire the good parts as I wander down to Bank Street, notably the Picture House and the neat carving on the branch of HSBC, before dropping down to the A6032 and crossing over to get to the riverside, and for variety I'll be crossing over the 2008 footbridge. It's a really nice piece of work this, crossing from the flour mill on the south bank and above the weir, over which the Aire gives a demonstration of its full force, passing gracefully in a broad s-curve, an immediately preferably passage to risking life and limb on the 1808 road bridge judging by the number of patrons, and I do wonder how long that barge has been stuck on the weir below it, as it seems to be there in every picture ever taken of this bridge. Press on to Lock Lane, which leads through the crowd of youthful rugby players and down to the Castleford cut of the Aire & Calder Navigation, a path already trammelled, but the only one available to get to the Fairburn Ings wildlife reserve and to Castleford Viaduct. If I were especially ambitious, I'd have taken a trespass from East Junction to cross over the Aire via the old railway bridge, but knowing its condition is terrible and its ironwork is rapidly decaying, I have no desire at all to be there when the decks start to fall in the river below. Instead I'll just wander around its northern end and photograph it from all angles, cursing the sun for residing exactly to its south, and hoping that someone at Sustrans has the nous and cash to preserve this gem of 19th century ironwork before it rusts beyond repair.


Barndale Road bridge

I will trespass on the line north, though, as the embankment rises above the marshes and flooded mine workings of Fairburn Ings, and to aid the walker, the track still remains in situ as far as Barndale Road bridge, and I don't feel that I'm inconveniencing anyone by being here. It's plenty overgrown though, so a path has to made through the overgrowth (is that a word?), and careful foot placement is needed at times, walking on the sleepers when its dry and on the ballast where its wet, avoiding the sections which have been eroded in recent years (2007 is my guess), and it all feels a bit like how the world might look if civilisation suddenly disappeared. It's pretty hard to believe that the last use of this line, serving the colliery at Allerton Bywater, was as recent as 1992, such is the level of decay, but it's fun to spot the remnants of the coal workings, notably the remains of a weighbridge, and to find just how many birch trees can grow in a confined space, before the end of the line is met at the road bridge. Beyond lies the site of Ledston station, of which nothing visibly remains, not even the remnants seen on the pics on Lost Railways, and industrial units occupy the site of the colliery off to the south, and even though the line ahead looks relatively clear of vegetation, I understand that it is fenced off from access, so an escape route has to be sought and it proves easy enough to clamber up the embankment to get to Barnsdale Road. Trot down to Station Road, oddly on the wrong side of the line for the actual station, and it's only a short way past the industrial units that I detour to Haigh Moor Way where a new housing development has emerged, completely not the sort of thing that you would expect at this remove from other major settlements, but the commuter belt seems to have come to Allerton Bywater because if it's a brownfield site, you can build, build, build without restraint! Meet the paths again by the climbing frame which really looks like a UFO landed on a Big Top on Google Maps, and the junction layout indicate the hope that the surfaced path will continue south in the future, whilst I join the old line heading north again, the section finally closed in 1969, to head over Middleton Road and onward to Park Lane.

Bowers Junction

Here the cycleway known as The Lines starts out (and I thought it was The Linesway when I encountered it two years ago), and to demonstrate the care that is taken for it, the entrance gate is really rather special, and excellently florid bit of metal work, and out track rise onto an elevated embankment, one so high it needs a fence along one side to prevent travellers from sliding down to the water feature below. The view to the south give a view of Allerton Bywater that is much more like the one that I would have expected, 70s bungalows, small-scaled semis and those odd small-windowed terraces, whilst a look north shows Kippax off in the distance, dropped on its hillside, and the trail itself brings out the casual ambler and riders, it's good to have some passing company after the first hour of solitude. Crossing doctors lane involves a fun zig-zag to get around a missing bridge, and a little further along the embankment we come to Bowers Junction, and I hadn't been aware of any spurs on this site, but an examine of E289 illustrates that this is the branch that lead to St Aidan's opencast site, now forming a footpath to the nature reserve so that's another half mile of railway walk that will have to wait to a later date. The path enters a cutting as it runs behind the house of Great Preston, and ponds seem to have been installed by the hard surface for the creation of a more varied wildlife feel. either that or the puddles have grown increasingly wild, and the remains of a coal staithe presents itself too, looking like half a bridge abutment. Beyond the puzzlingly narrowed Brigshaw Lane bridge, the eagle eyed will spot a levelling out of the terrain, and the presence of industrial units almost certainly suggests a station site, and as the garage is called Station Road motors, I do believe I called it correctly. Sure enough this is the site of Kippax station, the lost link to this substantial village that these days could easily be ignored as it has no major routes going through it, I certainly had no idea as to its size, spread out on the hillside as it is, I wouldn't have expected to find tower blocks out here.

Selby Road bridge

Past Berry lane bridge, the trail rises to cross Kippax beck and offers a changing perspective on the village and of the plumes from the power stations down the Aire valley before the wrinkles in the hills hide everything to the east and the rolling countryside takes over, and even at this relative proximity to settlement you can still get one of those odd moments of total stillness and peace as no man made sounds interfere. It starts to look like the best of the day has passed as it greys over whilst I try to get a fix on the farms that the Leeds Country Way passed somewhere to the west as I press on, and for a railway trail it sure does undulate as it enters another stretch of cuttings, and we must be getting close to civilisation again as the path starts to become occupied again. Coming the other way and seeing me with my stick, one of a gaggle of small boys crammed into a push-chair has to enquire of me 'Are you a bit old?', which can only be answered 'Just a bit', provoking much hilarity, it's a bit alarming that i could be actually mistaken for an old man (I'm really not, despite what I say). Crossing Brecks Lane (access to the northern tip of Kippax) means rejoining the LCW and after a pause for watering by the picnic bench I lunched at last time I came this way, it's press on through the cutting that really is the most attractive section of the whole pathway, with its pleasing curve and completely erroneous overbridge, and looking exactly the same as two years ago. Push on into Garforth, under the A63 Selby road bridge and follow the path as it gets squeezed between the suburban gardens, offering a sneaky look into the local residences, but probably providing enough difficulty to ever getting this line reopened, which is a shame as it would be a useful relief line for Leeds area rail traffic. It's almost possible to wave my supervisor's house whilst out here, but I don't need a reputation for turning up in Garforth unannounced, so I'll keep on the the end of The Lines at Ninelands Road, and I won't be trying to trace the remainder of the branch as it crosses wasteland behind the local aggregate works, just a bit too much trespassing for an urban area, instead taking the lengthy road walk up to the Bar Lane bridge to peer down to the Leeds - Selby line to see if any remnant of Garforth junction is visible, and the answer to that is a resounding 'no'.


Lily Pit Cottage

That's one railway path down, and the next one is to be found not too far to the north, beyond the A642 Aberford Road, and this is to be traced once beyond the unattractive light industrial sites that have developed along Ash Lane, this is the Aberford Railway, or the Parlington Railway or the Fly Line, constructed in the 1830s to service the coal mines that grew up around the Parlington estate, north of Garforth. Running on a gentle down hill gradient to Aberford, initially by horse traction but upgraded to steam in the 1870s, it largely supplied coal to the local markets to the north before ceasing to be profitable and closing down in 1924, a rare example of a private railway operated by the landed gentry and never incorporated into any of the larger railway companies. Mining ceased in the area in the 1930s, and two of the pits supported by the line must be now hidden by the industrial estates off the A642, so an eagle-eye will be needed to spot any remnants that have endured, the odd brick built building in amongst the later constructions in steel frame and panel would suggest colliery activity. Indeed it would be hard to convince the unaware walker that the path we follow is a former trackbed, as it mostly resembles a flat and straight farm track as it heads out towards the M1 beyond Hawks nest wood. Peering into the trees does show up a few out of place building remnants and a raised mound with a concrete slab atop it definitely looks like a capped shaft to me, and the warning notices further along alert you to former mine workings so this must have been Elizabeth pit and my industrial archaeologist sense is still working. Beyond the M1, a dead giveaway is provided by the name of the house by the track, Lily Pit cottage, showing a distinctly un-rural profile, though it these days looks more like a country cottage as there is nothing else visible to suggest former mining activity, the land reclaimed by forestry and farming.

The Dark Arch

Enter the Parlington estate, and venture into the dense Parlington Hollins wood, and the path shows a distinct elevation above the forest floor for a distance, ample proof of this being a railway embankment to me, and then it becomes even more convincing as it slips into a shallow cutting, as no one would go to that sort of trouble for an ordinary country lane. It also provides for some rather moist going, as the track has been well carved up, and as it swings to the north-east beyond a forestry track it seems to be sharing its ditch with a local stream and the going starts to get a bit tenuous, so it proves easier to abandon it and head over to Parlington Lane, the main track across the estate, for some firmer footing and look over the fields to the impressively sized Home farm to the north.The trackbed disappears in undergrowth to my right, only distinctly reappearing by the fishpond and gamekeepers cottage, where it merges with the lane, and it does seem tempting to go for an explore around the various paths around this estate, as there seem to be no one around and its mostly unoccupied, but that's probably not wise when a man with a shotgun might be around to shoo you away. Stick the the lane / trackbed as it passes what looks like the remains of a platform, and then it follows the line of a ha-ha (a recessed garden wall and landscape design feature) before descending through the Dark Arch, a short curved tunnel which is definitively a railway structure to these eyes, but it was actually built in 1813 so that traffic on the lane would not be seen by the Gascoigne family from Parlington Hall, and was never used by the railway which passed to the south of it. Still, I'll walk through any available tunnel, which despite light wells and its short length still manages to be ridiculously dark and moist, and the trackbed reemerges to pass through the woodland littered with blooming Snowdrops before passing under the Light Arch, another old structure which separated traffic to the house from the industrial traffic on the lane.

Aberford

Happy to report that the sunshine returns once the top of the estate is met, passing Pinfold Quarry, and concluding that the Gascoignes really did their best to industrially exploit their estate through the 19th century before decamping to Lotherton Hall in 1905 and leaving it to decline and decay in the 20th, indeed the Parlington estate almost feels like it needs a bit of a social revival to me. Finally start to meet other walkers out on the lane, and this must mean that we are close to our destination, and the lane follows an obvious terrace to the estate house that may have been the station house back in the day, it's not much further on to the end of the line, and I'm guessing that the rough ground to the north was the site of Aberford's staithes and the coal yard, from which the markets in Wetherby and Tadcaster were served. That's not all that Aberford had going for it though, as it sits on the Roman Road of Ermine Street (last seen in Allerton Bywater), later becoming the Great North Road and the A1, and it has developed as a classic ribbon settlement, stretched along the main road and not gaining much width, and a wander up the road demonstrates its history as a staging post on the road from London to Scotland with numerous former coaching inns along its length. The road also has a feeling of scale that doesn't quite match the status of the settlement that now resides there, but even if it has become a commuter village, there's a lot to recommend it, especially with its recent architecture sympathetically blended with the Georgian buildings, three thriving pubs and its church dedicated to St Ricarius (the only one in the whole country). As I've time before my ride home, I'll wander all the way to the top of the village, crossing over Cock Beck, and the former ford which gave the village it's name (which is oddly Welsh if you look at it wrongly, like Pontefract) and make note of the other paths that stretch out to the west and east, as new trails are always appealing to me. The top half of the village is much less appealing than the bottom half, really ordinary suburban designs in the main, but an old road sign indicating this as the Ferrybridge - Boroughbridge road is a nice relic to find, and I draw up at the Old Cafe bus terminus, where no cafe remains,  to look out to the A1(M) bypassing the village to the north and to conclude my walk at 2.05pm, and I've barely had time to water and draw breath before the #64 bus arrives, primed to take me back to Morley, non-stop!

Next on the Slate: A Transmitter and a Canal!


1,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 953.1 miles
 (2014 total: 39.9 miles)