Brighouse to Batley 09/11/14

The final corners of the season are here already, the last days of my three year odyssey as well for that matter, and having been good to my word to do a lot of wandering below the Calder - Colne boundary, I still find that there are corners of Kirklees that I haven't ventured into. Far too many actually. Last year I apologised for not getting anywhere near Slaithwaite or Meltham, and a year on neither of those locations have been visited on my travels, and even with all those lines coming down on my map, I have somehow failed to go anywhere  near Mirfield as well, so I can only conclude that there will still be plenty of paths to pursue when more walking comes on in 2015. For now, though, a trip across the Spen Valley seems in order, as the top corner of this district has been largely forgotten when most of my routes went south, and so we head to the land of Cleckmondedge once again, to see if its best features are still there, and to sneak in a railway walk that could have easily been forgotten about. Additionally, as I'm trying to make the best of the weather whilst November offers days that are little more than 8 hours long, I'm travelling on a Sunday without making any changes to my plan, which means that my start line in Brighouse is not 35 minutes distant, but nearly 2 hours via the long way round through Bradford and Halifax.

Brighouse to Batley, via Clifton, Liversedge, Heckmondwike & Birstall.  10.5 miles

Brighouse from Clifton

Disembark at Brighouse station, after 10.10am, as the low sun and long shadows drift across the town, and it's a rather familiar appearance as I seem to have made the acquaintance of this corner of Calderdale under similar conditions two years ago, and I'll make for the Calder Bridge, between the towering mills and flour silos, to admire the Welcome to Brighouse sign, rendered in a good facsimile of 1930s railway poster style, even if the town advertised doesn't really resemble the one in reality. Follow the A641 as it passes over the Calder & Hebble navigation, and the Calderdale Way, away from the town centre as we work around the extensive road works around Sainsbury's to find the way onto the A643, the most well hidden of all the major roads which pile up and criss-cross at this corner of the town, finally finding a familiar landmark in the embankments of the L&Y's Pickle Bridge Line of 1881, looking a whole lot more substantial than they did when I last passed this way, and also forming the entrance to the former Clifton Road station, which I have learned since. The ascent on Clifton Common road is pretty harsh, one I should have seen coming as every route out of upper Calderdale involves a hill climb, and this is no different as we follow the main road out through Brighouse's remoter terraces and suburbia, getting good views up the valley and over to the M62 bridge as we go, the appearance of Emley Moor mast is also completely predictable. Clifton village is met by the Armytage Arms, advertised as a refreshment point for the Kirklees way, se we're close to familiar tracks already, and I take the path along Towngate, expecting the village to be revealed as a ribbon of older houses spread along the bluff high above the river, but it's mostly a suburban sprawl, which is a much more disappointing aspect, with the oldest, and nicest, section being around the village green and war memorial, where no gathering seems to be going on despite it being Remembrance Sunday. It's definitely a village blessed with views though, hanging high above Calderdale, and I depart to Deep Lane, passing the Black Horse Inn which bookends the village and I follow the road as it rises above the Willow valley golf club, also previously visited on the Kirklees Way, soon passing over the M62 itself and rising to meet the boundary stone which marks the end of Clifton parish and our departure from Calderdale, and so onwards to traversing Kirklees district.


Liversedge Cemetery

As Freakfield Lane rises, it's a surprise to find it inhabited with joggers and dog walkers as we are quite far from any major centres of population, but once we crest we get a familiar spread of views around us, with St Peter's Hartshead sitting in isolation above the fields to the north and that epic view into the Colne Valley emerging to the south west, and regardless of the number of times I have seen it , it is always one to love. It's shrouded in a mess of haze today, and despite the promises of all day sunshine, it looks like we are going to be getting a lot more cloud cover than I'd wish for, which should be entirely expected, and I'm feeling in an improvisational mood as I meet the track of the Kirklees Way once again, choosing against following the roads through Hartshead and Roberttown, and choose to go cross country, heading over towards Peep Green Lane to make an altogether greener trip into the Spen Valley. The familiar views soon pass as I head to the cluster of houses by Windy Bank Lane, as the Spen Valley appears, offering few immediately distinctive landmarks, and I descend among the undulating fields to meet Green Lane, rising behind a cemetery that seems to be remote from any of the surrounding villages, and I'll cut my path through there, despite the lack of official rights of way through it. It's a pretty large site, with quite a few people out to tend graves, and it almost feels like Victorian parkland that has since become a necropolis, but it hasn't remained active enough to keep the chapel open, which now stands boarded up and neglected as the heart of it. The identity of the cemetery is finally revealed as I depart it, belonging to Liversedge, which makes sense now that I'm in the landscape rather than regarding it on the map, as I'd suspect burial plots are much easier to locate on the hillside outside the town rather than trying to find more space within it after its rapid growth in the 19th century. A route from Clough Lane to the town needs to be found, around the entirely rectangular Triangle farm, and by the ancient and rather tumbledown Bullace Trees farm, passing small kids on Shetland ponies on the lane before meeting the longest field walk of the day, down to Lands Beck and on to the path that takes the perimeter of the Birkby's and Kautex plastics factories, also slipping behind the Spen Valley Sports college, where the kids are out on the playing fields to use their Sundays for healthy exercise, which seems nutty, until I remember what I am actually doing.


Liversedge Central Foot Tunnel

Headlands Road drops us on the edge of suburban Liversedge, but we soon strike for the heart of town, wherever that might be as we cross to meet the footpath that slips downhill to the site of the former L&Y Liversedge Central station, now home to the Spen Valley Greenway and its riot of cyclepaths, and so a foot tunnel beneath the old station site can still have a current use as I pass beneath it to Ashton Clough Road, nowadays an industrial dead end, but surely once the road to the station? The footpath I had intended to follow around the back of the factories is somewhat overgrown and rather than have a fight with brambles, I choose to stay on the pavements as I move out to the A649 Halifax Road, heading west past the Lonsdale Hotel once I get the idea to go past the parish church and adding another improvised section to my day, and that can be found at the end of the footpath that departs Rouse Street, which is too narrow for both walker and dog walker to occupy simultaneously. Christ Church Liversedge might look like a rather mundane Victorian church when viewed from a distance, but up close it seems very well designed, as it sits atop its grassy promontory, with its high walls and elevated clerestory giving it a much more dramatic appearance, and it's definitely one worth seeing, especially as the shroud of trees have lost their leaves rendering it much more visible than it would be at warmer times of the year. Unfortunately no path exists eastwards, where a lot of houses have gone up since my E288 was printed, and so a long detour is necessary to get back on track, up Church Lane to Knowler Hill, where the Albion Inn looks like a good prospect as a pub fixer-upper, and then it's on among more factories and over the River Spen, looking like more than a ditch at this point, and up Green lane to meet the A638 Bradford Road. I don't much care for walking along major roads, and this one offers little of interest, aside from the observations that there seem to be an awful lot of pubs in the Spen Valley, and that it appears that about half of the Job Centres in the country seem to have been built out of the same pattern book within a single pre-1960s decade, and so on we go, passing across the A62 and failing to spot where the boundary between Liversedge and Heckmondwike might land, and the odd spread and mix of industrial and residential developments demonstrates the falseness of those models I was taught in GCSE Geography many summers ago.

Heckmondwike Cemetery

Depart from Frost Hill road to take the footpath that slips between a pair of factories before continuing in to Heckmondwike around the long perimeter of the Flush Mills site, now operated by Autoneum and one of those rare mill sites in any town that is still wholly in industrial use, and that's a rare triumph when 90% of mills listed on my OS maps are now residential site or post industrial dereliction. It might not be the old mill buildings, largely being newer buildings but a few wall fragments of the older mills still endure around the perimeter, and its worth taking a look too, as this path was chosen to take me on to the roads that dwell above Heckmondwike cutting on the L&NWR New Leeds Line, better known as the Spen Valley Ringway these days. I came along here to take the views down into the cutting which I had considered doing long before my walking life started, and to be honest the views are not that good as I make my way from Cook Lane to Cemetery Road along pavements and alleyways, as none of the bridges announce themselves distinctively and most of the walls are so high that I cannot see over them, so most of the pictures I take are not really of what I saw as I went past. It's still an engineering marvel, but certainly one best viewed from within rather than without, and being at ground level gives a few perspectives on Heckmondwike that I didn't get in 2012, like noting the turreted Non-Conformist chapel that has been converted to a Mosque with only a minimum of redressing, and spotting the former Roman Catholic church of the Holy Spirit, which stands disused at a scale and style that is all sorts of bonkers. My next walking target for the day demands that my track head north again, away from my destination, and it's convenient that Cemetery Road leads to another local green space, Heckmondwike Cemetery, naturally, where an even more extensive selection of graves fills a large field hemmed in by suburbia in all sides, high above the valley with a spired double chapel that is even sadder and more derelict than the one in Liversedge. It's good spot to get a perspective across the Spen Valley down towards the Calder and the parish church at Mirfield, and then it's time to stop looking back and make tracks towards Birstall, passing along Dale Lane and through the council estate to meet more suburban sprawl on the elevated B6122 White Lee Road, passing into our final valley of the day as we hit the descent on Smithies Moor Road.


L&NWR Footbridge, Birstall

I'm not entirely certain if Smithies Moor itself is meant to be parkland or not, it certainly has en enclosed playing field but I'm guessing that the rest is merely common land, and the descent away from the interestingly angled council houses has me looking over to the distant M62 and trying to get a fix on Oakwell Hall, which should be somewhere over there, but the big house that my camera picks out certainly isn't it. Looking over Birstall gives me a lot to see, but few obvious landmarks, and hitting the edge of the town has me finding more Shetland ponies hiding among the terraces and semis, and then it's on to meet the crossing of the A62 and A652, and you have time to ponder, as you wait for the traffic to allow you a moment to cross over, if the man outside the van dealership on the corner might really hate his life as he waves to traffic whilst wearing a dog costume. My next target hides somewhere behing the Italian restaurant at the crossroads, but It's not easy to spot the way to the cul de sac named The Crossings, which was once the terminus of the L&NWR Birstall Lower branch of 1852, one of the really forgotten railways of West Yorkshire, once envisaged as that company's route to Bradford but condemned to backwater status after the GNR gained approval for the Batley - Adwalton line. Having lost passenger services in 1916 as a wartime measure, it soldiered on as a goods line until finally closing in 1962, and now all that remains of this terminus are the distinctive sloping edges of the platforms and loading bays along the retaining walls of the 1980s suburban houses that have grown in the area, but off to the east, beyond the gate that just will not open is a mile of cycle path following the route of the line, which somehow didn't get consumed by redevelopment. the section that runs into Wilton park, the green space of Birstall - Batley, has a good reason to have endured, but the earlier section, up to Brookroyd Lane is an altogether more unexpected survival, running along an open section up to the substantial footbridge, before passing between fences through a new development of house on a track that is clearly only a few months old, so Yay! for councils putting money into schemes that promote healthy living. the track through Wilton park is pleasingly quiet, whilst a quiet buzz of activity goes on on the playing fields below and the woodland tracks above, the sun breaking through the cover of trees to give me one of the loveliest strtces of railway walking that I have had through all my seasons.

All Saints, Batley

Glimpses of the transitions from Birstall to Batley are gained through the tree cover, showing up more enduring mills and well-sized town houses, and we run out of railway path as the track ends at the Carlinghow Hill bridge abutment, another former station site, but the alignment can be followed on along Chinewood Avenue as it drifts into one of those council estates that seems to be uniquely styled to this area, taking the path down to the A652 once more, leaving the briefest of railway walks behind, as I make for the ancient point of interest in this town. There are few churches in this area which are distinct in the landscape, notably those at Upper Batley, Hanging Heaton and Staincliffe, but Batley Parish Church seems to be doing its best to hide, behind the large building of the Conservative Club, but it shouldn't as All Saints is a rare Medieval establishment, dating from the late 15th century in the Perpendicular style, complete with a pedimented tower with battlements. The churchyard is a pleasing little oasis of calm in this town, and a quick glance at Wikipedia will show that I have passed and noted a good many of the Grade 1 listed churches in this county, and spotting the remainder should be another target for 2015. Beyond, Branch Road leads to the Market Place, and the heart of Batley's civic quarter, where the Town Hall and Branch Library stand opposite each other to illustrate the wealth available to the town in the Victorian era, and the contemporary heart of the shopping district can be found along Commercial Street, where the prosperity of the town is hard to judge as most of the shops are not trading on Sunday afternoon, though the Tesco superstore is predictably busy. The finish line approaches, as I descend to Hick Lane and across the A652 once again, noting the Batley Mill Outlet, which seems to be a thriving industry in these parts, and note the gateway to nowhere which has many bats upon it, which gives a literal interpretation to the town's name. The final pull is up Station Road, which is wide and proud looking, with many warehouses which must have been prime real estate in the 19th century, but now stand looking like this needs to be revived as an upscale residential district, another idea to ponder if a few million pounds were to drop into my lap. The day comes to its end point at Batley station at 2.05pm, and having had a sub 4 hour window to complete my trek before catching the Sunday service, I arrive with 7 minutes to spare, proving that it's possible to cross Kirklees and check a new station off this list even at this late juncture.

Next on the Slate: The first walk of the year went to Bradford, and so the last one leaves it


1,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 1389.6 miles   
(2014 total: 476.4 miles)

   (Up Country Total: 1294 miles)
   (Solo Total: 1162.6 miles)
   (Declared Total: 1181.4 miles)