Day Three of my Four Day Walk from Manchester to Leeds is a bit different from the others. Whereas Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4 are predominantly on canal towpaths, ex-railway lines and multiuse paths. Day 3 from Penistone to Wakefield is almost entirely by footpaths, bridleways and roadsides.
By the time I left Penistone, the weather had settled into being the first straightforwardly sunny day of the walk.
Leaving Penistone via the first bridleway I set out across the fields. The morning feeling very fresh.
Penistone and its surrounds are home to some seriously nice houses in possession of some lovely views. The landscape recalls bits of Derbyshire in and around the white peak, as well as some of upland areas of Worcestershire and Warwickshire on the edge of the Cotswolds.
This said, not every house in the area has been bought, fixed up and extended yet.
My objective first thing was to pick up the Barnsley Boundary Walk.
This path is not the quickest. As is the way with walks like that the focus is upon (loosely) following the edge of Barnsley District and calling in at local attractions on the way.
The first attraction that the Barnsley Boundary Walk calls at – heading north from the point where I joined it – is Cannon Hall Museum Park and Gardens. Cannon Hall itself is now run as a museum by Barnsley Council, while the grounds have become a country park.
After the Cannon Hall Country Park, the walk enters a long, straight uphill section, with brilliant views behind you. I was a bit surprised when I looked at the Ordnance Survey Explorer route summary for the day’s walk that there is actually more climbing today, than yesterday..! A bit of a surprise when Glossop – Penistone crossed the Peak District
Barnsley and its surrounds are famed for its coal mining heritage. However, on the walk in Yorkshire so far, I had seen very little recent evidence of mining. It was not recent, but amidst the grayish mud indicative of coal I walked across in some woodland I spotted what I thought were bell pits. Early coal workings predating the industrial deep level extraction of coal.
Tired out and just after passing one of the highest points on the walk (after Penistone) a village called High Hoyland, I was greeted with the most spectacular vista across Barnsley, right towards the centre of the eponymous town. As well as the M1 motorway and the vehicles streaming up and down it.
Then starting a long descent, in the distance at last, Wakefield.
Whoever runs Wakefield’s social housing reclad its tower blocks in a distinctive way with colourful triangular roofs (probably in the 1990s). Owen Hatherley was suitably withering about the effect in one of his early books. I always recall the tower blocks and their pointy tops from when I was a student at York, a decade ago and more now, and would see them from the train heading north if going via Leeds rather than the quicker Doncaster route. It was good to see them today.
Just after spying the distant centre of Wakefield I came upon a road sign. Eight miles, which meant I was about halfway.
In addition to being halfway it was soon time to leave South Yorkshire for West Yorkshire.
Right on the boundary, handily just off the M1 is Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It stands in the forlorn grounds of Bretton Hall. Once a famously autonomous and creative satellite campus of the University of Leeds, now since its closure in 2007, derelict. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park brightens the place up though.
The middle of the ornamental lake is where Barnsley turns into Wakefield, South Yorkshire into West Yorkshire. Which meant I was crossing the line into the walk’s fourth and final county.
After the Sculpture Park I continued through the parkland.
There are impressive views out west to the huge 319 metre tall transmitter mast at Emley Moor. Which is the tallest freestanding structure in the UK and the twenty fifth tallest in the world. I reckon I could see it clearly on the day I climbed Bleaklow from Glossop.
Now I really was entering urban territory again. Walking down a litter strewn lane (with more brilliant views of Emley Moor) and passing through a nature reserve to reach the village of Netherton (same name as one near Dudley). This stands just opposite Horbury, which is in a mini conurbation with Wakefield on the far side of the Calder and Hebble Navigation.
Passing through Netherton, approaching the Calder and Heble Navigation, I briefly passed through a little suburb called New Scarborough before approaching the canal cut down a steep hill.
The Calder and Heble Navigation is old as the UK’s inland waterways go, having been canalised (it is a naturally occurring river rising in the Pennines) in the 17th Century.
Now north of the canalised rivers I kept walking, passing through a riverside area, and passing into the suburb of Horbury.
From Horbury, a fast, level, well surfaced multiuse path leads beneath the M1 into Wakefield proper.
One of the challenges of walking between urban areas is the necessity of detouring to avoid massive pieces of infrastructure: motorways, railways, reservoirs, pipelines etc. One advantage of canal towpaths, greenways and former railway lines is that they relate to the landscape infrastructurally, meaning that they negate the need to navigate around them. As having not been on any today I was relearning…
Presently, after trudging through the outskirts of Wakefield, the city centre’s impressive vista appeared over a hilltop in an inner city park.
And about ten minutes later I was walking into it along Westgate, passing the main railway station.
Pleasingly my hotel had given me a room overlooking both Wakefield Cathedral – and – the distinctive flats which had guided me into the city.
And I got some nice shots from a westerly angle in the evening light.
Tomorrow after a relatively relaxed thirteen or fourteen miles this walk will conclude at Leeds Central railway station. Weather is not looking great… But we’ll see what happens. No unexpectedly hilly sections are anticipated tomorrow.
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.