Road to Home 2022 Day 2: Oulton - Cudworth

Oulton to Cudworth 31.5 km

You'll find the Trans-Pennine Trail more easygoing than you think. 

- Noticeboard at Stanley Ferry Marina

Day 2 of my route from Leeds towards Canterbury coincided entirely with the Trans-Pennine Trail, a well-signposted, well-cared-for and much-frequented walking route. So I didn't have to worry about finding my way but could relax and just follow the arrows! 

The trail started out through the fields, then along a cycle track, a canal towpath, and the sidewalk of a quiet country road. 

Stanley Ferry Marina

I crossed the Doncaster Road, already regretting not having booked the Redbeck Motel just a kilometre farther up the street ... But it was only lunch time, so I proceeded on into the nature reserve at Walton, which claims to be the world's oldest protected natural area. 

A bit of history: Walton

Walton, originally Weala-tun (c. 650 – 830), a name which means 'Welshman's Village', is recorded in the Domesday Book (c. 1086) as Waleton. This suggests a settlement of native British people was established well before the Saxons arrived during the 7th century. During the Norman dynasty, the village was recorded as Waton, but since the Middle Ages (c. 1154) to the present day, the village has held its current name of Walton. 

Walton lies on the Barnsley Canal (now disused) and is home to Walton Hall, once the residence of Charles Waterton, affectionately known as 'Squire' Waterton to the locals. A pioneering naturalist and explorer who found himself living right where the world's first industrial revolution began, amidst the coal mines of northern England. He was one of the first to recognise the negative impact of this revolution on human progress, and the need to manage this progress in a way which benefits both humankind and the natural environment. Waterton transformed the grounds of his estate into the world's first nature reserve in 1820, and recorded seeing 123 species of birds in Walton Park over a 30-year period. Walton was an inspiration to Charles Darwin, who was on one occasion his guest at Walton Hall. And so the village of Walton may claim to be the site of the first attempt in history to reconcile nature with industry, an important step in the history of environmentalism and an inspiration for us today.

Charles Waterton, by Charles Wilson Peale, 1824, National Gallery, London

Walton Park is now Waterton Park Golf Course, and Walton Hall has become Waterton Park Hotel. Fortunately, there are public rights of way crossing the park: "All footpaths must be kept open and in good order, and this can only be achieved by someone constantly walking them. Rights of Way must also be preserved as should Bridleways and the condition of all footpaths, stiles and gates must be observed and maintained" (https://www.overtown.org.uk/about-walton/footpaths.html).

Walton has a long history of coal mining, with documentary evidence of estate and field names dating local mining activities back to the 17th century; in late Victorian times, mining was concentrated on a seam found on the Walton Hall Estate. Shafts were sunk for Sharlston West Colliery at Walton in 1890, and the mine developed rapidly, benefiting from the good railway and canal networks. Pit dwellings were built for the miners, called Ings Cottages or, as they were known locally, Spike Island, or simply the Spike. The name survived nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947, but was later changed to Walton Colliery. By the 1930's there were about 1,200 men working there.

An explosion in the colliery killed five men on 22 April 1959. The pit was saved several times by industrial action before finally closing on 3 December 1979, leading to the loss of 550 jobs in the town. This was planned to be one of the first en-bloc transfers of miners from an exhausted colliery to the new Selby Coalfield, but only around half of the workforce (excluding those that chose redundancy) moved to the Selby Coalfield. The remaining miners transferred to similar work at Ackton Hall, Allerton Bywater and Nostell Collieries, and later to Selby when those were pits also closed.

From Walton the Pit Stack Facebook page 

The site has now been transformed into Walton Colliery Nature Park. Large lakes were constructed when the reserve was landscaped in the mid-1990s and the excavated earth was then used to cover the colliery's vast spoil heaps.  

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton,_Wakefield 

https://www.overtown.org.uk/walton-colliery-nature-park/the-pit.html

https://watertonswalton.wordpress.com/

Hard to believe there used to be a coal mine here

The disused Barnsley Canal

But Waterton Park Hotel & Spa is not only terribly expensive but fully booked for the night, so I continued along the path by what used to be the Barnsley Canal to Royston, and from there took a shortcut to Cudworth. 

Tuesday is washing day in Royston 

Finding beauty even in Cudworth 😍

Madam will be dining in this evening 😅

Road to Home 2022 Day 1: Leeds - Oulton

Leeds Oulton/Woodlesford 13 km

If we don't go mad once in a while, there's no hope. 

Rachel Joy, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Another Long Walk: after Road to Rome 2021, it's time for Road to Home 2022! 

This year's mad idea is to walk from my birthplace in Leeds, England to my home in Italy. 

Not necessarily all at once! 

Today I began the first section, from Leeds to Canterbury: a pilgrimage destination in its own right since the Middle Ages, as well as the starting point of the Via Francigena pilgrimage route to Rome and points south. 

This will be a highly personal pilgrimage for me, because St. Bernard's Way, a route that was already established before I came along to walk it from Leeds to the beginning of the Via Francigena, passes through many places of particular significance in the history of my family.  

Beginning in the place where I made my début in the world: Leeds, Yorkshire. 

Here's how Day 1 of Road to Home 2022 went! 

***

Woke up at dawn with a charley horse - what a way to begin a new walk, with a cramp in my leg before I even got out of bed!! 😅

I soon gave up on the idea of going back to sleep, and listened to the birds heartily singing their dawn chorus, unfazed by the light but steady rainfall that was pattering down on the skylight in my attic bedroom. Then I made my way down to the kitchen and sat drinking tea and reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which my cousin had given me and which I judged worth carrying for as long as it takes me to finish it, until my cousin came down, made me a cup of coffee and took me to the station to catch the train to Leeds. 

I had been to Leeds in 2018 to discover what the town where I was born and lived in for the first three weeks of my life actually looked like, and here are a few of the pictures I took on that occasion. 

Leeds was a small manorial borough in the 13th century which became a major centre for the production and trading of wool in the 17th and 18th centuries and then a major mill town during the Industrial Revolution. Wool remained the dominant industry, but flax, engineering, iron foundries, printing and other industries also emerged. 

When I was in Leeds in 2018, I visited Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills, located in a former textiles mill on the River Aire, an experience I highly recommend to get an idea of what factory workers' lives were like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Back in 2022, I did not spend much time in Leeds, just enough to purchase a few necessary items at the Decathlon (conveniently located right in front of the train station) and obtain my first stamp on my pilgrim's credential at the Cathedral. 

The Cathedral had only just opened for the day, and I found a lady arranging flowers on the altars, who took my pilgrim passport to a man with a vacuum cleaner, who took it to the priest in his back office. The man with the vacuum cleaner knew exactly what I meant when I asked for a stamp, so I musn't be the only pilgrim to have walked through Leeds! He returned my credential with a magnificent Leeds Cathedral stamp in bright red ink. 

But I did not actually start my walk at the Cathedral! I had a specific location in mind from which to begin this personal pilgrimage: the address that appears on my birth certificate.

 

And so I left the cathedral and headed for the University district to locate the address of my parents' lodgings at that time: my first home in the world. Here it is!

I didn't seem very impressed with it, judging from the few photographs taken of me in the three weeks I lived there! 

Me announcing my arrival in Leeds, June 1966 

Looking a little more content with life

The house appears to be empty today, with a for sale sign in the overgrown garden. 

At this point it was raining steadily, so I didn't hang around, but made my way down to the River Aire and the Aire and Calder Navigation Canal, part of Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and followed these parallel waterways out of town along a footpath that forms part of the Trans-Pennine Way. 

It soon stopped raining, and it was a very pleasant walk, in the company of the joggers, bikers, dog-walkers, ducks and swans of Leeds, surrounded by the sweet scent of hawthorn trees in blossom. I passed several locks on the way, and colourful canal boats. 

One of the many bridges I walked under today

Mother swan with six little ones. Dad was busy chasing the ducks away

Duckling (known locally as "dookling" 😁) 

Another slow traveller

Thwaite Watermill 

The Owl and the Pussycat, I presume? 😅
("... went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat")

I left the canal path at Woodlesford Lock and walked up the main road into the town, arriving at my accommodation just in time to connect up for a yoga lesson with my next door neighbour back home - the perfect way to end a day of walking! 

A historic note about Woodlesford 

The name Woodlesford most likely comes from Old English *wrīdels (meaning 'thicket') + ford, the ford being at a bend in the River Aire close to the present day Woodlesford lock on the Aire and Calder Navigation Canal. The existence of the town is first recorded between 1188 and 1202, but much of Woodlesford's expansion took place in the nineteenth century due to the mining and stone quarrying industries. 

The closest coal mining pit to the centre of the village was sunk to the Beeston seam in the 1870s, but was only operational for a few years; many of the miners employed there then moved to work at pits owned by T & R W Bower Ltd on the opposite side of the river. Miners living in Woodlesford also worked at the Rothwell pits owned by J & J Charlesworth. There was a big influx in population in 1911 when Henry Briggs, Son & Company Ltd sunk two shafts to the Beeston and Silkstone seam at Water Haigh. That pit stayed in production until 1970 when many from its workforce were made redundant or were dispersed to other collieries in the area and further afield on the Selby coalfield. The area declined when coal production at Rothwell ceased in 1983, but it has recovered largely due to its proximity to the centre of Leeds.

The village is also the home of Bentley's Yorkshire Bitter. The Bentley family started the brewery in 1828, but after the brewery was acquired by Whitbread plc in 1968, beer production ceased in 1972. 

My accommodation for the evening is a small room in the former stables of the local inn and pub, which stands astride the official boundary between Woodlesford and the neighbouring village of Oulton. The food in the pub is tasty, and affordable, but unfortunately Bentley is not on tap! 

 

GPS tracker took a break during the blue part in the middle....🤷‍♀️

What next?

Where I've walked so far: 

I took my first Long Walk in 2015: 600 km in 28 days on the Via Francigena from my home in Chiavari to Rome. 

Between 2016 and 2019 I walked in the other direction, from my home to Santiago de Compostela. Then I walked from Porto to Santiago on the Camino Portugues with my Dad in September 2019.

In 2020 I walked from home to Florence, and in the spring of 2021 I continued on the rest of the way to Assisi along Italy's second most popular pilgrimage route, the Way of Saint Francis, shown in blue on the map above. 

Then in September/October 2021 I went back to the Via Francigena, the southern part this time, walking from Rome to Santa Maria di Leuca, almost 900 km, in 37 days, with the Road to Rome 2021 project.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the Annandale Way in Scotland and Hadrian's Wall Walk in England in 2018! (That accounts for the little red line across the thinnest part of the UK in the photo above.)

So what next?

How about walking all the rest of the Via Francigena, to the north of where I live? From Canterbury, through France and Switzerland, over the Alps and through northern Italy back to my home, the point where I started my first walk 7 years ago?

Sounds great! 

But wait - why start in Canterbury? 

Canterbury Cathedral itself is a traditional pilgrimage site, and there are paths converging on Canterbury from all over England. 

I was born in England, in the city of Leeds, Yorkshire. Though I left at the age of three weeks... it could still be a starting point of particular significance for me!

So went my train of reasoning over this past winter. Looking into the practical feasibility of this project, I discovered the existence St. Bernard's Way, a 1573 km long distance walking route from Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, founded in 1132 by twelve monks from Clairvaux Abbey. to Citeaux Abbey, founded by St. Bernard of Clairvaux south of Dijon in France. The route retraces the path that the monks of the Cistercian order would have taken from the monastery at Rievaulx to attend the general meeting of the Cistercian order in Citeaux Abbey; in France, the route follows the Via Francigena before branching off toward Dijon.  

But I won't have to worry about getting all those difficult French names mixed up, at least not this year, because I will be starting in Leeds and walking as far as Canterbury, and then Dover, for the present! 

St. Bernard's Way

The British portion of St. Bernard's Way was traced by Tony Maskill-Rogan, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when he and two friends walked through Chiavari in January (courageous walkers!) of 2018. At that time Tony was researching a possible route for a new Way of St. Augustine. The three walkers stopped overnight in Chiavari, and though they had already booked their accommodations I did invite them over for supper, and we spent a fun evening together which was immortalised in Tony's blog! 

It was 2014 when Tony traced St. Bernard's Way, and I'm not sure how many people have walked it since then, but I intend to find out if it's still there, and still walkable! 

My plan is to start with the UK portion of St. Bernard's Way, beginning with Stage 6 in Leeds and walking from there to Canterbury and then to Dover. The interactive map on Tony's web site shows the route. 

Stay tuned!