When I say that, what I actually mean is we did a circular walk, taken from the Wakefield way:
Walk number 1 it was, that took us a long part of the un-restored canal. The Wakefield way as you can see from the photo I nicked, is a circular walk - around Wakefield of course. The book of walks, splits it into sections that start and finish in the same place, using various public footpaths/carparks to make it easy to do.
The book we're working from is old - very old. So old in fact, that lots of the landmarks used to navigate, have been removed or have died... such as "big tree near a fence" or "large gate next to a style". It CAN lead to "interesting" moments trying to work out where on Earth you are - or rather where on Earth you should be going lol.
Our plan THIS year, is to walk each walk, enough times to get it right... sort of a trial and error affair AND in the hope they will sink into our brains for retirement. It was our 4th attempt at walk 1 ... it starts off at Wintersett reservoir, and goes into Haw Park wood. There's a visitor centre there and "things to do" for kids - it also has helpful signs up in the wood to make things a little easier... These signs, however, do not help " Wakefield Way" walkers...
They are quite helpful and interesting I suppose... especially if you're trying to make education fun... it took a while to get Andy on side but he now knows about "Oak trees" thanks to this.
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IT's a slow burner (the learning process that is - not the tree) but we'll get there in time...
About a mile into the walk, we ended up alongside the old Barnsley Canal. As you can see from the map, the canal used to link Barnsley with the Aire and Calder in Wakefield.
It's a nice walk along the tow-path - which is in quite good condition... as is the canal itself. It's easy to see how it could be brought back into life....in many places, it holds water well and the bridges we came cross aren't in too bad condition either. If you're interested, you can read more about it here http://www.bddct.org.uk/home.html
I took a few photos as we wandered ...
I'm not too sure who those ugly buggers are but my new hat was very warm! ;-)
Until next time...
2 comments:
Looks like it would be good to explore. It's a shame sections are missing at the Walton / Wakefield end. I'll put this walk on the list. We had a walk down the towpath at Stanley on Sunday in the direction of Heath. It was a lovely day for it. I think we spotted your mooring.
It's quite a nice walk - we're going to do it again tomorrow once we've had a look at fall ings lock... apparently, it's having an "open day" tomorrow with guided tours... can't see it taking all that long to walk down into the lock but it'll be worth a visit.
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