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Showing posts with label West Yorkshire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Yorkshire. Show all posts

COUNTY BAGGING: West Yorkshire - Yorkshire Sculpture Park (3.8 miles)

Saturday, 29th June 2019

Apart from short, local mooches, I've not really done much in the way of walking this month so it was nice to end the month with a double-whammy of our walking group walk and an out of county "county bagging" trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Yorkshire.

We met up at The Hall at 9.30am for the 1 hour 30 minutes drive.  The sun was out and the forecast was for it to be the hottest day of the year so far, topping out at around 28 degrees, a stark contrast to the previous week's rain and below average temperatures!

After arriving at the YSP we headed into the visitor's centre for a cuppa and comfort break before setting off for a roam to look at the sculptures.

Looking south from the Visitor Centre

Iron Tree by somebody or other Wei Wei

Heading to the Naked Lady by Damien Hurst
 I walked to the right of this picture to see where the water was coming from that I could hear.  I returned around the other side of the sculpture to be greeted with a cross-section of what her insides looked like, complete with baby in womb.

The source of the sound of water

Nothing Special Happened
The sun was pretty hot now so we retreated to the shade of the tree-lined lakeside walk.

Dappled shade on the lakeside walk

We found a nice spot for our lunch, sat in the shade of a tree overlooking the lake.

Swan with pregnant lady sculpture behind

Swans taking off
Living art?

Having a cooling dip
 Even on the riverside walk there were sculptures.  This next one started off looking like a whale and baby, then you spotted an ear, then you saw it was a whole face!
Whale / Ear / Face

Crossing some pointless stepping stones
- are these art?

Everyone doing their own take on
The Man Looking At His Phone

Chinese Zodiac
From here we took a steady plod up the open hillside back to the Visitor Centre.  It was hard work in the heat and we arrived at the centre glowing profusely and ready for a well-earned cuppa and bun!

Even though sculptures and art aren't really "my thing" it was fun putting my own interpretation on some of the sculptures and realising that my garage full of rubbish is simply art waiting to be installed elsewhere!  

Great choice of walk Mo - thanks for organising it, and we couldn't really fault the weather either!

Parking: YSP Visitors Centre (£12 per car for all day)
Distance: 3.8 miles
Max height: 454 ft

Thanks for looking 😊

West Yorkshire: Eccup Reservoir (6.3 miles)

Saturday, 17th February 2018

I decided today was going to be my "out of county" walk day and I chose Eccup Reservoir on the (retrospectively, stupid) assumption that Yorkshire Water usually provide pretty good "easy access" tracks around their reservoirs and it wouldn't be too muddy.... Pahh!

To be fair, the route that hugged the reservoir was, indeed, okay.  But, the walk up to it from Stair Foot Car Park following The Dales Way ..... MY GOD .... MudFest.  Slippery, slide-y, goo.  Some of which had been well squished about by sheep and cattle and was ankle deep.  Delightful!

Aaaaand, to add insult to injury, my ViewRanger track didn't record properly.  I set it going at the start of my walk (obviously) and it managed to track 0.02 miles before it switched itself off.  I don't know why.  Anyway, lesson learned - sometimes it's not a good thing to follow a paper map and have electronic gadgets as back up - because that way round, you don't check the gadget as often (at all) as you should which means you don't spot things like it stopping recording your track.  I'm miffed because that's about 3.5 miles it hasn't recorded for my Challenge365 

Aaaanyway, despite all of that, the weather was lovely and thankfully not like the weather I'd left back home.  My legs got a bluddi good workout, slip-sliding around and, in Summer, this would be a lovely walk.

So here's some pictures (strangely enough, I didn't take any during my MudFest as I was too busy flailing my arms around trying to stay upright ):

Just amused me - sheep and geese grazing!

Looking towards Harewood House

Looking down to a bridge spanning the reservoir dam intake river

Eccup Reservoir

Valve pumps ... apparently

The higher trail around the reservoir

.. plus better views of it from up here ..

... than from down here on the "official" path

A zoom-y in of a comms mast in Horsforth

I would have walked through here back to the car if it was less muddy

All in all, this would have been a lovely walk if it wasn't for the mud and maybe one for a re-visit in summer.

So here are the fairly pointless ViewRanger Tracks ... 


Thanks for looking

West Yorkshire: Hebden Bridge

Sunday, 19th January 2014

Another one added roughly 4 years later.  There's no write up this time as the forum that trip report was written on is now defunct.

If my memory serves me correctly, we walked up to Hardcastle Crags and stopped off at Gibson Mill for a cuppa and bun but, as it was done in the days before ViewRanger and I can't remember the route as such, here are a few pics of what was a lovely, general walk in the West Yorkshire countryside in winter:

I'd like to live here

Woodland path alongside Hebden Water (river)

Mebby don't cross at these stepping stones!

Weir

Gibson Mill

Signpost OCD



Almost arty-farty pic of Gibson Mill

Hardcastle Crags (I think)

Easy forestry road walking

Farmer with a sense of humour!

Nice view towards the Pennines (I think)

Stoodley Pike in the distance

Ed enjoying the views

Looking down the Hebden valley

The only muddy path en-route
Thanks for looking 😊

West Yorkshire: Wentbridge (7 miles)

Sunday, 24th November 2013

Another walk/pics added some 4+ years after the event....

A little wander just inside the West Yorkshire boundary at a place called Wentbridge which is just south of Pontefract, with Ed and Kerry. A nice autumnal walk of about 7 miles with a pub stop in the Shoulder of Mutton half way round. Cheap tea at 90p a cup and a spot of free lunch from the leftovers from a buffet which was on the bar. Finished off in The Blue Bell pub! And we got a free Yorkshire Pudding :) 

Some pictures:

Funky fungi

Gate overkill!

Feeding time at the ranch

Looking down the Went valley

River Went

Little Donkey

Weir on the Went

Looking back from whence we Went .. well, came

Pointless gate!