Apperley Bridge via Calverley
A Wee Walk for a Wednesday
I've always joked that Apperley Bridge is the nice part of Bradford; this is a little unfair. Bradford is a pretty odd place in terms of how it is organised, so there are certainly nicer areas than Apperley Bridge. These areas are part of Bradford District, not Bradford City - an important distinction (for some people.)
For my money, Bradford proper starts to peter out around about Greengates - a housing development just on the edge of Apperley Bridge - and then? Well then you're very much into Bradford District territory... but I'm not here to argue map minutiae.
This walk began on the outskirts of Calverley, where we had the closest to a sunny day we've had in these parts for quite some time.
Calverley has all the village vibes you could ever want or need. There's a good mix of friendly locals wishing you good morning, joggers gasping for air because they only run on the weekend and surly looking folks who are either too preoccupied with their own thoughts or too posh to acknowledge your existence. It has a park, a golf club, a few pubs, some allotments, a dog training school and a really old church which, apparently, has goats and sheep wandering the grounds chomping the grass. Have yet to encounter this phenomenon myself.
Calverley’s main road snakes up out of Bradford and brings bad elements crashing through the place at high speeds in the middle of night, usually pursued by the Police, whose sirens wake up the long suffering denizens of this village atop a hill.
Along this road, off to one side, just past one of the pubs, you can find a path down to the canal.
The thing I love about walks like this is the connections my brain gets to make: this pathway slants down at quite the angle through Calverley Woods, meeting a car park beside a bridge that I have passed under many times, while walking along the canal.
Now I know that this whole section connects all the way up to Calverley, it's like I've been let into some secret; slotted a piece into the empty space of the jigsaw that is my mental map of the area.
Once across the bridge, you have to circle back around and come down a set of stairs to get onto the canal. I noticed these steps on one of my first trips into Bradford from the airport. I remember sitting on the bus, chugging along, and seeing two women in walking shoes. They were traipsing down those stairs, following a green sign proclaiming "Public Footpath" and I thought to myself, "I wonder where that goes" and, of course, now I know. I'm in on that secret too.
I must confess, however, that I find the canal rather boring. Don't get me wrong: I love being next to the water. I love the fresh air, the green of the vegetation all around me, and, of course, the walking. It’s the landscape that I cannot be enthused about - everything is flat, enclosed by trees, limited by hedgerows. You can only see what's just ahead of you, which you might think would provoke surprise and interest and yet… once you turn a bend, it's just more of the same. It all feels rather predictable.
Having said that though, I nearly got bowled over by a rottweiller chasing after a poodle today. I can't say with good conscience that that was ever something I could have predicted happening to me, as I strolled along a canal minding my own business feeling ever so slightly bored.