13 Very Colourful Miles
More photos on Flickr.
Yesterday I explored Saltaire and walked from Shipley to Leeds alongside the Leeds To Liverpool canal (LLC).
Titus Salt was a Victorian businessman who built the entire village of Saltaire for his cotton mill workers to give them better living conditions. To specifically plan and built such a scheme was nothing short of revolutionary. As recognition of this, Saltaire is now a World Heritage Site. I was expecting to love the place but actually found myself hating it's oppressive atmosphere. Every street, every building is so full of Salt and the strict rules he set about how his workers should live their lives (no hanging washing in the street, no political debate etc) that it's hard to see how anyone living there could ever escape his prolifically bearded, authoritarian shadow:
The Man, The Beard
After rambling about Saltaire and Salt's Mills for most of the morning I was very ready to head onto Shipley to start the walk back to Leeds. A quick train journey, a five minute walk and I was at the 13-miles-to-Leeds canal marker shown at the top of this post and ready to begin.
The LLC was a pretty audacious building scheme when it was proposed too. Way back in 1776 a group of businessmen came together to agree a route and costs for a canal across the Pennine hills. Moving goods along the canals was much, much cheaper than moving them by roads and they were anxious to connect the mill towns of Yorkshire with the export opportunities of Liverpool's port. In the end it took until 1816 to complete the main canal but it was a success story - the canal did much better than it's rivals and was able to compete with the railways for business right up to the start of the 20th century. These days the only trade it sees are chandlers and canalside pubs but it's still worth exploring.
Canal paths are ideal if you want an easy walk. They don't require a map, are fairly socialable, the paths stay usable even when the weather's bad and there's plenty to see. You can peer into the locks, look for canal mileage markers and wave at the narrow boats passing you by.
Because of the extremely cold weather we've had for the last three weeks all the narrow boats were trapped into their moorings waiting for the frozen sections of the canal to melt.
Fully Frozen In Places
The canal was still busy though with walkers, happy, muddy dogs, cyclists, fishing folks and aggressive swans that laughed at me and tried to eat my bootlaces:
Yes. I have swan-attracting boots.
Despite curious swans and taking lots of photos along the way, it took me about 2hr40m to walk the 10 miles back to Kirkstall Brewery. A time I'm happy with as it means that even when being a busy little shutterbug I walk 14-16 minute miles consistently. :)
In total I walked 17 miles yesterday, 3 miles around Saltaire, 10 miles on the canal, 4 miles round and about. I felt fine last night and I feel good today... I'm obviously fitter than I give myself credit for. :)
All of this walking is 101 goals related by the way. It's all in preparation for climbing Scafell Pike. A friend who knows about my 101 in 1001 goal of climbing a mountain asked me if I wanted to go and climb Scafell as part of a group in April. My answer was, of course, YESYESYES. But now I need to spend the next nine weeks making sure I'm ready to go and conquer a mountain...
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