A Walkers Tale

For this walk I would be once again following a canal towpath - and doing a walk that feeds off the Pennine Way. The Pennine Way does in fact briefly follow the Leeds & Liverpool Canal on the far side of Gargrave to the side I would be walking - and in my opinion should stay on this canal until it reaches Gargrave. For those interested in those joining walks along the Pennine Walk, click the links for the write-ups for Gargrave to Horton-in-Ribbdlesdale (heading north via Malham Cove) and Hebden Bridge to Gargrave (again heading north) . The Leeds & Liverpool Canal itself is a long canal - running for 127 miles across the Pennines, with the canal coming into operation in 1816 - and unsurprisingly it starts and ends in Liverpool and Leeds.  The route of the canal is quite a meandering route, and as a result it is nowhere near as steep as other canals through the Pennines - with the Liverpool & Leeds and Rochdale Canals both having the same number of locks, despite the L...

Earlier in the year, I had walked the Pennine Way - picking up the route near to Hebden Bridge and then walking up to Gargrave on the first day, and on to Horton-in-Ribblesdale on the following day. The route I took to join up with the Pennine Way was to head out from Hebden Bridge along the Rochdale Canal - and I enjoyed this short stretch of canal enough to make a note to come back at some point, and walk a bigger section of this canal. Today I am heading out to Littleborough, and will be doing exactly that, joining up with the canal just past Littleborough Summit, and then walking the canal to Sowerby Bridge - where I will divert off onto the Calder and Hessle Navigation to reach Halifax. Rochdale Canal in its full length runs from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge, but having had a look at the canal online, I was less excited by the Manchester section - and and more interested in the stretch I had planned to walk today. The canal was originally opened in 1804, but went through major r...

This walk was the second of two days of walking, having previously walked from Ashington out to the coast at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, and then down to Whitley Bay , on the previous day. Today's walk would continue on down to Tynemouth, and then cut in through North Shields - and then on to Wallsend, to join up with the Hadrian's Wall Path through to Newcastle. Starting out from Whitley Bay, I first head off to get some supplies for the day - and then head off following the coast southwards out away from Whitley Sands, and through an initial section passing above a rockier, rather than sandier, section of coast - heading past Brown's Point to Cullercoats Bay. Cullercoats Bay While walking this section, it is very obvious that the good folk of Whitley Bay like to get out and about in the morning - with a morning jog being the most popular activity, but with early morning swims and cycles along the coastline also being high on the list of things to do to start the day. The little...