A Peaceful Walk In A Yorkshire Town

A walk in a Yorkshire town.

As you sit or lie down to rest and make yourself comfortable,

Snuggling down into your bed,

Giving the weight of your body up to the floor or sinking back into your chair,

I'm going to take you on a gentle afternoon stroll up and down the residential streets of the little town I live in in Yorkshire,

UK.

So please feel free to make any preparations you need to before you start on our journey,

Which probably won't be many as you're going to be travelling purely in your imagination,

But nevertheless enjoying all the sights,

Sounds,

Scents and textures of a typical Yorkshire town where old houses stand cheek by jowl with new developments.

I hope you'll find it interesting,

But not so interesting as to keep you awake.

You're starting your stroll at my house,

Which is on the very eastern edge of the town.

You've never visited here before and after having a cup of tea with me,

You're interested to see all the local sights.

You cross my back lawn and go out through a five barred gate into the little unmade lane that runs down the side of my house.

Directly opposite my gate is the back entrance to a veterinary surgery and as you turn right and head towards the main road,

Following directions I gave you earlier,

The back door of the vets opens and a whole range of discordant barking can be heard from within,

Like an orchestra tuning up.

A veterinary nurse comes out wearing a green tunic and trousers.

You are wearing a warm coat but her arms are bare.

It's that time of year where the weather is uncertain and when either or both outfits are equally suitable.

You exchange a smile and a nod.

She has a large grey wire-haired dog in tow with a bandaged leg and a large plastic cone fitted around its neck.

The cone bumps against its head as it walks but you can see it's delighted to be out in the world and strains eagerly towards you,

Long pink tongue lolling out.

She laughs and pulls the dog on down to the end of the lane where there's a patch of grass.

Beyond that lies a cemetery with war graves and beyond that a river.

You however are headed in the opposite direction.

You turn right again towards a zebra crossing.

You push the button and almost immediately the traffic light above turns to red,

Thwarting large streams of traffic coming in both directions.

Engines idle,

Their owners drumming their fingertips on the steering wheel.

You can't help smiling inwardly at the thought of stopping them all with a mere push of a button.

You keep your glee hidden of course and acknowledge them politely with a raised hand as you cross the road to the loud pip-pip-pip of the crossing.

A woman in a silver car smiles at you and the unexpected warmth of this makes you smile back.

There are two ways,

One along the noisy main road and one that winds its way back and forth through several streets of terraced houses.

You can't resist taking the latter route.

You've always enjoyed looking at people's gardens and seeing the different plants,

Garden furniture,

Paths,

Trees and flowers they've put in to enhance their own environment but also to prettify their street and beyond that the town as a whole.

A gardener yourself,

You appreciate their efforts and the houses are attractive.

They're made of a dark almost black stone which is very rough to the touch.

It's called millstone grit.

It's an incredibly hard stone tougher than granite quarried during the 18th and 19th centuries from the moors that rise high above the town to its south.

As you set off up a side road with a row of these dark stone houses on your left,

A sign warning you that this is a 20 miles per hour zone so don't walk too fast.

You pass a red post box on a corner toward those moors.

To the east stand two gigantic rocks which the moor is named after and which they say were thrown down by giants.

You can't see them from here but what you can see is a rising expanse going up to a ridge at the top.

This changes colour continually in different lights you've heard at different times of the day and year.

Now this afternoon the main colour is peach.

You're not sure which vegetation is giving this colour and think probably the heather.

You put it on your ever present mental list to google.

Your mobile phone may be in your coat pocket but it is staying there until your walk is over.

You want to pay full attention to your surroundings.

Who knows when you'll pass this way again.

The first thing you notice on your right is a small low-rise block of flats.

These aren't made of millstone grit but probably of concrete with some sort of stone cladding to make them fit in with the rest of the buildings in the area.

They are functional and unadorned with perfunctory oblongs of grass at their side and at the front.

They look institutional somehow.

Wanting to be positive you tell yourself they are probably very much fit for purpose inside.

You wonder if they house elderly people.

You walk past and cross the road to the long row of small neat houses on the left.

Very few of them have curtains or blinds and if you wanted to you could look straight into their living rooms.

Politeness forbids this though as you saunter along you allow your gaze to sweep back and forth casually.

Taking in a comfortable looking ginger cat on one windowsill who regards you with thrilling green eyes,

A rubber plant and a giant teddy bear on another.

Passing another window a white Jack Russell terrier bounces up and down as if on elastic.

It's frenetic yapping,

Audible even through the double glazing.

You pass a tall metal cabinet on the pavement.

A low buzz comes out of it and on top someone has carefully placed a small child's toy no doubt lost from a pocket,

A goat made of orange plastic with black horns.

The street is thick with parked cars.

For nearly everyone on this street there is nowhere else to park but right outside their own front room window.

Talking about children again you notice attached high up a sign.

A yellow square with a red triangle inside contains the silhouettes of two children holding hands with the word school underneath.

You are puzzled by this as it looks like a normal residential street.

No hint of a school anywhere but as you move on you come across a gap between the houses and you hear a sudden excited babble of high-pitched voices.

You can hear the voices but not see anybody.

Peering down the gap you find a cobbled path with heavy duty aluminium gates at the end.

It must be the school's side entrance and here come the children themselves erupting out and through the gates at the end of the school day to where a group of young looking adults wait.

Anticipating that the street is about to be flooded with parents and small children you quicken your pace slightly.

Not that you've got anything against the little darlings but you're enjoying the solitude of your walk,

The peace of quietly strolling.

The flats have given way to some modern looking housing opposite the stone terrace.

In the one on the corner the garden has been dug up and large builder's bags of gravel stand ready for use.

Now you head down a narrow alleyway or ginnel as they call them in Yorkshire.

It leads you between the side of someone's house and a high wooden fence.

You feel the chill from the house wall on the right side of your face.

If someone came down the ginnel in the opposite direction there would be barely enough room for you to pass them but no one does.

As you emerge from the darkness of the high sided alley you glance to your left onto a courtyard shared by a few new build houses.

The street you now turn right into is wider than the first street and has terraced houses built of gritstone on one side and mixed housing on the other.

These mixed houses,

Some terraced and some semi-detached,

Are made of brick with cladding on the front that has been painted a range of pastel colours,

Grey,

Cream,

Beige,

White.

One or two are pebbledashed.

The terraces on your right differ from the first street in having tiny front gardens.

They are only two metres deep at most but it must make all the difference inside.

You would look out onto greenery,

From one window a small tree with two bird feeders hanging from it,

From another an evergreen hedge and you wouldn't have to contend with passing strangers looking right into your front room.

One garden boasts containers full of the strong pinks,

Blues and yellows of spring bulbs.

You breathe in and catch the scent of hyacinth.

In another a cherry tree is just coming into blossom,

Its flowers pale pink like candy floss.

The blossom comes of course before the leaves so there is no green on the tree at all,

Nothing to detract from the spectacle of pure pinkness.

On the other side of the road the gardens are big enough to take the length of a car.

Many people have paved or graveled their garden in order to do this.

A shame in one way perhaps but for practical purposes it's just as well.

It leaves the parking spaces for the blackstone terraces.

The road is much too narrow to take more than one row of parked cars.

Not everyone has paved their garden however.

Some hold a mixture of gravel,

Grass and weeds and in another stands a child's trampoline complete with a light mesh surround to stop the kids tumbling off.

Some houses have a good lawn,

One has artificial grass turf,

Its perfect green uniformity the only giveaway.

At the end of the street you turn left.

The house on the corner is quite big.

The pavement passes quite close to their back door on which a sign hangs.

A lovely lady and a grumpy old man live here.

So does another white Jack Russell terrier it seems for one appears out of nowhere and runs up and down with its nose at the bottom of the hedge as if hoovering something up from the ground.

This awkward position doesn't stop it barking,

A sharp penetrating sound as fast and regular as machine gun fire.

Well perhaps not quite that fast.

Once again you inadvertently quicken your pace feeling for some reason embarrassed as if that racket is your doing.

On the right appears a fish and chip shop.

The smell of frying potatoes wafting out of the open door.

Your stomach growls a little in appreciation and for a moment you are tempted to go in and buy a portion of delicious chips still shining from the hot fat which you would douse in salt and vinegar and wolf down standing outside the shop.

You wrestle that desire down.

It is only two hours since you ate a perfectly good nutritious whole food salad far better for you than vinegar soaked chips though nothing like as delicious.

The dog's continuous barking is now at your side sparing you on until you reach a slightly busier road and cross it onto the other side turning right then immediately left to arrive in yet another street with terraced houses in.

This time the houses are grit stone on both sides.

These houses look especially black and you're not quite sure whether this colour is inherent to the grit stone or whether it's partly dirt.

This town lies due northwest of an old mill town and the prevailing wind it's said used to blow soot in from the factories there.

So whether the striking colouring is pollution or natural beauty is something of a mystery.

Another job for Google.

All the streets around here are the territory of the old corner shop,

A tradition that lasted longer in the north of England than in the south.

The corner shop sold everything.

Groceries,

Newspapers,

Coal,

Light bulbs,

Cigarettes,

Beer,

In short everything you might need for day-to-day living and so close that you could walk to it in your slippers.

Several corner houses in this little town and particularly in this area north of the railway line where the houses are small bear the marks of having once been corner shops.

You pass one on the right.

Its big windows have been reduced in size by adding stone blocks underneath,

So it looks more or less like a normal house.

As you head up the street noticing that you're getting slightly out of breath having been going almost imperceptibly uphill for about 10 minutes now,

You see at the other end of the street as it curves round another kind of shop,

A joiners and builders yard.

The hill gets steeper and as you reach this yard you are properly out of breath.

You stop for a moment taking in the big scruffy blue sign,

A flaky pastry of peeling paint and you glance in through the mesh gates to see a concrete outbuilding marked office,

A pile of scaffolding poles,

A heap of slate roof tiles and a yellow skip full of rubbish.

The place has a disused feel.

Having caught your breath you walk past the yard noticing that it adjoins a terraced house which is another example of a former corner shop,

Although this one still has its original huge shop windows in place with a set of shelves directly behind.

Obscured behind the filthy glass stand glass bottles,

Some ceramic bowls,

A lamp and many pots,

Some designed to hold plants,

Others tea.

You go closer to look at a particularly nice bowl and touch the window pane which is cool.

You walk round.

On the other side of the corner a broken venetian blind only partly hides the inside of the room from view.

You glimpse broken furniture,

A stack of cane chairs stuffed in boxes.

You wonder if the joiner and their family still live there but a man coming out of a house opposite looks over at you plainly wondering what you were doing looking through his neighbour's window so you smile and raise an appeasing hand and move on.

In front of you now across the road in complete contrast to the old-fashioned site behind you is a bright modern development of what you know to be retirement flats,

Carefully manicured gardens,

Tasteful outdoor furniture and chrome balconies are the order of the day.

You turn right parallel to this large development and the back of your hand brushes an evergreen bush which releases droplets of water onto you in a refreshing spray.

You cross the road to walk next to the high station wall,

A truly mighty edifice made of very large stone blocks,

Vegetation sprouting from the cracks and moss,

A surprisingly bright shade of lime green at the bottom.

You hear the low whine of what must be a train leaving the station,

Though you can't see it.

The trains here are all electric.

Opposite the mouth of another road that heads back down the hill,

The streets here are all in a grid pattern,

You come to a gap in the high wall and a blue sign that says trains.

You enter and climb a steep flight of concrete steps to your right.

Now standing near the top part of the high wall,

You can see all the way down the road which is a long one.

The jumble of dormers on top of the houses getting smaller and smaller,

Almost to a vanishing point.

Beyond them lies the main road where you stopped all the traffic,

Though you can't see it from here.

What you can see is a thickly wooded hill rising in the distance.

It is too early in the year for any of the deciduous trees to have gained their leaves,

So you gaze on different shades of brown,

With a few dark green spikes of evergreens among them.

At the top of the hill stand a few scattered houses,

And beyond them lies a green field,

Then in the far distance another stand of brown trees.

It is a lovely view.

As you stand in the slight dampness of the concrete and stone around you,

The sun comes out high above them all behind you,

And you turn to feel the warmth on your forehead and cheeks.

What you also turn towards is the town's monstrosity.

It is time to face the railway bridge,

A giant concrete structure painted in dull orange and cream,

Streaked with grey and green.

The next flight of steps to your right are filthy,

Their paint flaking off,

Their edges infested with rust and dirt,

Litter trodden into the steps.

Heavy-duty forest green mesh fences direct you towards these steps to cross the train track.

Behind the fences small wastelands,

Nests of brambles,

Litter and dead grass.

A black panel of a gate bears white graffiti of a kind you decide not to describe here.

But the footbridge is nothing if not useful.

It might have a certain utilitarian grace.

The waste ground is not unleavened.

Here and there slim silver birches have been planted,

And it's possible that wildlife flourishes to some extent.

And there's no denying the fact that the existence of a railway,

An end-of-the-line station,

Is one of the wonders of this little town,

Connecting it to the big cities of north and south alike.

You stand there almost on the point of walking onto the station platform to get the train to somewhere exciting.

You don't lose the opportunity to take a look at the moor again either,

Its huge brooding presence above the town.

Just as suddenly as the sun came out it goes back in again,

And you feel cool rain on your forehead and cheeks,

Though so light it is little more than a mist.

But it makes up your mind for you.

These are excursions for another day.

You imagine that your listeners are probably asleep by now anyway,

And if they aren't they are surely fed up with the sound of your voice.

So you blow a kiss to the railway bridge,

Ugly but necessary,

Turn your back on it and begin to retrace your steps.

You have long been of the opinion that a walk need not be circular,

That it is just as interesting to go back the way you came,

The view being totally and utterly different.

And so you stroll all the way back,

Along and down,

Along and down,

Turning to face the view of the wooded hill again and again,

Heading back to the house next to the vets,

Where you hope there will be another cup of tea waiting.