A New Walk

Having stayed local for our dog walks for much of this year owing to lockdown and coronavirus restrictions, we feel as though we've exhausted our local walks so yesterday, we got in the car and drove ten minutes to a nearby village where there are some woods where we haven't taken Archie before.

It was a bit of a drab day but the forecast for the rest of this week is considerably worse as it's supposed to rain all day today and tomorrow so we decided to get out while we could.

There's a lane which runs to the right side of the railway track and then to the right of this lane are the woods.

Archie is always nervous when we walk anywhere new, it's as though he's spooked, he keeps stopping and looking around him. I don't know what he's looking for but there were very few people about.

I expected the ground to be much muddier than it was. There were patches of mud but it was quite dry in the main.

Archie enjoyed himself, there were lots of new scents for him to sniff out. I'm always conscious that we do many of the same walks so I don't want him to become bored, though he does seem to like the familiar more than the unknown.

I do think that these woods will be more attractive if we return during the summer months, it looks so stark at the moment but I can imagine what it will be like in spring when the trees are covered in zingy green leaves.

As we passed through the other side of the woods we came to a sign for the Trans Pennine Trail. This is a long-distance path running from coast to coast across Northern England entirely on surfaced paths and using only gentle gradients.

The path here runs alongside the Aire and Calder Navigation, which is the canalised section of the Rivers Aire and Calder in West Yorkshire. The navigation was built to connect Leeds to the Humber and the North Sea.

Archie loves water and did wander off to the side of the canal but I think the drop was too far for him to really consider jumping. We always used to put him back on his lead when we were near water but he's got better as he's got older and tends to do as he's told these days and stay out of the water.

We turned and had a wander the other way.

Various boats were moored here and one of the boats was selling refreshments.

This is somewhere we'll definitely return to. We enjoyed our short walk but we'd definitely like to venture a little further down the canal the next time we visit.