Canal Walk: Keighley to Saltaire

With the engineering work on the Airedale line completed it was time to return to Saltaire and do the walk we had hoped to do last year. The weather reports for today had changed from “sunny intervals” to “sunny” and back again for the last few days so we were hoping for good weather. As we left Liverpool the sky was blue and the sun shining, perfect for walking on the canal. Along the motorway it started raining but we were still optimistic, sure that it was just a passing cloud.
We parked at Salts Mill, Saltaire. There is plenty of free parking and at weekends you can park right outside the entrance to the mill, close to the station.
We just missed one train but it was only 20minutes till the next one so we popped into the Mill to have a quick look at the book shop (toilets available).
It is about 10minutes from Saltaire to Keighley on the train. Along the way you can see the canal running alongside. You get a good view of Dowley Gap aqueduct (and the sewage farm next to it) and the locks in Bingley.
Keighley station is very nice, a steam railway uses one platform and it has kept a lot of its old fashioned charm.
The canal is about a mile away from the station; it doesn’t go to Keighley itself but follows the contour of the valley side above the River Aire. There was once a plan to build a branch from the main line to Keighley but it was too expensive. After a quick, hot, and not so gourmet sausage roll from the CO-OP near bridge #197 we got onto the towpath at Stockbridge.
Throughout the walk there were plenty of people out walking and cycling. Some people look like they are in a race others look like they are in no hurry at all. We were somewhere in between.
The first couple of miles are about as straight as the canal can be (outside of Burnley). On the left are green fields on the right housing. Just after Morton Swing bridge #198A is a rather nice house right on the edge of the canal. How nice it would be nice to sit in your living room just inches from the water. They are lucky that canals don’t flood like rivers do. Mileposts 109 and 110 were there but other than them there were few others.
After a nice but not overly interesting stretch we arrived at the famous Bingley Five Rise Locks. Just before the locks is an old stable building now a café. We went in as it says it is a store but they didn’t even have any postcard of the locks outside.
Bingley Five Rise is one of Aikmans Seven Wonders of the canal world, lifting the canal 60ft. The idea is that the top gates of one chamber are the bottom gates of the next. Interestingly they are earlier than flights of single locks elsewhere on the system. At Greenberfield the rise lock was replaced by individual locks in an effort to save water. The locks are very interesting, although like most Wonders a little smaller than I had expected. There are a couple of features worth noting. The ground paddle gear is housed in boxes with the handle on top. The gate paddles on some gates are rather interesting. They are scissor cloughs, which are wound with a handle and use a horizontal rack to open the clough or paddle. This is the first time I have seen a scissor clough though they are said to be on the locks at Blackburn and Stanley Dock. Also note the overflow channel from the lock chamber to the by-pass channel.
After the Five Rise there are some new apartment buildings built to look like converted warehouses or mills. Then come the little brother of the Five Rise the Bingley Three Rise. There are brand new gates on the Three Rise, they haven’t been painted and have no winding gear attached yet. The by-pass channel of the three rise goes underneath the lock side buildings.

Next to the three rise is the Damart factory. It’s a large stylish building, a complete contrast to the modern sheds built today. The canal towpath was moved here to accommodate the road next to it. I was pleased to see that the half mile post had been relocated and is now bolted to the wall.

The towpath is good for the whole of this walk and is a cycle route so watch out for cyclists without bells. The canal is clean here but there was a fridge floating in the cut, is it the same one I saw in Blackburn last year..?

Near Maud bridge #204 the canal is overlooked by tower blocks, they must have great views but don’t do much for the scenery themselves. Before the next bridge there is a bus stop on the towpath, but this is for a water bus so don’t worry about being run over by the number 78. After Scourer bridge #205, is Dowley Gap 2 Rise Locks and Changeline Bridge #205. This is a very nicely kept stretch and has the plaques to prove it; it is award winning. After the locks is the Dowley Gap Aqueduct which carries the canal over the River Aire. You can turn off the towpath here and get a view of the arched aqueduct. There is a path here which seemed to be popular with walkers and cyclists, it follows the river but I don’t know how far or where it goes. Back on the towpath we were bothered by midges, there is no sign of a date on the stonework but I am sure there must be one somewhere.

At Hurst Lock (a single lock) we saw the first moving boat of the day. It was heading towards Bingley and had plenty of photos taken of it. Soon Saltaire was in sight, the mill chimneys and the church tower rising over the trees. The church in Saltaire is very well designed; I think it’s my favourite building in the town.

Back in Saltaire the walk was over. We went for a sandwich at the tea room on Victoria Road and gave our feet a rest. It would be good to have a guide book to the buildings of Saltaire but I have yet to find one.

This is obviously a popular stretch of canal for walkers and cyclists. It includes the Bingley Five and Three Rises and the Dowley Gap locks and aqueduct. I would imagine that the tree-lined bits are very nice when they are in full leaf. For me it lacks some industrial archaeological curiosities, something to figure out and wonder about. For quite a while the canal is close to the A650 and you can hear the traffic. I would recommend the shorter walk from Bingley to Saltaire.

Now I have walked the first 115 miles from Liverpool Pall Mall to Oddies Swing bridge; that leaves just 12.25 miles to go. Whether we will do it as one walk or two remains to be decided but the plan is to stay in Leeds.

Canal Walk Saltaire to Shipley

Today’s plan was to drive to Saltaire and park at Salts Mill. Then take the train from Saltaire to Keighley and walk the 6 or 7 miles back to the car via the famous Bingley Five Rise. As we drove out of Liverpool there was no avoiding the fog, by the time we were on the M62 all the traffic had their fog lights on. So much for the landscape photos from the top of the Five Rise I had planned. But by the time we had reached the M60 the fog had lifted and it was looking like a nice clear sunny day, perfect for canal walking.
With the exception of one junction there are plenty of brown signs to Salts Mill making it fairly easy to find from the motorway. We parked in the large free carpark at the back of the mill. The station is on the other side of the mill on Victoria Road. It was only after buying our tickets that we noticed that there were no trains this weekend due to engineering works. Not to worry though the posters said there were rail replacement buses so we had a quick walk around the very pretty church which stands in between the railway and the canal. From the churchyard the canal looks more like a park lake than an industrial highway. The leaves had turned orange and yellow and fallen into a deep carpet which the squirrels were busily looking through. At the edge of the canal is a Leeds & Liverpool Canal Company boundary stone, looking like a small gravestone. Back at the station there was no sign of the bus to take us to Keighley. We waited and waited until it was clear no bus was coming. It was too late in the day to wait an hour in the hope that a bus would show up. £2.40 wasted on tickets.
Time to decide what to do. We could walk from Saltaire to Keighley and hope there was some way back (a long walk back if there wasn’t). Or walk to Bingley and then walk back (but I would have to come back to do the Keighley bit some other time). Or walk the other way to Shipley, or give up on walking and just look around the mill and town. While we were deciding a group of people had gathered waiting for the Leeds train and no bus showed up for them.
We decided to have a quick look around the mill, use their toilets and then have a short walk up the towpath to Shipley and see if we could find the junction with the Bradford branch. Not quite what we had hoped for but at least I could look for some mileposts. It wasn’t long before I found the first post, a quarter mile post you can see from Saltaire Bridge 207A. This post is 113.75 miles from Pall Mall.
The towpath is busy at Saltaire and easily accessible from the bridge. The towpath is part of the national cycle network, routes 66 and 69. There were lots of cyclists, some more serious than others. There were also lots of people out walking and enjoying the warm autumn sun.
We went under Saltaire Bridge and walked along the towpath between Salts Mill and the New Mill. The two mills form a deep canyon. You can see the loading bays where barges from Liverpool delivered Alpaca wool. Past the mills there is a line of trees, their orange and brown leaves reflected in the canal. Milepost 114 was there missing its plaques but painted white. At the next bridge 207E there are some old houses which pre-date all the buildings around them. There are dates about the doors but only the last number, 8, is visible from the towpath.
There are a lot of new buildings here, all empty on a Sunday, one belongs to the Inland Revenue. Before Victoria Street Bridge 207B is a red brick warehouse which was clearly designed to use the canal. It has a covered loading bay at the front and a basin to the side the end of which is covered.
After the bridge is a set of canalside buildings which look like they are either recently refurbished or newly built. They have covered loading bays, there is a glass section which is a bar or restaurant. The whole building is very well designed. Leeds is 13 miles away and there is an Ibis hotel right next to the towpath at bridge 207B.
On the other side of bridge 207B there was a heron in the water. I couldn’t tell if it was swimming or walking but it soon got camera shy and flew off. Under bridge 207D the evocatively named Gallows Footbridge is a half mile post.
At Junction bridge 208 there is a mix of empty old ruinous buildings and new apartment buildings. The canal is in transition here and it is hard to tell what its character is right now. There isn’t much of the Bradford branch left now, just a turning point. There have been plans to restore the branch as part of the redevelopment of Bradford.
The next bridge is Dock Swing Bridge 209 and when we approached it was being opened to allow Walrus to pass through. The crew were joined by 3 scally kids who found it all very interesting. There was no sign of milepost 115 beside the railway bridge 209A despite it being shown on the 2005 OS map. At Oddies Swing Bridge number 210 we turned around. Just 12.25 miles from the end of the canal.
Thanks to Northern Rail our day out wasn’t what we had planned. I felt cheated out of a really nice walk. We missed out on seeing the five, three and two rise locks. And instead of a 6 mile walk we did a mile and a quarter. Not much reward for a 140miles round trip.
As for Saltaire, it is a UN World Heritage Site. It’s a model workers town built by Titus Salt for the workers in his huge textile mill. There are small terraced houses and some public buildings. The stone lions have character and charm. Although it was clearly a great achievement to build this town it doesn’t have the impressive scale of Port Sunlight. Salts Mill seems to be a literal waste of space. It houses a rather disappointing art collection, a very popular cafe and a book shop in a space that once housed hundreds of people and machines. There is a timeline display showing the development of the site but it really needs a museum. The mill is clearly popular with the sort of people who like the sort of thing on offer there but there wasn’t anything for me to go back for other than the free car park.