Waymarks

I don't know if I'd be able to recreate the walk we took, on paths I've never travelled before. There were a few distinctive waymarks along the journey, but they were more useful photographically than as guides to remember the route we took. 

I love the sheer number of tracks and footpaths criss-crossing Calderdale. That alone tells you of the numbers of folk in the past two hundred years who have walked from home to the local mill to work, to school, to chapel on Sunday and to market to buy food. Some of the paths are hollowed out with wear and others paved with setts or slabs to provide a firmer footing. 

Public footpaths (rights of way) are marked on maps and signposted but lots of the well-trodden routes are 'permissive paths', routes that landowners allow people to use, often simply because they've been used for years. 

Like most of the Yorkshire Dales, Calderdale arguably has more dry stone walls than people! They snake their way improbably up hill and down dale, overgrown and furred with moss. Sometimes you can see huge gateposts, their gates long since gone but still bearing holes or metal pins denoting their purpose. 

At the farthest point of the circular walk, we climbed a steep hill to reach Wadsworth Obelisk, a war memorial commemorating those from the parish of Wadsworth who died in the two World Wars. That  stretch nearly killed me (!) but the view from there, looking down to Hebden Bridge, was lovely, even on such a dull and misty day.