The Calder Divide Trail is an ‘off-road’ bike route through a landscape woven from a series of remarkable features. In broad terms there are two types of features:
Human - the time and energy of farmers and labourers have gifted us features as varied as canals, former colliery’s which our greenways now pass through and packhorse bridges.
Natural - from the cycles of rock, sun and rain emerge crags, woodlands and rivers
I have selected a series of features that can be found along the route of the Calder Divide Trail and Judith Broug aka missyredboots@mac.com has designed a set of icons and a stunning poster to illustrate these unique and much loved aspects of the Pennines. Listed below are the six figure grid references so you can locate them on a map. On the event weekend there is a 'landscape challenge’ and quiz at the campsite. Details below.
Adrian Wright
yorkshiredivide@gmail.com
50 prints available at the CDT event weekend
canals
Aire & Calder Navigation (1704)
Barnsley Canal
(1793)
Calder & Hebble Navigation
(1764)
Rochdale Canal
(1804)
Cloughs (steep sided wooded valley)
Colden Clough
(SD 097 283)
Coxley Bank
(SE 271 169)
Marsden Clough
(SE 095 073)
Netherley Clough
(SE 105 045)
Willykay Clough
(SE 025 124)
Colliery’s
Allerton Bywater Colliery (1992)
Flower Scar
(1964)
Lofthouse Colliery
(1981)
St Aidans Gravel Pits
(2002)
Walton Colliery
(1979)
craggs
Blackstone Edge
(SD 973 164)
Binn Edge
(SE 054 106)
Gate Foot
(SE 182 086)
Whirlaw Stones
(SD 936 255)
Ramsden Edge
(SE 122 055)
Monuments
Black Dyke Mills
(SE 106 303)
Kirkburton Stocks
(SE 198 125)
Mount Cross
(SD 915 276)
Stoodley Pike
(SD 974 243)
Wainstall Waifs
(SE 034 285)
Moorland
Chelburn Moor
(SD 958 188)
Flockton Moor
(SE 225 144)
Flower Scar Moor
(SD 895 246)
Midgley Moor
(SE 022 282)
Marsden Moor
(SE 020 120)
Packhorse bridges
Black Pit Bridge
(SD 993 269)
Eastergate Bridge
(SE 029 122)
Jack Bridge
(SD 963 283)
Millennium Bridge
(SE 428 260)
Ragby Bridge
(SD 922 224)
reservoirs
The South Pennines has the highest concentration of reservoirs in the world. I’m still making the list!
Rivers
The River Calder flows off the Pennine Moors and is fed by hundreds of becks, brooks, streams and five main rivers - the Elphin, Colne, Holme, Ryburn and Spen - each with their own distinctive biography.
But the Calder is the mother river.
woodland
Buckley Wood
(SD 985 270)
Haw Park
(SE 366 152)
Judy Woods
(SE 145 277)
Shelley Wood
(SE 196 119)
Shepley Mill Wood
(SE 193 107)
On the event weekend this poster is available (A3 and A4)
Poster design by Judith Broug aka missyredboots@mac.com
On the event weekend in September riders are invited to answer a series of questions about specific features which they encounter along the route.
At the campsite on Saturday evening we gather in the barn with a quiz about the features.
The prize is a print of the poster shown above.
