Skedew one

Slow Way not verified yet. Verify Skedew here.

We did the walk from Dewsbury to Skelmanthorpe and had a bit of trouble with it, hence its low rating. There were a couple of short necessary detours, poor signage and a couple of difficult gates/stiles (all detailed below). It’s good enough to verify, but an alternative route would be better. Hopefully we’ll get round to doing it again and can suggest something.

Leaving Dewsbury station you are quickly onto riverside walks, which would be prettier if there wasn’t so much litter. When you turn right away from the river, keep on the footpath to the near side of the grassy storm drain/overflow rather than following the official route across the concrete bridge. We did this by mistake and it turned out for the best as the official footpath takes you through a small industrial estate which had a locked entrance gate on a Sunday morning.

The official route also suggests you can cross the river on a footbridge. You can’t. This is an old metal industrial bridge which is closed off and unsafe. Instead continue a hundred metres on, cross on the road bridge and come back along the river path.

You leave the litter behind once over the railway and into fields. Keep an eye out for the left turn over a stile in one of the fields as you may be tempted to keep going straight up the hill.

It’s then straightforward through fields, the occasional settlement and a pretty wood. Crossing the A642 is safe, as is the A637 in Flockton. After that (and before Hutt Farm) we had an encounter with a very friendly herd of young cows (see photo!). I would not have wanted to do it on my own or with a dog.

Be careful on the short road section on Park Lane as there is a blind rise. It is a quiet road and the cars that passed us were driving carefully, but not all will do so.

Once you are off the road, the stile into the second field is really high and difficult to climb. We discovered that we needn’t have bothered as you can keep to the left hand side of the hedge and re-join the path at the next gate.

Our final problems came around Silver Ings farm. The route takes you into a field (coloured bright green on the Slow Ways map). The gate was ramshackle and hard to get through; in lifting it to try and close it properly one of us tore our trousers on barbed wire holding it together. The field contained a field of cows plus young calves and a large bull. Perhaps it would have been OK, but we chose to climb over a few strands of barbed wire into the neighbouring field (on the left) before re-joining the route at the end of the field.

Not a good end to a long walk.

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