Saturday Walk – Medium to hard c 7.3 miles. Goit Stock Waterfalls and Hewenden Viaduct from Woodbank Nurseries, Harden

The walk will start from the car park at Woodbank Nurseries, Harden Road, Bingley, BD16 1BE at 9:30am

As it’s a large car park, I suggest we all park on the right-hand side as you drive into the car park – up against the fence boundary. This is a free car park. We can use the toilets in the garden centre before the walk, but please make sure you arrive early enough to do this. It opens at 9am.

The walk starts along a few roads, with pavements, before we join a quieter lane which passes houses and joins Harden Beck. We enter Goit Stock Wood and waterfalls of differing sizes. It’s a lovely route – trees and water, fabulous in my book. We pass a mill complex; now apartments and walk along their access road before more trees and a stretch above a steep wooded bank. We get our first view of the Hewenden viaduct around now. We cross the B6144 and then approach the viaduct and eventually pass under the arches. There’s a short steep section as we have to reach the path which goes over the viaduct. There are great views over Hewenden reservoir at this point too.

The path over the viaduct is called the Great Northern Trail and is the route of an old railway line. If you’re tall enough (I’m not!)  you will be able to look over the walls to see the view! After crossing the viaduct, we walk down a lane and enter more woodland. We walk on lanes, pavements and through fields before entering the St Ives Estate where we walk by a pond and then descend through more woods and join a lane back to Harden Road, which we cross to arrive back at Woodbank Nurseries.

The Potting Shed café, in the garden centre, doesn’t need us to do a pre-order, so you can just choose what you fancy to eat on the day..

There can be some very muddy sections near stiles and previously it has been very muddy through the woods near the waterfalls. There is a variety of stiles on this walk and there may be livestock in the fields. There have been horses previously.

Please wear appropriate clothing and footwear, which take account of the weather forecast, and bring a drink. Poles might be an idea in view of the mud risk and it may well rain a bit before this walk. As you all know poles are very useful on the uphill and downhill sections as well as for stability if we do encounter some mud. I do my best to assess the weather and the likely walking conditions but would ask everyone to decide whether a particular walk is right for them on that day. Please note that everyone taking part in the walk does so at their own risk.