Photos I most regret failing to take on this walk due to camera batteries running out:
1. Narrowboat on the Humber opposite Winteringham, a fortnight ago.
2. Elland Road stadium and the city from the heights of Wortley, today.
Leeds is hilly, quite a shock after Hull and its East Riding hinterland. And it’s taken me almost a week to appreciate this properly, as I’ve mostly been in the centre or along canal routes. A six mile hike via Armley up to Cottingley fixed that today.
Not the great central Leeds power icons but the two 25-storey residences of Cottingley are reputedly the highest towers in the city. They are unmissable from the high green of Wortley Recreation Ground, which rests nearby those other high icons of south Leeds, St Bartholemew’s and HMP Leeds, Armley. My route connected all of these today, and revealed more about the geography of power.
To say that Leeds is hilly reveals little. My route, and subsequent conversation with Barry in the church at Cottingley heights, helped to form the impression that residential Leeds consists of a series of islands which are separated by the old low fields, the river basin, the canal route, through which run the railways and major roads, with the industrial works, warehouses and retail sheds clustered along them.
This struck me on the amazing walk down Highfield Garth from Wortley Recreation Ground, past Elland Road stadium, up to Beeston, down Crows Nest Lane and then up again to Cottingley. The stadium is big on the near horizon from the top of Wortley and the Garth drops steeply and directly towards it over the Leeds to Huddersfield railway line, continues by way of a necessary pedestrian crossing over the hectic A58 Whitehall Road. From there the route falls steeply again into a suddenly narrow twisty track between high wire fences, the other side of which are various types of residual industrial sheds: reconditioned tyre merchants, a vast storage area for portacabins and portaloos. The track continues beneath the Doncaster and Sheffield railway line, before emerging in the open space of Islington, another expanse of industrial and commercial sheds on the A62 Gelderd Road and down Low Fields Road.
Here industry and leisure sit together. The Leeds Wall is no historical jewel – it’s an indoor climbing centre; another shed proclaims SOCCER CITY – FUN CITY, and the vast triangular canopy over Elland Road dominates the scene, displaying without irony in possibly the largest typeface in West Yorkshire, the words LSS WASTE MANAGEMENT – THE BIG YELLOW SKIP PEOPLE. Leeds United have been in the business of managing waste for the last few tortuous seasons, the wasted fortunes of misplaced ambition, but this vast stadium (sitting on the far side of the M621 motorway in a low sea of industrial units) still proclaims a greatness, despite the team’s current position 67 places from the top of football’s league ladder.
St Bartholemew’s (somewhat ironically for a high Anglican church) is on Wesley Road, Armley, and the rise up to west Beeston’s three churches is by way of Wesley Street. A residential area, a busy Friday afternoon Co-op, a school, a pub or two, all at an impressive (or isloating) height, before another drop by Windmill Hill down Crow Nest Lane where new housing blocks sit perched, a little out of place, over farmland, and as the towers of Cottingley rise above everything in fields of green the lane – suddenly feeling like the rural route it has been for centuries – crosses the southbound railway and then passes more industrial units (chemical companies, a store for Metro bus stop signs).
Cottingley is truly an island. It takes a few minutes to cross the A6110 Beeston Ring Road which runs beneath it on the east side. The M621 borders it to the north, the A643 Elland Road to the south, and the Huddersfield railway line to the west. It rises rapidly and high above these, this modestly-sized 1960s estate built on ‘New Town Principles’. It has been compared to Bransholme in Hull, but it’s nowhere near as vast. It is, however, isolated by all that lies below, just as Bransholme is isolated by its position on the edge of the city and by major roads which surround but bypass it.
In the modest and pleasing worship space in the multipurpose Cottingley church building, just beneath the vast towers, Barry talks about the positives of the geography of power as it affects this deprived but decent community. Being an island strengthens a community’s sense of itself; sharing a clear geographical and sociological space encourages a cooperation between churches of different denomination. As a candle burns beside us for the International Day of Prayer for Peace, boys use the church door as a football goal and Barry talks about seeing his role as an advocate for these youngsters who are too easily written-off or reviled. When the church rebuilds the wall which a car demolished, and renovates the sign which currently reads CHURCH IN COTT LEY, Barry is also going to build a special wall designed for the boys to kick their ball against.
This intention reminds me of a sight I saw across the industrial valley. Wortley Recreation Ground resounded with rattling, metallic sounds which sounded, at first, like possible acts of vandalism. But the source of the noise was one young man singly enjoying the facility of a large skateboard park which the authorities have placed there. It seems that, uphill, in the geography of power, it’s possible for tiny hints of grace to be found.