Meaningful Meanwood

Wednesday 28th September 2022.               Meaningful Meanwood 

Today the Lads are duly paying their respects to their dear friend Eddie who sadly left this world 3 years ago.

 They intend to cover one of his favourite walks, which will  incorporate part of the Meanwood Valley Trail an area of north Leeds.

It was a group of 7 that fulfilled this journey, which proved to be full of trials and tribulations so to speak. Nevertheless it was done with great determination and sentiment. 

Our group consisted of John, Malcolm , Colin, Brian, Derek, Dave and Alan as the guide, owing to the fact that he had accompanied Eddie on this particular journey along with many other outings. With the lads congregating at a bus stop in the city centre at about 11 o’clock  in order to board a No 51 bus that would transport them to the area of Meanwood, a journey of approximately 25 minutes. Plenty of chatter about the route the bus was taking , however we eventually arrived close to the entrance of the local park and soon began our journey, once out of the parkland we now entered a wooded area and began to follow the Adel beck. At first this pathway was easy to contend with but once through the ring road underpass the conditions became somewhat difficult to negotiate, eventually a sort of lunchtime seating area was found which enabled a few of us to consume our sandwiches courtesy of Greggs.

From this point it was just a short distance to one of our intended points of interest, the Seven Arches Aqua-duct a Victorian construction built to carry a water supply to the city in about 1840 , not in use anymore but as been giving a grade 2 listing status.

 

From this point we continued our journey on towards Golden Acre Park this particular stretch of the adventure proved to be a test of our endurance and not succumb to the treacherous underfoot conditions, ie wet and slippery rocks and tree roots that at any moment could spell disaster ,fortunately we managed to avoid any mishaps and eventually emerged from this particular location only to find we were somewhat short of Golden Acre Park,

 

local knowledge was now required from some kind person ie a cottage dweller who gave us 3 options, we took the one we all seemed to agree upon and soon found ourselves in the grounds of the Church in the Village of Adel, quite a lovely building with a wonderful arched doorway , leaving the church behind us we now made our way through a relatively newly constructed  housing estate and out on to the main road , at this point we were still about a mile or so from Golden Acre Park , so feeling rather exhausted we decided to take the short bus journey to the park instead of continuing with our walk, eventually we found ourselves sat at a table with drinks in our hands in the grounds of Golden Acre Park, much to the relief of everyone concerned.

This had been a tough undertaking much to our surprise, not a vast amount of distance covered but very time consuming due to the terrain in certain areas. After a short while reminiscing it was off to the nearby bus stop and take the return journey back to the city centre in order to connect with our respective homeward modes of transport.

Cheers Everyone