Birthday Bash

 Wednesday 3rd September 2025.                Birthday Bash

Today would see 9 of the Lads converge at a location known as Stanley Ferry, a canal side spot close to the city of Wakefield., so not too far for some of the group to travel, whilst for others it was a train and bus ride etc.

A rendezvous time of 11:20 had been arranged, so it would be John, Colin, Brian, Mark, Keith, Derek, Glenn, Dave and birthday boy Russ that would take part in today’s adventure, which would weather permitting, include a short canal side walk followed afterwards with a lunchtime meal in the nearby hostelry celebrating Russ’s birthday of course 

By 11:30 and formal greetings exchanged our adventure began, not long into our walk and Russ decided to give us all a local history lesson about this particular area, he spent most of his youth here in Stanley. So his knowledge was boundless to say the least, he briefly explained the workings of this section of the canal and pointed out the accessibility it gave to nearby industries, mainly coal mining and quarrying etc, some features of these are still visible, muck stacks and very deep lakes.

From the canal side our walk now took us through nearby woodland and eventually to an open meadow which in previous days had been part of a local farm, only ruins of its existence remain now.

At some point during this particular stretch of our walk we somehow managed to get separated into two groups, one taking the left track and the others taking the right at a particular junction, however we did manage to relocate each other at a crossing bridge by the canal, from here we followed the towpath back towards our lunchtime destination the Stanley Ferry Pub.This is where we enjoyed our choice of meals while discussing future adventures and outings, we eventually got round to singing the customary birthday song along with a few other customers joining in Cheers Russ.

We had been fortunate that the predicted heavy rain showers had not reached this location yet, so our short walk was able to be extended somewhat,  much to our pleasure, I think we all throughly enjoyed ourselves today. It was just as we were saying farewell to Stanley Ferry that the heavens open and down came the rain at a few minutes past 2pm.  by this time we were in our cars and almost on the bus on our ways home.

A Big thanks to all especially Russ

Cheers Everyone