Surprisingly, until today, I had never before in my life been to Castleford. It is a hardworking Yorkshire town south east of Leeds with a population of some 45,000. It is famous for rugby league - being the home of Castleford Tigers but once it was also famous for coal mining. Most of the nearby collieries went the way of many others in the 1980's but Kellingley hung on till 2016 - still feeding the big power station at Ferrybridge.
I rode up there by train once again on another sparkling spring day. My aim was not to mooch about the town itself but to strike out into the countryside north of Castleford. I was wishing I had caught the 10.02 train instead of the 11.02 in order to give myself more time. At times I was marching like a soldier just to keep up a good pace.
Only when I reached the charming village of Ledsham did I allow myself five minutes on a churchyard bench - drinking from my flask of water and munching on a chocolate and hazelnut croissant I bought from Lidl last night.
I marched on to Ledston and then across the fields to Allerton Bywater. However, at that point my watch said I needed to cancel a planned detour if I was going to make the 15.52 train back to Sheffield. After waiting five minutes for a timetabled bus that never came, I continued the march back to Castleford but as the little station came into view my train left without me. If only I hadn't waited for that elusive bus!
I went into "The Lamplighters" pub on Carlton Street and ordered myself a well-deserved pint of bitter shandy. I got chatting to Lucy - the pleasant young barmaid and she kindly allowed me to use her phone to ring Shirley and tell her I had missed my train and would be home an hour later than I had indicated. It was one of the very few times in recent months that I realised it might have been useful to have a phone of my own. After all, public phone booths that actually work have become as rare as hen's teeth.
And so I rode back to Sheffield still reading "The Gallows Pole". Here in my home city as evening approached, human life was buzzing and it felt like the end of a warm summer's day. Bars and cafes were filled at the end of the working week and in Endcliffe Park young people still sat on the grass socialising in groups as barbecue smoke rose heavenward. Surely Ukraine's current horror was just a nightmare we shared - wasn't it?
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/bRw42P1
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