Updated 23/03/2024
Length and time 4½ miles (7km). Should take you about 3 hours. Highlights A lovely holly tunnel, a vaccary (old stone slab fence), Stone Chair and some lovely woodland walking. Gradients Steady climb at the start but after that, no major ascents and descents. Terrain The route is all on good tracks and paths. Obstacles Many stiles to cross and some flights of steps. Facilities Duke of York at Shelf Bottomley’s Arms at Shelf (100 metres off the route) Old White Beare and the Pear Tree in Norwood Green. Bus access to the route There are no buses to the start of this section but a link path from Halifax. There are buses at Stone Chair From Shelf there are several buses to Halifax and Bradford The 363 and 686 buses from Norwood Green go to Brighouse.
1. Just after passing Simm Carr (SE097277) turn left and follow the lane to a waymarked stile on the left. The OS map takes a path that crosses diagonally over two stiles to the top of the field. Most people walk to the end of the lane, and then turn left along the top edge of the field.
2. In the corner of the field, turn right over a stone stile under an oak tree. Continue up the field edge (keeping left) partly on an old paved path, leading to a stone stile at the top. Cross the stile and turn right on Fall Lane – a wide path, towards the houses.
3. Follow the track between the houses and through Addersgate farm yard, and continue along to a junction with a tarmac road. Continue straight ahead along Paddock Road until reaching a water trough where the road turns right.
4. Here, you turn left into Cowling Lane and almost immediately right up through a stile keeping left of the field wall up the hill to a concrete track. At the corner, turn left on to a wide path called Cut Lane that has become a tunnel of holly bushes.
5. At the end of this, turn left on to a wide walled lane. When you reach a crossroads, turn right. Continue to the junction with a tarmac road (Tanhouse Lane.)
6. Cross Tanhouse Lane to a gap stile and follow the path behind the farm buildings on the right. Head towards a tree and metal gate to find a grassy track. At a wall go through a stile to go along a path marked by stone slabs known as vaccary walling.
7. At the tarmac road, turn left and then right to find the Duke of York Inn on the corner of the Brighouse and Denholme Gate Road (A644). Examine the inscription on the Stone Chair, opposite the front of the pub,
(There are bus services to Halifax and Bradford near here)
8. From The Duke of York Inn, turn down West Street and continue past Shelf School.
9. Just after Broad Ings Way, cross the road and take a sign posted paved passage on the right. Cross the busy Bradford Road (A6036) to Bridle Stile (or turn left for 150 metres to the Bottomley’s Arms).
10. Follow the road or the parallel waymarked wide grassy path along the edge of Shelf Hall Park. Immediately before the car park, turn right downhill to Stile House where the road becomes a track and continue for about 750m towards Dean House Farm.
11. Do not enter the farmyard; look for a finger post and wooden stile in the wall to the left before the farm gate, and go down to the stream, cutting across the field corner.
12. Cross the stile and footbridge near Dilly Waterfalls, climb the stone steps and turn right onto a concrete lane. At the house follow the narrow-fenced path on the left. Go through the gates and take the right fork going downhill into woodland above Wood Fall Beck.
13. After a short distance, bear left at the fork, taking the higher path. Further on, where a stream crosses the path, go up on a wide, grassy path, to the field corner left of the pylon.
14. Cross into the next field, following the topside of the wall into a narrow path. You come out on to a tarmac lane at Middle Ox Heys Farm. Continue to the T-junction. You are now in Norwood Green.
15. Turn left along the road for about 600m, passing the Old White Beare pub on the left, to the war memorial in a park on your right (SE 142 267).