Daydream travels take me on the beaten tracks

ARMCHAIR travel is not just convenient. It’s the only way to get around these days.

Compelled to stay indoors on pain of fines, I can still go globe-trotting in my imagination. Reliving past trips to distant places, and planning new ones.

As restrictions lift, Tier Three Tours, based in this little office full of maps and guides, will get me back on the road.

Let’s start with Spen Valley Greenway, between Bradford and Dewsbury.

I chose this from Julian Holland’s superb book, Exploring Britain’s Lost Railways. It begins by the reopened station at Low Moor, south of England’s “wool capital” and marches seven miles through Cleckheaton, Liversedge and Heckmondwike to Ravensthorpe. As any puffer-nutter knows, there used to be an engine shed at Low Moor, dating from Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway days.

Almost the last of the steam era, it survived until 1967. The line closed to goods traffic in 1990, having lost its passenger services in the 60s.

Since 2001, it has reopened as a cycle and footpath, “a green corridor running through a heavily-populated urban area with distant views of moorland,” says enthusiast Julian. Along the trail are works including a flock of sheep built from scrap, a giant pedal and cycle seat and 40 steel hoops in a circle. It sounds like Tate Modern in a railway cutting. Can’t wait!

Lockdown has atrophied the old leg muscles. But I’ll make it to Heckmondwike – great Tyke textile town names, these – where old station platforms survives.

Thence by bus back into Bradford, and when I lace up my walking boots again Sam Smith’s Shoulder of Mutton by Forster Square station might be open.