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Walk Summary: Hard 8.0 mile circular walk from Upperthong, Netherthong, Woodale, Cartworth, Hinchliffe Mill and back to Upperthong
Start : Farmers Arms pub at Burnlee
Locality: Upperthong
Area: North
Start OS Grid reference: SE1315307808
Start What3words : duos.muddy.partly
Difficulty: Hard
Distance miles: 8.0
Ascent meters: 482
Estimated Walk Time hours: 4.8
Pub & Locality: Farmers Arms at Burnlee, Holmfirth
Parking: Small pub carpark and on-street within walking distance, but on narrow road
Public Transport: Pub is within 20 minutes walk of the centre of Holmfirth
Walk Description:As if leaving the pub, follow Liphill Bank Road to the right for 200 metres, when a footpath goes off to the right at 90°. Turn onto this and work your way uphill to Greenfield Road by the last houses in Holmfirth! Cross over and go up the steep field path to come out on Broad Lane. Go left up to the centre of Upperthong. When the lane goes round to the right, instead go straight ahead through the village centre rather than following the lane left. Pass the Royal Oak pub on the right. About 100 metres beyond the pub, the road turns down to the right. Instead, turn left at this point to go past a row of modern houses, on your left, with a field on your right. At the walled lane ahead do a dogleg right and then quickly left, and bear slightly right to go downhill through a pretty little valley, Wickins Dike. Get across the water and keep bearing rightish uphill. There is a distinct deviation to the right through woods: keep going until you reach a farm building.  At this point, on our walk we turned back to the left to go up to take in the view from the trig point at Wolfstones Heights, well worth the detour, and then doubled back.  The route now follows the old route down to Netherthong village from Wolfstones. It is very clear, although at the end it ‘deteriorates’ to an alley between gardens and goes across a communal drive! Pass the war memorial on your left and stay straight along Towngate: don’t follow the squiggle right on the OS map on our website – it takes you to the former home of an NCOM member where we stopped for coffee! Instead, pass the shop and pub, with All Saints Church on your right, and rather than follow the main road (New Road) downhill to the right walk down Church Street, which turns into School Street where it passes the school (!) and then in turn becomes Thong Lane.  Continuedown this to where it crosses the Woodhead Road (A6024) in Thongsbridge. Use the pedestrian crossing and go directly ahead on to Miry Lane. Pass the vets on your left in the bottom, cross the bridge, perhaps pausing to look out for kingfishers on the wing amidst industrial architecture, and then start going uphill. When you reach a former church (now a private house) on your right, turn to the right: a couple of hundred metres up this path, there is a fork to the right blocked off by a horizontal pipe masquerading as a gate. Go this way and carry on directly into the woods: you will join the former Huddersfield/Holmfirth railway line. As you reach some new houses, keep them on your right, and shortly afterwards turn up quite steeply on a footpath going to the left which brings you to New Mill Road (A635) (NB this has gone a little askew on the OS route plan – the path you are looking for is a few yards further on than the sharp turn on the OS route indicates!)  Cross the road, and turn up the (unnamed?) lane on the right: this brings you on to Banksville and if you keep going up you will reach Town End Lane: turn right here. Soon you will be going downhill again, but before you reach the junction with Station Road/New Mill Road turn left up Town End View: note the height of the garden walls on Town End Lane! The OS Map goes wrong again here: you do not have a sharp left going between houses off here. Bear left as you join Town End View and you are at the start of Bank House Lane which follows the contour, bringing you out through someone’s garden onto Cliff Lane. Turn left and go steeply uphill. The lane levels out and you have excellent views of the earlier part of your walk through the “Thongs”to the left.  When Cliff Lane joins Cliff Road, go diagonally across and up the footpath between houses: at this point you are rejoining the OS route!  The path emerges onto a footpath which goes left/right along a popular dogwalking area known locally as ‘Cliff’ – former quarries. Instead of joining this path, go straight (or diagonally!) across, and after a few yards you will find yourself entering a stone ‘corridor’. Go along this and straight down the field, with views of a different valley. At the end of the field go right, rather than left to Wooldale, and turn left at the first track on the left, opposite an isolated modern bungalow and with Wooldale Wanderers AFC football pitch on your right. Come out on Winney Bank Lane: go right and after the farmhouse immediately on your left, turn up the lane to the left. This track is walled: keep going up until the walls ‘finish’. Go diagonally across the field and meet another track to a farmstead. The gate may be closed but it is still a public footpath. Follow the footpath signs through the yard and reach Sandy Gate. A right-and-left dogleg brings you to another path following the contour of the hillside, which you follow to the end, where it joins Cross Gate Road.  Turn right and follow this road – a bus route! – down on to the B6106 Dunford Road, and go straight across, carefully! Visibility is poor here.  Keep going downhill on the road in a fairly straight line to the bottom of the valley (don’t turn left onto Choppards Bank Lane), and then go uphill again, on Green Lane, passing The Oil Can Cafe and motor museum on your left (an interesting stopover if you have time.) Where you go through houses at the top, an area known as Washpit, turn right on Lamma Well Road.  When you come to the junction 150 metres up the road, go across and up the steps to join a footpath behind the farmhouses which joins a track: go straight between fields and come to another track going across, known as Ward Bank Road. “Wiggle’ across to go down through the fields to Cemetery Road: go straight ahead again on a tarmac track downhill and between the houses. Pass Malkin House on your left and go straight across their field and on the diagonal across the next field down into Malkin House Wood.  Come to a crossing path in an open area – turn right here: go down and you will come to Bottoms Mill and its dam. Turn left behind the mill across the end of the pond and walk up to the A6024 – the Woodhead Road out of Holmfirth. Turn right towards Holmfirth, but after 100 metres go left along and up Burnlee Road: look out for the Farmers Arms pub on your left on Liphill Bank Road.
Other comments and Points of Interest: (1) Whilst this walk begins at the Farmers Arms at Burnlee, at the time of our walk, the pub was not set up to serve lunchtime food! We bought fishnchips from Compos just up the road and – with pub’s permission – ate them in the pub.
(2) The point of this circular walk was to cover paths around Holmfirth, but not set foot in the town – the walk route succeeds admirably.  The walk takes in a number of amusingly named ‘thongs’. One explanation is that the name goes back to an old Scandinavian measure – a continuous strip, or thong, was cut from an animal hide and the thong was then the measure of the area it would encircle. True or false?

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