retiredmartin

April 2025. Menston to Otley.

OK, the set-up post for the big trip to Otley, and a question “Why Menston ?“.

I’d only decided to take the train to Leeds roughly 45 seconds before it departed Sheffield. I think you’re supposed to buy your ticket earlier, but I like to be sure I’m getting a seat before pressing PAY.

£15.20 off-peak to Leeds, another £4.90 to get to Menston, your staging point for an assault on Otley since the latter lost its station in 1965. Beeching really hated trains, didn’t he ?

Perhaps I should aim to tick all the UK rail stations, a man’s gotta tick, but that might make people think I’m a trainspotter and that would never do.

I knew nothing about Menston, perhaps there’s nothing to know. The bloke who invented Lassie, seen here standing guard outside Dad’s care home window,

was born here, and the Kaiser Chiefs went to school here and wrote OMG about the Otley Mild Group.

Having never graced the GBG in my ticking lifetime, I briefly considered exploring the local pubs.

Ooh, the Menston Arms is a Sam Smiths, get some great pics there.

But the pubs are a mile’s walk away,

and the electronic display at Cleasby Road bus stop says the Number 34 will be here in 6 minutes.

Obviously I can’t just stand there, it’s the standing still that kills you, so I walk ahead to the next stop, and the next, following the 34’s progress on the app.

It never arrives, and I’m a mile out of Menston before the bus zooms past, 15 minutes late.

Honestly, I enjoy the walking, but the A6038 into Otley is the dullest 2 miles I’ve trudged all year, this long terrace of houses on Bradford Road the only attraction.

Someone in my next pub will inform me I should have walked via the Chevin for the views. NOW you tell me.

Otley is a strange place, isn’t it ? Without a railway station the roads are clogged with traffic, but the cobbled streets are oddly quiet.

The finger post by the Cons Club makes it look a hive of activity,

and the Otley Pub Run is (apparently) world famous, but I’ve walked it in 5 minutes before arriving at my new GBG entry,

and finding it (at least temporarily) shut.