The City of Leeds includes Leeds itself and sits in the top right-hand corner of West Yorkshire, with the City of Wakefield below it, the City of Bradford to the west and North Yorkshire to the north and east. As with the City of Wakefield, the metropolitan borough includes the actual city it is named after, plus various other towns and villages. But it’s character is very different to that of the City of Wakefield; Leeds city centre is huge and lively, with older buildings sandwiched between modern ones. It is rich in industrial heritage, not least as the starting point of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Britain’s longest and one with which we will become very familiar over the next few walks. Towards Bradford, it has absorbed towns similar in size to Wakefield into its suburbs, but each retains its own character; towards York, there is more open countryside, although it is primarily agricultural and arguably less appealing than one might expect.
There are fifteen extant railway stations in the City of Leeds, although again only fourteen walks – Garforth has two stations, as we shall see. There are no castles on this section our of tour of Yorkshire, but we shall see a sixteenth century house and grounds, a ruined Cistercian monastery, towns that thrived on textiles, and – of course – the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. We start by heading up the line from Wakefield to Leeds city centre, but we stop off on the way at the village of Woodlesford…
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