Just seen a short section that they have finished within the re-surfacing they are doing at Applerley Bridge. A black strip of featureless tarmac, looked bloody awful and surely its just going to turn it into a motorway. If this is the plan for the full stretch from Leeds to Skipton its a sad day. 🙁

it is part of the cycle super highway. I like it. good for commutes away from the traffic.

do you mean appley bridge near wigan?

It’ll wear in and look fine in a year or so.

I wish they’d tarmac my local towpath. It’s muddy and rutted and slow and full of holes, it’d be much better with six foot of blacktop along the length of it and would make my commute to work much nicer and safer. It’d probably protect and hold together the flaky old canal wall too.

Won’t happen though, because of whinging nimbies moaning about how the beautiful scenery of the local chemical works, warehouses, factories, derelict mills and scabby playing fields would be ruined by a bit of sensible surfacing.

tarmac? – for a useful traffic free route? – fine.

(although in my humble opinion hardpack is often better if it’s an area that gets cold and frosty – as canals often seem to)

surely its just going to turn it into a motorway.

i’m going to guess that’s partly the point?

Agree with it being a great away from traffic route for evrybody, but must be a better surface option than tarmac.

I used to cycle down the Bridgewater canal towpath the 7 miles each way to work, as it was better than risking almost certain death on the parallel nose-to-tail main road. It was rutted, full of water-filled holes, and axle deep in filth, most of the year round.

Then they went and properly resurfaced it all with a 3ft wide gravel path. It was, quite frankly, absolutely bloody brilliant!!

Stop whining, you big fanny! 😛

If this is the plan for the full stretch from Leeds to Skipton Liverpool its a sad great day.

FTFY

They tarmacced parts of our canal path, it’s ace. Turning onto the squishy dirt riverbank path is always a blow. It does ice up a bit though. It looked terrible on day one but now it’s grey and has grass encroaching and plants overgrowing, and dirt trodden onto it, it looks just fine.

Sod the lot of ya going to get my drive done as well … 😉

Anything would be better than the tooth loosening chatter bumps along the stretch from Buck Woods to shipley.

You need to start thinking like the local yoot, and think of the positives. New uses for it…..

Is the resurfacing complete now? Considering a bit of a Shipley-Leeds commute but don’t fancy doing it with detours round Horsforth/Kirkstall.

Still on-going domino

Cheers Shredder, any idea where the detours are? Are they a PITA or not?

That stretch is a motorway. I was walking the dog in Bramley Falls once, heard a car, looked down and there was a red nissan micra doing about 60 along the tow path.

@ domino they seem to be up to Appaerley Bridge with “tarmac” but dont really use the canal past that to link into Esholt / Calverly etc. So not sure what diversions remain.
So they must be gearing up for the stretch from A Bridge to Thackley now boo 😈

I’ve heard they are only tarmacing from Leeds to Shipley. The winter months will be fun with the ice! Can’t see them putting any grit on it. So we’ll see how long it is before someone ends up in the canal.

towpath info

Sounds like a good thing – not really in the same league as trail sanitisation. Towpaths are there to get from a to b. As for icing, there’s plenty of opportunity for ice to form on the hardback-only sections round Bingley. Can’t see Tarmac being any worse.