START from the parish church in Bingley.

From Old Main Street by the church, take the Harden road to Ireland Bridge on the River Aire.

Don’t cross but take a path on the left between buildings, soon tracing the riverbank along into Myrtle Park.

Advance to a footbridge on the river, across which head away to a path rising into trees.

Up a few steps is a junction: go left, and when another branch climbs to the right, keep straight on your path rising the short way to the wood top.

It runs along to emerge via a stile at a solitary house.

Pass along the front and on a faint path through the field ahead.

Shortly after narrowing you reach a stile accessing Beckfoot Bridge on Harden Beck.

Across, head along Beckfoot Lane between sports fields and Shipley golf club where suburbia is reached.

Keep on the roadside footway to Cottingley Bridge.

Cross the main road to a stile, and steep steps drop onto the riverbank.

The path heads downstream by gardens before emerging into sports fields.

Simply remain with the river, entering denser scrub at the end.

The path passes under the by-pass and into further trees.

Through a gap is a tall-walled snicket section.

As the snicket turns right at the end, your hedgerowed path continues on the riverbank.

At the far end another snicket goes off, while your path bridges a sidestream to enter Hirst Wood beneath a corner of Nab Wood Cemetery.

Passing beneath a railway bridge, the path heads downstream through trees, and before long rises slightly from the river when a thinner branch stays with it.

On the brow a junction is reached: turn right, curving briefly uphill then left (ignoring a lesser right one) to run a straight, level course through Hirst Wood.

At the end the path emerges into a car park at the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.

Turn left over the canal bridge at Hirst Lock.

Turn a few steps right to the lock, then at a gap in the wall a path drops onto an access track.

Past this cross a footbridge on the Aire and go left to a footbridge on a sidestream.

Go left again to a rowing club, where a footpath resumes upstream, rising at the end onto the canal towpath at the end of an aqueduct on the river.

Turn right to cross a bridge, and the towpath resumes on the other side, passing Dowley Gap Locks and beneath a road bridge at the Fisherman’s Inn.

The towpath runs through greenery into Bingley, and all the way to Three Rise Locks.

To the left is the footbridge by which you will finish, but first advance five minutes further to view the iconic Five Rise Locks.

Retrace steps to the footbridge over road and railway, dropping back down to the road by the church.