West Yorkshire

Kidbrooke Village is tbf not very near Woolwich; it's more an extension of Blackheath's opulence nowadays

Even Plumstead now is mostly composed of a huge new slightly-upmarket estate where all the streets are named after species of bird and a particularly delightful stretch of Thames walk (leading to Thamesmead) begins. I strode it with my best not two weeks ago. We saw a tern.

West Yorkshire, though!

When I was working in North London I used to enjoy walking under the tunnel from the Woolwich side to cut out all the London bridge and arduous journey up the Northern line crap. I don't quite believe that Plumstead has been gentrified though! West Yorkshire is very unfashionable but that may change as London embraces it's destiny under the swelling North Sea over the next few decades!

Ross Raisin's "God's Own Country" (book) is very good - well, the first two thirds of it anyway.

When this book came out I was actually working on the Guardhouse estate in Keighley and we used to travel through desolate Bronte Country every morning on the way. I can't remember whose review it was that put me off it at the time, but I found it quite annoying for some reason. Well it was probably just my pathetic chip on shoulder Huh! posh boy schtick, that has obviously served me so well thus far!

It was on the Guardhouse estate where I first witnessed what was genuine Dickensian squalor to the point where it was the first and only time I contacted a child protection agency about a particular house I worked in.

I am rambling here, it is probably a decent book - ignore me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-47999394

Ilkley Moor is burning .. erm babe!

Bit of a broad question but where's good to stop off between Oxford-ish and Leeds-ish? Sometimes go for a mooch around Yorkshire Sculpture Park but anywhere else good?