Baildon Walkers
This welcoming walking group are striding out across Bradford.
Published: September 4, 2024
Meet The People of Bradford in our new digital series, created in collaboration with renowned documentary photographer Tim Smith.
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Tim spent a day exploring the Bradford countryside with Baildon Walkers Are Welcome, an inclusive walking group from Baildon. This story includes quotes from different members of the group.
This is Baildon Walkers Are Welcome – in their own words.
We’re called Baildon Walkers Are Welcome. We set ourselves up about 10 years ago to be part of a national network of Walkers Are Welcome towns and villages.
We know that there was a lot of really nice walking around here – open country, hills, rivers that people would enjoy coming to. Here is Baildon, about five miles out of the centre of Bradford on the high ground between Airedale and Wharfedale.
People love hearing stories, and it’s lovely telling stories. People love stories about people and about places, and if what you’re saying is true then all the better.
At the launch of our walking festival last year, we’d found a sound clip of JB Priestley talking about coming out onto Baildon Moor and walking across to Hawksworth. It was from one of his radio programmes, just him telling a story. When we played it the room was hushed, completely hushed. It was wonderful!
Telling a story about the roots of a community and things that have happened here over the years, I think a lot of people find that very compelling. If you can explore on foot, it’s like telling yourself a story. I used to love, as a kid, exploring places. Let’s go there! Our group provides a safe way of people being able to explore.
When you look around us there’s not a lot there in terms of buildings and other structures. It’s just open clear spaces, and we’re just so fortunate to have these kind of areas available to us and be able to take advantage of it for our physical and mental health.
It also needs remembering that this part of the country is an industrial area with hundreds of years of history. These areas, around Baildon in particular, were a major escape for people from the industrial centres to get out and get some clean fresh air. We are continuing that tradition, showing what these open areas of Bradford have for the people of West Yorkshire.
There’s a phrase: ‘It is solved by walking’. I’m a great believer in that, I think we all are. If you’ve got a problem, you can go for a walk on your own or with friends and you can work through it. It’s good physically, it’s good mentally, it’s good socially. It does everything.
