Beyond Bradford and the Brontës – new walking trail shows West Yorkshire’s natural beauty

The Bradford Pennine Gateway Trail, launching this weekend, aims to ‘change perceptions of Bradford’ by taking in the moors and the area’s new national nature reserve A grainy photograph, dated 1938, hangs in a frame on the downstairs wall of my B&B. It shows 100, perhaps 200, elegantly attired trippers sitting on the green at Shipley Glen in West Yorkshire.

They’re picnicking, chatting, taking the air and enjoying the sunshine, while admiring the rocks and woods that frame the deep gully below. It’s local, low-carbon, cheap-as-chips tourism before the jet age – and also a model for how we may travel in the future. I arrived here thanks to a new trail , launching on 19 September, that runs through the also newly established Bradford Pennine Gateway national nature reserve –…