Run/Walk 2: Hollins, Marley Brow, Druids Altar
five miles
ROUTE:
Take the Harden road out of Bingley but just after crossing over Ireland Bridge take the wooden steps leading up right by the Ireland Terrace sign. Head up Altar lane past the gated track  to Raven Royd and then take the footpath, signposted to Marley, heading right across the fields. The path takes you to the wood marked on the map as Hollin Plantation
The picture above shows the 21st century path through Hollins. On the right is the track through Hollins as it was when Harry Speight researched his Chronicles and Stories of Bingley and District in the late 19th century. The boys are collecting wood. Speight thought it an ancient track which once continued to Currer Laithe and Keighley
ROUTE
The path through the wood meets a track and drops down to the riverside path from Ireland Bridge.This path bears left through a gate and over a stile in front of Marley Hall before heading left up the Marley Brow track. This track winds its way up to a wall with a stile. Now you follow a path through the bracken. Bear right at the first fork and left at the second  to meet a path by the wall with fields beyond. Follow the path left to join the track coming up from Transfield Farm.Druids Altar is on the left At the junction of tracks avoid Altar Lane and instead go down Cross Gates Lane marked on the signpost as leading to St Ives. When the lane veers right, head left down another bridleway. A short way down, veer right through the wall stile, head down across the fields and enter the wood by another stile. Take the path leading straight ahead which then bears left and slightly downhill. This path circles round the wood but take the path leading left down to the busy Harden Road. Cross the road and take the stile opposite. The path leads down to Myrtle Park. Cross the tubular bridge  and head left by the riverside walk back to Ireland Bridge 
Druids Altar gets a mention in Benjamin Disraeli's political novel Sybil or the Two Nations (1846) as a meeting place for fanatical Luddites. It's an excellent viewpoint  but romance rather than evidence makes the connection to druids and ancient sacrifice. The terms druid and druidical were used indiscriminately in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The druidical fancy reaches its extreme in William Keighley's mid nineteenth century description of an awe-struck multitude watching the druid priests officiating on one large stone while another stone serves as a pedestal for a wicker collossus containing "the doomed and trembling victims."
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