Skipton to Saltaire Along the Canal

The route

This is the flattest route in this set by a wide margin - 25.6km of canal towpath from Skipton to Saltaire with effectively no climbing recorded along the way. The challenge here isn't gradient, it's distance and pace management on a surface that never changes character, which makes it a genuinely different kind of test from the moorland routes nearby.

The towpath

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal towpath is well maintained throughout, signed and hard to get lost on, which frees you up to focus entirely on running rather than navigation. It's a shared route though - cyclists and anglers use this stretch regularly, and it gets busier the closer you get to Saltaire, so courtesy and a sensible pace through the built-up sections matter more here than on the open moor routes.

Saltaire

The route finishes in Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage village built around Salts Mill. Roberts Park, right by the canal, has the Half Moon Cafe and toilets in its old pavilion building, a good spot to recover before heading home. Saltaire railway station is a short, flat distance from the towpath, with regular trains back towards Skipton via Leeds or Shipley.

Getting there and back

Because this finishes a long way from where it starts, it's worth checking train times before you go - the railway is the practical way back, rather than relying on a car shuttle over this distance. The towpath has no real elevation to speak of, so this is a route that runs equally well in either direction if you'd rather start from Saltaire and finish in Skipton.

Why it works

There's a place for routes that strip away terrain and navigation and leave you with just the distance, and this is that route for this part of Yorkshire. The Sir Titus Pie n Pickle Plod, a marshalled towpath race with feed stations every three miles, runs along this same corridor, which says something about how well this stretch works as a route in its own right rather than just a connector between two towns.