Distance 4.7 miles/7.5km
Typical duration 2 hours
Start and finish Leeds Town Hall
Start postcode LS1 3AD
Step-by-step details and maps ramblers.org.uk/leedscity

Leeds always makes me feel guilty. After all, I’ve lived less than an hour away for years and yet never explored it. So here I am, on a Ramblers’ route that takes two great loops through the city, hoping to discover what I’ve been missing.

I start at the station, not the town hall as suggested. Who would start there? The mayor? But this proves a judicious move as the two loops reveal two very different faces of the city. First I drop down the steps and burrow under the station into what is know as the Dark Arches. When, in 1865, they built the station over the river Aire and the Leeds Liverpool canal, they ended up with this tunnel system: a bricklayers paradise – 18m of them, bricks that is, not bricklayers. I emerge near a canal lock and various smart new buildings mixed with old.

It must be a bylaw in Leeds that no old building must ever be used for the same purpose that it was built for. All this solid Victorian stone, all the columns, domes and heraldic brickwork, the pediments, cornices and figurines that were once insurance offices, banks and mills; they are all now restaurants, delicatessens and bars, especially bars. Even the grand old Bourse stock exchange is now a bookies, which you might argue is an exception to the rule. I wander out into an increasingly lost and forlorn area, past the ruined Temple of Edfu, or rather the overgrown and derelict Marshall’s Mill. It was built, improbably, along the lines of the Egyptian temple and is a Grade I listed building still awaiting reassignment. It would make a fabulous museum of ancient history, but is more likely to become another bar. There is no hurry from my point of view: I’m a fan of industrial decay more than regeneration.

In deserted Globe Street I notice a black man standing motionless in the road, staring straight ahead. I ask him if he’s all right. “Is that dog chained up?” he asks. He has a hint of a South African accent. I become aware that through the open gate of a motor repair business there is the sound of a big dog barking.

“I’m sure it must be. I’ve just walked past the gate.” But he doesn’t move. Now I see he’s actually terrified. I turn around. “Come on. I’ll walk past with you.”

We set off. “Are you frightened of dogs?” I ask, redundantly. “I was once badly beaten, and they had…” but then he’s gone, running madly down the street. I shout after him – “Try not to run!” – but he is already far away, reliving some terrifying ordeal. I turn around and pick up the route again, past the lovely Italianate towers of Tower Mills. In the spruced-up brick buildings, people are sipping skinny lattes and fiddling with their Macs.

At Whitehall Road I drop down by the river Aire and walk east, past the station and downriver on the left bank. In 1780, an information board tells me, the river was a pure trout stream, and a century later a polluted hell choked with dead dogs, cats and pigs.

Now there’s the Asda office. I am loving this walk: the strange juxtapositions, the fragments of graffiti, the lost, lovely flourishes of Victorian stonecraft and brickwork, and the sumptuous array of cafes. I choose one on Leeds Bridge that is a bacon-sarnie type place. I want something solid and old-fashioned, the right accompaniment for the spirit of those long-dead workers who started the Co-op near here.

Now I’m on to the second loop, which is through the modern city though it’s still full of wonderful views, like the bespoke tailor, its window filled with bolts of tweed, next to the tarty delights of the Simply Pleasure sex shop. In the city centre I detour into the City Museum: a venerable building that appears to have been renovated by the sex shop designers, all gaudy colours and things that vibrate and go ping. It’s free, however, and they do have the fossilized skeleton of a hippo found nearby in 1852; not an immigrant, they came from here.

The Art Gallery is more worthwhile, one of those provincial collections that is full of surprises: a Derain, some Sickert and lots of vorticists, plus tons, literally, of Henry Moore. The Tiled Hall Cafe here is a superbly ornamental spot for some tea and cake – or there’s La Bottega Milanese close by.

I head back to the station and to the Friends of Ham – a bar and deli/restaurant serving real ale. A brilliant walk. Why did I wait so long? But what I’m thinking about, as I board my train, is that African guy, somewhere down there, hopefully having calmed his racing heart by now. I wish I could have helped him walk past that dog. Change and regeneration isn’t such a bad thing, but sometimes rather easier for stone and brick than flesh and blood.

Get there

This route starts a 10-minute walk from Leeds railway station. Many buses stop on The Headrow, which is very close to the start point. Visit www.wymetro.com to plan your journey.