I walked out of Leeds city centre along the Leeds to Liverpool canal last week, past people sitting in the sunshine at waterside bars and on past the Victorian mills, new upmarket apartment blocks and pretty locks that chart part of the evolution of urban life in England.
A couple of miles along the canal, when you get to Armley Mills, you cross a bridge over the River Aire and cut up through a retail park with its KFC, Aldi and Abu Bakr Supermarket opposite on Kirkstall Road, towards Headingley, one of the great cathedrals of English cricket.