This page is an alternative to the [Transpennine Real Ale Trail] (http://www.realaletrail.net/). A fork of it if you like haha!
It is a rough guide, a work in progress, based on the Halifax to Manchester branch of the [Calder Valley Railway Line] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_Valley_line).
This page is becoming a full guide to the pubs serving real ale that can be found on the Western end of the Calder Valley Railway Line, on the leg from Halifax to Manchester Victoria.
The idea came to a group of colleagues and fellow real ale enthusiasts after having had an enjoyable day out on the original and first [Transpennine Real Ale Trail] (http://www.realaletrail.net) made famous by Oz and James.
- Halifax
- Sowerby Bridge
- Mytholmroyd
- Hebden Bridge
- Todmorden
- Walsden
- Littleborough
- Smithy Bridge
- Rochdale
- Castleton
- Mills Hill
- Moston
- Manchester Victoria
Eventually every stop on the trail will have its own page with directions, a map, contact details etc. And maybe we can even produce a .pdf or printable guide for those 'old school' types who don't want to be consulting their mobile every ten minutes.
It started with an Adobe Spark page with a short report and pictures of each of the pubs we visited. Then, to make it easier for others to follow in our footsteps, and for all of us to explore the other stations on future occasions, we decided to create a website. The idea was to include directions to each pub and have links or a display of the next trains. Of course as you're unlikely to have your desktop with you when you're out and about the pages should be mobile friendly.
We've recently (April 2017) put up the list of pubs: https://calder-vale-ale.uk/pubs.html. This uses a 'responsive' table format that seems to work, but is not perfect by any means. And also, we've taken advantage of the cloudflare CDN to provide free SSL for our custom domain while still hosting at GitHub: https://blog.cloudflare.com/secure-and-fast-github-pages-with-cloudflare/.
Just added a FaceBook Page: https://www.facebook.com/caldervalleyale/ @caldervalleyale .