Just a few miles outside Keighley, hikers with rucksacks stroll along country lanes enjoying stunning views of the Yorkshire Dales over the dry stone walls.
But as visitors descend into the market town they cross an invisible frontier between North Yorkshire, one of the quietest policing areas in the country, and West Yorkshire, one of the busiest.
On the face of it, Keighley is a picture postcard market town, just as attractive as historic Skipton, a few miles down the road across the North Yorkshire border.
The modern shopping centre and bus station straddle a maze of olde worlde shopping streets sandwiched between an imposing war memorial and the Church Green community garden.
Earlier in the day, local school children had been carrying out a litter pick at the gardens, which according to locals is a regular haunt for drug addicts and alcoholics.
But by lunchtime, as the kids packed up their bags, the first of the drinkers were arriving to take over the park benches to consume alcohol into the evening.
They then bed down in shop doorways to sleep it off, leaving their filthy possessions behind when they go off in the morning in search of more cheap booze.
This is the darker side of Keighley. But in more recent years, the binge drinkers have become less of a concern as the scourge of drugs had tightened its grip on the town.
Now a judge has branded the drug problem in Keighley as a ‘crisis’, adding crack cocaine is a ‘particularly nefarious’ drug, while jailing another dealer snared in a large-scale police sting.
According to one eyewitness who spoke to , vans have been touring the area, blatantly advertising the supply of drug growing equipment.
He said: ‘I couldn’t believe it. It was so blatant. I have heard they are not only supplying the lights and other equipment for drug grows but coming around to your house to set it up as well.’
Like many spoke to, the man was too frightened to give his name, for fear of retaliation. As one pensioner put it: ‘We feel we are being watched and if we talk we get battered.’
Another terrified shopkeeper added: ‘It is brazen. You see people high at nine in the morning. There are so many unemployed in the town.
‘For them it is a choice of drink or drugs. The police do nothing and we say nothing because we don’t want our front windows smashed.’
Our reporters were also threatened in a local pub, The Cavendish, which has been forced to employ bouncers to keep the druggies out, by a young drunken man who told us to leave.
He accused us of being undercover police officers and when we identified ourselves as journalists he became threatening and quoted from the football hooligan film Green Street – ‘F*** journos’.
In another incident, a man deliberately barged into our journalists as they were interviewing another resident on a deserted street corner.
One of the clean up organisers Richard Taylor said they were just trying to do something positive In the face of the drug culture.
He said fortunately no needles had been found on the Church Green. ‘But we did find lots of rubbish including plastic bottles which the drunks drink out of.
‘I was in charge of seven children and everyone had a bag of rubbish so there was a fair bit of work to make it look nice again.’
Down the street, shop doorways were littered with the pathetic belongings of homeless addicts including the bedding of a notorious druggie known as Homeless John.
One local said: ‘He is always screaming and yelling at people. He is a nightmare and we have heard he likes starting fires.
‘According to rumour he is not even homeless. He has a house that was bought for him by his wealthy family but he never lives there.’
Bus driver Oscar Bogusz is regularly pestered by two or three aggressive beggars, all addicts that sit around the bus station.
He said: ‘They have been known to fight over their pitches as well. I don’t know why they are not here today. They must have gone off to buy more drugs.’
Paul Walker, 72, said Keighley now bore no relation to the town he grew up in. He said: ‘Lack of local policing means there is now anarchy – for drug users, violent youths and other thugs.
‘It has got a lot worse since they closed the police station at Keighley. The bus station is now a no-go area after dark. You see teenagers fighting in there.’
Maureen Enright, 72, and her friend were attacked in their car by a group of screaming women who called the pensioners ‘bitches’ during a road rage incident.
She also believed drugs were killing the town. She added: ‘You do not want to walk around here on you own any more.
‘If something does happen and you ring the police it takes them three hours to come. Or they don’t bother coming at all and just give you a crime number.’
She agreed it was easy to spot the drug dealers by the cars they drive. ‘You see someone driving around in a £60k top of the range car you are you supposed to think they earned it by taxi driving.’
Keighley College is another place where dealers have been spotted selling drugs outside.
Local shop keepers have frequently spotted students walking past smoking weed on their way to and from class.
One, Omar Khan, said: ‘One of the problems is that people should not be serving under 18s. It is not just illegal drugs.
‘You see school kids buying vapes which shows they are starting addiction young. You see drunks downing cans right next to signs warning about £500 fines for street drinking.’
Terry Smith, 76, said: ‘I have seen all sorts. You can smell the drugs as people walk past smoking them. You also see them dealing around the town – needles and stuff.
‘It is not a nice thing to see – especially when there are kids around. The whole town has gone to pot. It was such a beautiful place when I was a kid too.’
In December, three men began sentences totalling almost 15 years for selling heroin and crack cocaine in the town.
‘The reality is that this kind of activity generally, and certainly in a place the size of Keighley, causes all sorts of problems, criminality, and reputational damage frankly,’ the judge said.
A month earlier four men were jailed for conspiracy to supply cocaine.
In October, drug dealer Mohammed Sardar was handed a sentence of three years and nine months after being caught selling crack cocaine to an undercover police officer six times in six weeks.
And 62 people were arrested in May on suspicion of drug supply offences after a police operation to dismantle drugs linked to county lines operating in the town and across the border in Skipton.
Some in the local on line community have linked the drugs trade to businesses which tend to trade in cash – allowing the proceeds to be laundered – such as vape shops, taxis and kebab shops.
But Vape shop owner Immy Liaquat, who has been running his business 12 years, said: ‘Drugs are a massive problem. They smoke it all day long.
‘They come in asking us for oil based cannabis in their vapes. They stink of the stuff. We have to keep a can of air Freshener behind the counter to damp it down.
‘It is that bad. We see kids walking past on their way to the college smoking the stuff like it is totally normal. It is getting worse around here. There are hordes of druggies.
‘You smell weed at least once every couple of hours when you are in the shop. Some one walked past smoking it while the police were arresting a shoplifter and the police did nothing. It’s nuts.’
Shiran Waduge, 42, boss of Bargain Exchange, got so fed up of druggies trying to sell stolen gear to feed their habit he started training his staff how to spot them.
He said: ‘We keep records of everyone we buy from. Some of the people come in trying to sell mobile phones they don’t even know the PIN number to unlock.
‘We have nothing to do with them. If I am not here the staff are trained to spot them. They will take anything for them but we said no.’
Another shop worker, who wold only give his name as Swra, said: ‘It is crazy. Ninety per cent of the people who come in here are high or smelling of weed.
‘You see them at night, acting like idiots – shouting and being crazy. The only way to stop it is stop the drugs coming in in the first place.’
Cannabis user Robert Smith, 66, who reckons the drug helped him while he was battling bladder cancer, defended his habit while sitting on a park bench facing the town’s war memorial.
He said: ‘I have been smoking cannabis for 50 years and I don’t see anything wrong with it it. I am not saying I approve of people shooting up heroin.
‘But the biggest problem in this town is the number of pissheads. You can’t move for them. They sit around all day drinking ridiculously strong cider and the police are useless.’
Clutching his walking stick for protection in broad daylight, James Robinson said: ‘The drug problem is bad but I have always got this if they bother me.
‘Drugs are rife in this town. The smell of them is. horrible. You don’t see the police. That is the problem.’