A week's worth of walks

14-21.4.14
Walking with; Ruthy, Paul and Stephen

  In the week that the Peak District National Park was celebrating it's 63rd birthday, it seemed appropriate to stay local and enjoy the beautiful weather in the oldest National Park in the UK and the second most visited in the world (behind Mt Fuji apparently). It was the kind of week where no great expeditions were planned but pleasant walks showing the diversity of the area were undertaken and enjoyed.
   The moorland around "The Cat and Fiddle" is an excellent expanse for practicing the art of fine navigation. I traced the route of groughs, located dew ponds and avoided disused mine workings. I skirted quarries, startled Grouse and ended up at Three Shires Head, all whilst basking in the rays of a glorious Spring sun. In the Dark Peak, Lantern Pike was a pleasant jaunt from Hayfield and Bleaklow proved to be a grim and forboding place both by day and by night. Following a navigation challenge undertaken by the Edale Mountain Rescue team led me to be convinced that they could locate a needle in a haystack, I didn't fare badly, but returned the next day to review the area under a somewhat dark and gloomy sky. Mountain Hares were everywhere, their coats changing from Arctic white to a duller brown more associated with the dun coloured moors of the Snake Pass. The Roaches too looked great under sunny skies even if the wind was whipping around the tops. The Bank Holiday weekend had crowds everywhere so I retreated to my urban hideaway to sit it out with little more than a brief jaunt to Marbury Country Park to admire the bluebells and the Great Crested Grebes.
   I suspect I may decide to wander further afield this week, but if I don't it's satisfying to appreciate the fact I have so much here on my doorstep!

To view the full album please click on the link below;
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.868562373159718.1073741861.597048676977757&type=3&uploaded=26 

Walking on Bleaklow

28.11.13
Walking with; Nobody

Bleaklow can be an intimidating hill, a vast expanse of peat, groughs, bogs and moorland often enveloped in low cloud, it's the kind of place where an overactive imagination could conjure up all manner of ghostly encounters. There are rumoured to be spirits of Roman legionnaires haunting the Pennine Way and the very real wreckage of many planes in the area can give a walk on this Peak District classic a sombre air. There are also, however, Mountain Hares, Grouse, a selection of intriguing stone formations and a sense of wilderness that can be hard to find in Britain's most visited National Park. Navigation can be a challenge especially in bad weather, but this just adds to the sense of remoteness which can be found on this bog trotters paradise!
I set off from Old Glossop along Doctor's Gate, a bridleway that follows the route of an old Roman road (possibly the one taken by the ghostly legionnaires....?) before cutting off above Shelf Benches and following the rough route of Wigan Clough up onto the tops. At this stage visibility was pretty good and as I wandered along the edge towards the Shelf Stones there were great views over the Dark Peak, plenty of Mountain Hares and very little in the way of human company. I made the Trig point and then bog trotted my way, compass in hand, in and out of groughs, across boot sucking patches of moor and into increasingly thick and low cloud until I located the weirdly sculpted formations of the Hern Stones where I stopped for a well deserved Chicken and coleslaw roll! The cloud was very low now and I moved onto the Wain Stones where another figure loomed out of the mist, proving to be a flesh and blood type of walker rather than a ghostly Roman. It was satisfying to gain the flagstones of The Pennine Way which led me along the beautiful Wildboar Grain and around Torside Castle. There is considerable conjecture about this site, for many years it was thought to be a Bronze Age hill fort or Prehistoric earthworks, although more recently the consensus has been towards it being a natural formation. I must confess that to my eye it looked as if it might be man made, but it's a striking feature none-the-less. There are tales of mysterious, ghostly lights dancing on the summit at certain times of the year, but I passed it in the clag with no supernatural experiences.
I left the Way somewhere above Torside Clough and cut in land, heather bashing and startling the odd Grouse. I eventually located the deep grough of Small Clough and handrailed it all the way down to the scatologically named Shittern Clough which was full of stunning Autumnal woodland and dense stands of Rhododendron. Popping back onto Doctor's Gate the path menadered back to Old Glossop and my car. Bleaklow will never be my favourite hill, it is rough and scruffy and not the prettiest, but it has a genuine feeling of wilderness and is certainly not a hill to be underestimated.

To view the full album please click on the link below;
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.777797895569500.1073741839.597048676977757&type=1 

Crowden

Walking with; Nobody
28.01.13

When I think of the Dark Peak, I tend to think about the "Big three", Kinder, Bleaklow and Crowden/Black Hill, but I do seem to neglect the latter. It doesn't have the mystery of Bleaklow with it's low hanging fog and aircraft wrecks (although it does have a few up there) or the history of Kinder and the tresspass, but it does have the Great and Little Brooks, Laddow Rocks (where the original members of The Rucksack club climbed and put in place the foundations of the modern Mountain rescue service) and miles of barren moorland. I wanted a bit more navigation work and figured miles of barren moorland met that criteria so away I went, passing the YHA before crossing Crowden Brook and making my way up to The Pennine Way. There were Pheasant and Grouse about and I heard Ravens at least twice on my walk. I ascended slowly until I reached Oakenclough Brook tumbling down off Rakes Moss,then instead of re-treading the next section of the Way, I decided to follow a narrow track contouring along the valley and below Laddow Rocks before emerging back onto the Way opposite the magnificent rock formations known as Castles.
The path crisscrossed the brook before the distinctive paving slabs showed me the way towards the distant Black Hill. I'm always struck at how vast the expanse of moorland is up there, miles of nothingness giving the lone walker the occasional chill down the spine especially when the mist starts to drift in.......Visibility remianed pretty good though so I struck off in an easterly direction, locating the pond at Sliddens Moss before continuing on the rough, broken up, tussocky ground in the direction of the ever visible Holme Moss Transmitting Station. The groughs were still full of snow and I set off a Mountain Hare in it's beautiful white coat, he made my progress across the moor look decidedly clumsy and he bounced and bounded away from me. I eventually made my way up on to Tooleyshaw Moss and searched for the remains of the original route that the Pennine Way took. The wind had gotten up by this point and the dark clouds that had hovered over Bleaklow began to scud in my general direction incentivising me to pick up my pace as I slip slid through the peaty bogs and mossy marshes from White Low and across Westend Moss. The squall when it hit did so with the kind of malevolence a disgruntled Nordic God might have used to show his power over mere humans and I was soaked before I'd even got my waterproofs out of my rucksack......luckily it was over as quickly as it started and I wandered the remaining path back to the hamlet of Crowden (the most Northerly settlement in Derbyshire) without further downpour.

To visit the full photo album for this walk please click on the link below;
https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=oa.332787893506789&type=1

Back of Bleaklow in the sunshine

28.03.12

Walking with; Nobody

A tough but beautiful day climbing up from the Woodhead Pass and with the sun beating down and tremendous views. As soon as I got out of the car and crossed the bridge over the River Etherow I saw a Dipper bobbing up and down on a small rock by the far bank and the wildlife was a constant over the whole walk. This is Grouse shooting country and the moorland in this area has been very much shaped by the demands of the shoot. The path up Far Black Clough is a cracker, it winds it's way up the very narrow clough, dipping in and out of the sunshine and ascending steadily, eventually it becomes a little too narrow and steep and a tiring scramble up the bank to the rough Landrover track used by the shooters is necessary. I followed a narrow path along the clough edge before following a large, sandy grough Eastward onto the path from Howden Edge. I followed this path for about half a mile putting up quite a few Red Grouse and a number of Mountain Hares in various shades of colour from pure white to dirty brown. Visibility was excellent so I could see my goal, Barrow Stones, and struck off across the moors to reach them, negotiating a few deep groughs and peat bogs before arriving at the stones for an early lunch and a bit of shade from the strong sun. I'd not seen another soul and the only sign of human activity thus far had been a helicopter which looked like it was distributing fertiliser or feed over the moors.

Refreshed by a chicken sandwich I headed across to the Grinah stones where I met a landscape photographer who was taking advantage of the fantastic weather and spectacular views over Ridgewalk Moor and over the River Westend. The rocks are eroded into fantastic shapes and the vista was amazing. I spotted a Common Lizard catching a few rays as well before leaving the stones and heading through some waist high heather South East towards Round Hill. In spite of the weather it was still pretty boggy underfoot and at one stage I found myself thigh deep in peat bog, this is not a walk I'd fancy in mid-January! After a while I met a deep landrover track linking the Ronksley Moor bothy with the Grouse butts. I wandered down to a viewpoint over the River Westend before returning along the path and down to the beautifully sighted bothy at the top of Lower Small Clough. It's pretty basic and is, I think, mainly used for shooters, but there is a poem tacked to the wall singing the praises of the shelter provided on a wild, snowy afternoon!

Lower Small Clough runs down across the heather (including a patch very recently burned) and past many well established Grouse butts to a beautiful spot where the clough meets the River Derwent, where I cooled down by sticking my head into the running waters! (Bliss!)

The path along the Derwent is beautiful and the landscape a little more lush than on the tops, but I soon had to leave the river and ascend the steep, brackeny slopes of Hoar Clough to the Shepherds Meeting Stones. Featherbed Moss is a pretty featureless expanse and it took me a while to locate the path that led back to the Howden Edge path, but locate it I eventually did and followed it due West until cutting off back to Far Black Clough where I followed the path all the way back to my car, sweaty, peaty but thoroughly satisfied by a great day.

One of the real highlights of today was the solitude. The number of other walkers I saw today can eb counted on the fingers of one hand, once I'd got away from the A628, there were no roads, houses, pylons etc and the tracks and butts were well hidden. It is remarkable to get a feeling of such wilderness and isolation so close to Manchester, Barnsley and Sheffield, and there is something magnificent about the utter bleakness of the expanses of moorland!

To see the full album for this walk please click on the link below;

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?id=718985691&tid=136991043086476&frecId=false&skipClustering=true&qn=1333017097&success=1&failure=0&set=oa.183955508390029