I love...

Turned out nice again

Saturday May 12 - Hayfield to Kinder Downfall

I should sell my meteorological services for weather-critical event planning because it almost always stays fine when I decide to walk. So, after days and weeks of relentless rain, it's a lovely 8 mile afternoon shared with good company thanks to my jet lagged Twitter friend @bongbrummie aka Matt. There's even a stiff enough breeze at the Downfall to get a small upward drift of spray. Not quite the pluming arc all the way back to the top that you get in harsher conditions, but a pretty enough effect all the same. The descent of William Clough is especially beautiful today. An interesting realisation is that if you reverse your normal route, everything looks completely different thanks to the altered angle of sunlight. Obvious, maybe, but who knew?

 

Close, but no cigar

Saturday April 14 - on Bleaklow

Bleaklow isn't to everyone's taste. It's easy to become disorientated in its groughs and hags. At this time of year you can find yourself with no choice but to wade through deep, slippery peat that is beyond waterlogged. Me? I think it's a beautiful place. But today I have sabotaged myself by somehow forgetting to bring my mountain jacket. My objective is Grinah Stones, billed as the most remote bouldering spot in the Peak District. Not that I go bouldering, but they look like great rocks just to be around. So do Barrow Stones, which you can see pretty much as soon as you emerge from the ascent up Far Black Clough. It's OK when I'm climbing and even when I start out across the eastern slopes of Bleaklow's plateau. But the wind chill is cruel and it's sleeting hard, from time to time, and my base layer, fleece and windproof softshell are only just keeping me warm on the move. I have a rule up here; if you aren't equipped to survive getting stuck for a night in the event of an accident, you shouldn't be here at all. Especially if you're walking alone, with no phone reception. So, reluctantly, I retrace my steps as soon as it's clear the weather won't be improving, just short of Barrow Stones. Oh well, they'll still be there next time I venture up here.

A really good Good Friday

Friday April 6 - a Crowden - Black Hill circular

Almost thwarted before I start, the A6024 has a 'road closed' sign at the bottom of Holme Moss. I figure the authorities have just been a bit tardy about removing it, following the heavy snowfall of Wednesday. It wouldn't be the first time. But no, when I reach the top there is a thick layer of snow barring safe passage on the Derbyshire side of the summit. Everyone who has ignored the sign, like me, and ventured up is turning back. But I've got snow socks and a random friendly guy offering to follow me down on his Quad bike, to see I make it OK. And I do.

So glad about that. The walk from Crowden, up Laddow Rocks to Black Hill and back down via Tooleyshaw Moss and Westend Moss is a boggy, snowy, exhausting 9 and a half mile delight. I've walked in snow up here before but I've never seen drifts like there are today in the groughs on Black Hill.

Close encounters with bonkers rocks & an angry bird

Saturday March 31 - the Woolpacks via Crowden Clough, Crowden Tower, Edale Head and Jacob's Ladder

I have a ridiculous fantasy. It's that the crazily shaped rocks of the Woolpacks, on the south western edge of Kinder plateau, are alive. When there's no one around they move. They mess around. They commune. They get up to all kinds of mischief. It's a bonkers idea, but then - it's a bonkers place. There's humour in this landscape and an atmosphere that actually makes me smile. It always has. You could imagine an episode of the original Star Trek working well if they'd filmed one up here. When the actual living & breathing part of my time on earth is over, this is where I want to spend eternity. Everyone close to me has been told.

Postscript: an unexpectedly close encounter takes place as the light fades and we're off the hill. A Chaffinch strikes up a bit of a display, in a tree as we approach. Louise plays the Chaffinch call on her iPhone birdwatching app to see how he responds. He responds all right. He swoops out of the tree and straight at my head, diverting at the last millisecond and actually clipping my shoulder. That's us told.

 

I'm a hillwalker, get me out of here

Saturday March 24 - across Saddleworth Moor to Raven Stones

There's a tiny but bitter irony in the way my initial attempt to escape from people today is scuppered by the crowds. To do the planned 10.5 mile horseshoe ridge around Dovestones I need to park at the reservoir. But the sun has brought out more trippers than there are parking spaces. People on what I believe is known as a 'family day out'. The place is crawling with laddish types and their towny-type, sunbed-kissed girlfriends/wives, mid-riffs on show, pushing buggies containing toddlers with ice creamy faces. I'm not in the most generous place with my thoughts, which grandiosely revolve around me being great because I do 'proper walking' and them being somehow inferior because they go no further than a few hundred yards from their Vauxhall Zafiras. I give up, grumpily, and head back onto the A635 over Saddlworth Moor. I stop in the first available parking area and consult the map. I can get across the moors from here to touch on at least part of my original destination, high above the reservoirs just east of New Mill. So that's what I do.

Walking on these moors, away from the established footpaths, is hard going, but the feeling of escape is all the more real because few people are daft enough to venture into the proper wild brown yonder.

Castleton to Mam Tor

Sunday March 18 - Castleton to Mam Tor

Busiest I've ever known it around here. But I haven't come in search of solitude anyway. Not today.

Back to Burbage Edge

Thursday March 15 - Burbage Rocks

Returning to a circular I did last year, but this time in reverse.

Just being

Sunday March 11 - on Britland Edge Hill

I don't feel like going far. I feel like just being somewhere great, not far from home. This is 45 minutes away, but it could be another planet. Just a couple of hours, sitting on a hill, doing nothing but be.

Another lonely place to die ...

Saturday March 3 - aircraft wreck hunting above Crowden

I'm always in 2 minds about searching for any of the many air crash sites in these hills. There is definite satisfaction in finding one and having a clear objective to the day does make a change from just walking. But, when all's said and done, people have generally died in these places. And in terrible ways. In this instance all 7 crew were killed when the Avro Lancaster PA411 flew into the barren peat and rock of Tintwistle Knarr on the night of December 21 1948. Then there is the looting. Selfish, ignorant people have taken so much debris from all of these sites that there's almost nothing left in some cases. I always say a 'prayer', of my own atheist construction, simply to acknowledge that I recognise the human loss with which these places are forever soaked.

It's a beautiful day, aside from that sadness. The walk from east to west along the edge above Coombes Clough is new to me and offers spectacular views over the Longdendale valley and it's reservoirs and out across Stockport and Manchester. On this occasion I have blown my timing, though. So absorbed in the hunt for the Lancaster I have left myself too little time to complete my intended circuit or double back before losing daylight. So I bail straight off the hill - pausing at the memorial for 3 pilots who also died in their Hurricanes on February 22 1945 - and walk back to Crowden along the A628 until I can rejoin the Pennine Way for the last mile or so. Not so pleasant, but a damn sight safer than staying on the hill when I've forgotten to bring my headtorch too.

 

Stanage Edge stroll

Saturday February 25 - on Stanage Edge