The Hatch Brook falls and Brinscall Woods

Hatch Brook Falls

I dreamed I lived in one of the old railway cottages, overlooking the lovely Lodge Bank at Brinscall. Across the lodge there are woods, which rise to meet the moor, and in the woods, hidden in a deep ravine, are the Hatch Brook falls. I saw these for the first time at the wrong end of a long walk, last year. I was tired and, thinking back, I was also ill. If you’re lost in Brinscall woods and looking for a way out, it’s not a good idea to follow the Hatch brook upstream. You end up in a ravine, with the falls towering over you, and there’s no easy way out. And if there’s been any rain, the brook fans out, making any kind of progress something of a puzzle.

But there is a way, if you’re careful. I climbed out, on wobbly legs, via a morass filled gulley, up on the right, and made it back to the car at White Coppice, on vapours. Spectacular as the falls were, they came at me at the weary end of ten miles, on a bad day, and were too awful to think of photographing. By comparison with other falls in the UK, they’re relatively small, but for Lancashire, they’re an impressive cascade in a wild setting, and something of a paradox, this sense of remoteness and inaccessibility, being such a short walk up from Brinscall. I told myself I’d come back, but, since that day, Hatch Brook’s always had the ring of Tolkein’s Mordor, and I’ve been avoiding it.

So anyway, it was like the dream was telling me to pull myself together, so I drove over to Brinscall and parked up on the Lodge Bank terrace, beneath the railway cottages. None were for sale, because dreams aren’t usually literal in that way. It was a cold day, with intermittent showers of hail, but it was the first “mostly” dry one, after a week of heavy rain. Still, I reckoned the going would be wet underfoot, and I wasn’t wrong.

There’s a well-marked path that leaves Well Lane, but which eventually peters out into a confusion of watery ways. The OS map has this path leading you directly to the falls, and then connecting with the lane higher up. And maybe it did in former times, but now it’s more a case of following it as best you can, as far as the ravine, then picking your way carefully up stream, also, at times, in the stream. But, so far as I can tell, there’s no way out by anything resembling a path. I’d have to check for a sign from higher up the lane to be sure.

The light was poor, and we start to lose it anyway not much after 2:00 pm, at this time of year, so I’d come prepared with a fast lens. It was pretty much as I remember it, picking my way up the ravine, and a wall of white water, rumbling up ahead, still something threatening about it, apparently hanging there, all spectral, in the ferny gloom. There was nobody else around. The brook was in spate, had fanned out, and needed several careful crossings to get within range of a shot. There are fallen trees, obscuring all the best angles, but I fiddled about and got as close as I could, still a couple of awkward uprights spoiling the composition.

There are lots of pictures of it online, suggesting many photographers have sought it out, and I have to say, all of their efforts trump mine. I can only imagine they had the agility of a monkey to get the angles they did, also a tripod for those long-exposure, milky water shots. It’s a tricky subject, but impressive in the wet. You might get nearer to it in the drier months, but then, without all that water, there’d be none of the drama. I made do with some hand-helds, then it started to rain, so I escaped the ravine via the gully, like last time.

In Brinscall Woods

I’d more energy today, so it wasn’t as much of a struggle. But it’s a mossy, lichenous place, needing careful footwork. The gulley comes out at a wire fence, just low enough to spring, without snagging one’s trousers. This put us on one of the main marked ways through the woods, but there are others, unmarked, that link up with several of the lost farms, and even a couple of mansion houses, now reduced to the rubble of history, and otherwise lost in the mysterious gloom of a densely planted woodland. Considering its proximity to Brinscall, the woods are a quiet place to explore, with many fascinating ruins, mostly the remains of small farms, but others clearly substantial, well-built properties, now just piles of mossy stone, amid the ferns and the moss.

In Brinscall Woods

From there, I took a long, meandering line, south, eventually coming down to the ruins of Goose Green farm, where the woods give way to the open ground of the Goit valley. I was there last week, having come at it from the other direction, from White Coppice. There’s a gloomy sky today, though, unlike the sparking sunshine last time. The ash tree I made such a fuss of seemed a good spot for lunch.

So then we followed the Goit back to Brinscall, sound of barking dogs now along this more popular trail. It feels like I’ve been out all day, but it’s barely a couple of hours, and not three miles round, though plenty to explore along the way. Lots of stories here. Sure, it would be good to live in Brinscall, like in the dream, overlooking the lodge, and the woods and the moors, rising beyond. I’m sure it’s not true what they say about Brinscall, that it’s always winter here, that the spring will come, same as anywhere else.

I’ve been retired a year to the day, now, and, unlikely as it sounds, what with Covid grinding on and all, it’s been a good one.