Wet feet and broken stiles – around Anglezarke

Wet underfoot today, after several days of rain. The path over to the head of Twitch Hill’s Clough is heavy going. It’s squelchy too as we come up the meadow to Peewit Hall. There’s a pair of picturesque oak trees here, always begging for a photograph. They’re especially striking today, holding on to golden leaves, and there’s a magnificent light to our backs from a low, wintry sun, which casts long shadows across the lush green of the pasture.

Actually, I’m not sure about that name: Twitch Hills. The first edition OS maps, up to 1849 have it on this side of Lead Mine’s Clough, tracing the line of the brook that springs in the hills by Jepson’s farm. Later ones, up to 1933, have it on the other side. Modern maps omit it altogether, so I suppose it’s gone from common usage. But I think it’s a fine name and worth using, and at least I know where I mean, though I may be getting on for two hundred years out of date.

So, we come up to the ruins of Peewit Hall, where we must make a choice: is it to be left for the Pike Stones, or right for Lead Mine’s Clough? We choose right, on a whim, but beyond that, we’ve no idea where we’re going. It’ll to be one of those days when we could end up anywhere. I was still abed and cosy at 10:00 a.m., lingering over coffee. I’m trying to limit myself to just five minutes of doomscrolling current affairs, but then get sucked into crazy cat videos, so the time goes anyway. And that would have been the day gone but for the Met office telling me if I wanted to be out walking, it was today, or a good soaking on any other day.

The sun is in and out, now, the sky clear and bright to our back, still, but layers of heavy cloud are spilling in dramatic fashion, over Winter Hill, and looking showery. It makes for an interesting and fast changing light. One minute the moors are desaturated and dour, the next they are beaming warm in tones of copper and rose-gold. Among the plantations over Lead Mine’s Clough, we have the striking juxtaposition of the occasional lone tree aflame, against a background of dark evergreens.

What news there was this morning didn’t stick, and I can’t bring any of it to mind in sufficient detail now to get hung up about it. There were various controlled leaks of the “difficult decisions” contained in the upcoming budget, but nothing that particularly surprised me. The overall message is the same as it has been for the past twelve years, that the future isn’t what it used to be. Energy is the big one at the moment. Calculations tell me I’m using half the energy I did this time last year, while paying more than twice as much for it. I have dug out thermals, and we do not run the heating in the day. Ironing is discontinued, and the oven restricted to meals that can be done in thirty minutes. All lights are LED, and even these frugal little fellows are used sparingly. Food prices are also raising a stir. There were several sharp intakes of breath from customers milling around the soup and the biscuit aisles, when I called in for my Lion Bar this morning. Lion Bars are 30% more expensive now than I remember when I first discovered them, but some things cannot be skimped. But enough of that.

We’re passing the ruins of Foggs, now, where I remember sitting one beautiful September evening, in 1977. I had left school in the summer, and this was the evening before I entered the world of nine to fives, and commutes. As the sun set over the plain, I was looking at a half century of wage-bondage, and trying to see to the other side of it, telling myself I’d come back when it was done, and look back the other way. I was lucky in bailing out five years early, but I’ve yet to sit at Fogg’s, and contemplate that journey. I think it would be to mark things with a greater significance than they deserve. After all, the journey continues. It’s just different now, and there is nothing to contemplate, only the future to embrace as best we can, whether that future will be smaller or bigger than circumstances and economic orthodoxy allow. It’s a different sentiment to one I used to hold, but that’s age for you. As a younger man, I recall writing:

I’ll go the muddy moorland way,
And into those dark hills I’ll stray.
With trusty pack upon my back,
I’ll etch my boot-prints up that track,
Until at last somewhere on high,
I find a cleaner, broader sky.
And then with flask of tea in hand,
I’ll take a stock of who I am;
Of what I’ve done and where I’ve been,
And ask if life is all it seems.
I’ll go the muddy moorland way,
And though it takes the whole long day,
I shall return a stronger man
Than when my journey first began.

Muddy moorland tracks and returning from the hills stronger and fresher? That hardly needs stating, but taking stock? Nah. It’s done. Move on.

We round the head of Lead Mine’s Clough, take the path by Old Brooks’ and then to Abbots – just piles of stone, but the names live on, at least in the vocabulary of those natives who walk these hills. Modern maps have removed them, but placed a curious blue star here instead, indicating a tourist attraction, but I can’t say if it refers to a specific thing, or to the area in general. Anyone coming looking for a café and a viewing platform will be disappointed. From Abbots, I often cut back down the Yarrow for a short walk, but the legs are itching for more today, so we pick up the track to Simms, with a view to perhaps checking out the routes around Wilkocks’ Farm. Yes, at last that sounds like a plan. From now, we’re on a mission!

Here we lose the sun, and the day takes on a darker aspect as a heaviness drags its way over Winter Hill, obscuring the masts, and the air comes at us with a fine drizzle, swarming like a cloud of microscopic midges. At Simm’s we encounter the first of the bogs as we head down the valley-side to the confluence of the fledgling Yarrow and Green Within’s Brook. There is a commotion up ahead, a woman’s voice raised in exasperation more than anger. She is berating an elderly gentleman I take to be her father. Worse, they have stolen my lunch spot. There’s a little runnel here I often photograph, but find myself self-conscious and make to pass the interlopers by, but then in a moment of rare self-assertion, I back-track, stand my ground and grab the shot like a pro.

The path from here requires careful footwork, if the bog is to be kept below one’s laces, and not up to one’s knees. There is also one quaking section I have nightmares about, and which I’m sure could swallow me whole. We’re skirting the eastern bounds of Wilcock’s pastures now, given over to horses. There are vast quantities of electric tape, shocking to beast and discouraging to man. There has been no progress in repairing the defunct gates and access, here, nor clarifying diversionary routes. Indeed, the only change I detect is the disappearance of the old rotting sign that indicates there might ever have been a public way over to Wilcock’s from here at all. I do know a way through the meadow, via an unofficial diversion, once shown to me, and perhaps indiscreetly, by a jolly, horsey lady, but it requires the leap of a deep, broad and steep sided ditch full of green slime, and I’d rather not, so we head further south to approach Wilcock’s by another way.

Here we encounter a stile that appears to have fallen over into splinters, and so we must pick our way through a tangle of wire and timber. The route is not well walked, and not surprising, as it’s most discouraging to all but the most determined rambler. As we come down to the farm, the little bridge over the brook is obstructed by an ambiguously placed plastic bollard, which we step over. One last obstacle, is the broken ladder stile at the farm wall, but we discover someone has repaired it, at least of a fashion.

All told, the feeling here is one of the dimming of access, and an increasing sense of challenge as we try to make our way. As I have said many times, it’s important we persist in keeping our rights of way open by walking them, or we risk losing them. Already, trespass has been upgraded to a criminal offence. It takes very little imagination to see the landed lobbying to have our rights of way curtailed as the anachronistic artefact of a bygone era. But in the words of Ewan MacColl:

So I’ll walk where I will over mountain and hill
And I’ll lie where the bracken is deep
I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains
Where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep
I’ve seen the white hare in the gullys
And the curlew fly high overhead
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead.

So now we follow the rim of Dean Wood, to the Yarrow reservoir, and finally down Hodge Brow to Alance Bridge. Here we pause for next to the last shot of the day: autumn trees sweeping down to the waters of the reservoir in fading light. Built in 1867, it was a late addition to the Rivington system. It’s been rather low all summer, through the drought, but is now filled to the brim.

The last shot we save for the little blue car, waiting in all the autumn gold, beside the Parson’s Bullough road. The boots have succumbed to the various bogs we’ve crossed, but dry socks and a flask of tea await. Oh, and we forgot to have our Lion Bar.

Just four and a quarter miles round, and six hundred feet of ascent, but feeling far enough for today. Then again, from such a slow start, we did well getting out at all.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/53.6368/-2.5643&layers=C