I keep dipping into Mark Sutcliffe’s Cicerone guidebook. I almost didn’t today, I am late up having not slept at all well (nothing unusual there), the day’s sunny start was changing and the forecast suggested rain later. But a sudden spurt of enthusiasm has me breakfasted and in the car by 10.30. I know that’s late by most peoples standards but what does it matter, there is plenty of daylight since the clocks changed. A little rain won’t hurt me.  A quick whiz around the motorways and I’m parked on the Tockholes road and starting the walk by 11.30.

I nearly came to do this walk a couple of weeks ago but the route description “a boggy indistinct path” and “the going is much tougher than it looks” were a warning especially after all this year’s rain. but some drier days have come along and my impatience gets the better of me.

All starts off well with a stony land rover track heading somewhere into the hills. I’m guided out of a noisy lapwing’s territory. The grasses have that dead yellow colour to them after the winter. The track turns a corner and becomes a boggy path which I soon manage to lose. Before long I’m staggering around amongst tussocky mounds, how can things go wrong so quickly?

I can see groups coming off Great Hill over to my right but the guide says cross a gully before joining the main track. I find a way down. I pass the  ‘trial shaft’ marked on the map and come close to the long abandoned farmhouse of Pimm’s, its location next to the trees.  Four coming the other way are on a professional navigation course. Others are D of E out training, map cases attempting to strangle them in the breeze. And then I’m left to myself for the slow trudge to the top. There are 360 degree views but all a little dull for photography. When was I last up here?  November 2014 with Al “The Plastic Bag Man” – I am going to his funeral this week. Is that coincidence I am here or is some hidden agenda guiding me?

The well constructed summit shelter is tempting for an early lunch but I’ve not enough miles under my belt yet. One of those lovely Peak and Northern Footpath Society signs has me on my way southwards along Redmond’s Edge with the masts of Winter Hill beckoning from afar. It was never like this before – a paved way becomes a veritable King’s Highway across the morass. Hundreds, probably thousands, of gritstone flags ripped out of old cotton mills line the route. Lancashire had more mills than most other places in the industrial era. Some flags bear the scars of the machinery embedded into them. This modern paving is to prevent erosion, I can’t imagine how much this two mile stretch must have cost. It gives effortless strolling, is quite creative in parts but doesn’t compare with the worn flags of the packhorse trails across the Pennines. Must be great for the Mountain Bikers though. In some places the peat is fighting back. Those dry stone walls up here must have also taken some constructing.

Onwards over Spitlers, the highest point, now on gravel and the road coming up from Belmont is reached, masts towering above us. I never realised that the River Yarrow started up here. A cyclist pulls in after her steep road ascent and we get into all things cycling, talk of electric bikes which we both eschew, for now.

Strangely I didn’t meet many people on that last two mile stretch but those I do have dogs and bar one not on a lead. The ground bird nesting season is in full swing, Curlews, Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Lapwings are all around. What makes dog owners ignorant of the effects of their dogs running loose across the moor? There are signs everywhere saying control your dog. Starting to get grumpy.

And then it was the noisy motor bikes hurtling past on the road. I shouldn’t get grumpy on a lovely day like this, but I do.  Fortunately after 200m I escape onto an old footpath, possibly the original way, past Hoar Stones down into Belmont.  The path is well contoured and drained, a delight to walk.  A quarry is passed with strange strata of overhanging slabs of rock. Fell ponies are cropping the grass and take very little notice of me. I arrive into the linear village far too high to consider a diversion to the Black Dog. I now in retrospect wish I had done as it was on one of our irregular meet-ups in November that I last saw Al. I irreverently call him “The Plastic Bag Man” because of his trade promoting and selling plastic packaging. Hopefully he won’t he won’t be vilified for all that environmentally damaging plastic.  So many good outings with him. 

My way onwards involves crossing the dam of Belmont Reservoir to link up with the Witton Weavers Way on the east side of the valley. But, no the way is closed for ongoing reservoir works. I had no intension of walking back up the busy A675 road. Drawing a discreet veil over my progress I find myself on the other side and on the lane up to Pasture House Farms. I share the way with a Labrador walker who’s daily route has been disrupted by the dam works. We admire the spring lambs but up ahead are cows that she is scared of, I sympathise, but then lead on to the open rough pasture where the herd. is grazing. They take no notice of us, I go north  she heads south. Yet another of those brief encounters.

Easy going on a good level track, past Lower Pasture Barn Farm, which has had several reincarnations since it was a ruin. My camera has started taking square pictures and multiple exposures, it is too fiddly to sort out on the move. Another of those P&NFS signs points up to Darwen Moor which I resist, my car park is almost insight. A hidden little path through the trees off the road takes me directly there.

An afterword. I’ve mentioned my late friend Al (the plastic bag man) too many times in the last couple of weeks with his name and memory cropping up all over the place. Tonight on NW TV news there was a segment on a chap with the same ‘fibrosing lung disease’ waiting for a transplant. Al unfortunately wasn’t fit enough to be considered for that.

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