Walk number 30 from Mark Sutcliffe’s walking guide. 9 miles.

I’m sat in the shelter at the top of Great Hill having a lunch time snack. There is a cheeky cool wind from the north.  I’m chatting to a bloke who has come up from Rivington the opposite way round to me. My hard work is over and I’m confident about the next couple of miles on the flagged path across Redmond’s Edge which I walked a month ago. Once again there are no distant views, Longridge Fell can just about be made out in the distance, but no hope of photographing it.

The day started badly with half an hour looking for my camera back at base. It was hidden in a shopping bag in the car yesterday whilst I visited Sainsburys. I know I shouldn’t hide things these days as I never remember where. I end up like a demented squirrel searching for his nuts.

Calm restored and another coffee drunk before I venture out onto the motorways. I’m soon through Chorley, past The Black Horse, the Bay Horse and The Yew Tree. Funny how you remember an area, all pubs we used to drink in after climbing in Anglesarke Quarry.  I park on the road just above the quarry but there is no sign of anybody climbing there today. How the trees have grown and obscured the buttresses.

Dropping back down the road I take the obvious way alongside Anglesarke Reservoir and onto High Bullough Reservoir. I don’t seem to recognise the way at all despite countless traverses before.

A random photo appears at Bullough Reservoir with no explanation. Here is what I found later. “John Frederick La Trobe Bateman FRSE FRS MICE FRGS FGS FSA  (30 May 1810 – 10 June 1889) was an English civil engineer whose work formed the basis of the modern United Kingdom water supply industry. For more than 50 years from 1835 he designed and constructed reservoirs and waterworks.” There is a lot more about him on Wikipedia, he had an amazing career.

A chance encounter with a walker in a group, extolling the virtues of ‘Trekking Poles’. I concur with him, having used them for forty or more years, ignoring the comments back then – “where is the snow”. But this chap is serious, having attached heavy weights to his poles to give him a full body workout. I’d never heard of that before. Impressed or perplexed I continue with my feather light poles.

There are some lovely trees along this stretch, I like the way those three have gown as one – Entangled Life.

I recognise the road near Waterman’s Cottage nestled between the trees at the end of the reservoir.  I popped out here once to see Bradley Wiggins flying past on a training run, remember him?

I hesitate my way forwards, but a lady points me across fields in the right direction to White Coppice. We fall into step, she explains that she is six weeks after a new knee operation. You would hardly know as she keeps up a good pace whilst waiting for her husband, freshly retired, to catch up. I relate to her my friend Sir Hugh’s first knee operation and the thousands of miles he covered and even after his second new knee he was still averaging 10 miles a day. I hope I have given her encouragement to eventually go beyond what her specialist has mentioned. We part company at White Coppice as they head for lunch in Brinscall. I don’t get to take a photo of the iconic cricket pitch as I keep to the right hand fell side of the Goit. 

This is then the steep bit. Up from the sign, which at first looked like one of those erected by Peak and Northern Footpath Association, but no, this is a Ramblers copy. A surprising number of people are climbing up this way. Can you see the white Mormon tower in the top centre?

At the end of the steep bit are the scattered ruins of Coppice Farm with an excellent information board including a map of the abandoned farms to the north of Great Hill. Can you imagine farming only 5 acres up here? They presumably would have been largely self-sufficient with the occasional trip down to market to sell and to buy.

Onwards. I’m envious of the runners who effortlessly pass me and disappear into the distance. Distant memories in deed for me.  

At a cross roads of paths another Ramblers sign appears. What is the Thomas Lockerby Footpath Fund?  “It uses the income from the assets of the Fund to preserve, maintain or improve public footpaths and bridleways located not more than 50 miles from Manchester Town Hall.” Do we need this proliferation of signs on the already well used paths? Would the funds not be better spent on gaining more access to the countryside within 50 miles of Manchester?

Onwards I pass another abandoned farmstead, Drinkwaters. I should nave looked for their spring water supply.

Onwards the summit comes into sight but it still feels a long way off.

I’m passed by a youth running bare chested with no spare clothing. He does however have his head phones on so has missed the sound of the wind and the skylarks. Of course he stops at the summit for a selfie and then disappears back down. Make of that what you want. Off road cyclists are looking more and more like trail motor cyclists, which is in fact what many of them realistically are. Old age grumpiness over.

The way across the ridge is indeed easy with all those flagstones. Everywhere around me is bleak moorland enriched in parts by the nodding white cotton grass. All I have to do is find the path going west downhill 300m before the Belmont Road. Did I pass it just then, I backtrack but am not convinced. I come back and there within 5m it is. Obvious.

Pleasantly downhill towards more abandoned farms, Higher and Lower Hempshaw’s. Not much left standing.

I cross a stream onto a track and then take the wrong “grassy track by a tumbledown wall” There are tumbledown walls everywhere. All is not lost as I do a longer loop on a land rover track above the Yarrow Valley. Another ruin is passed, Simms. The scenery is changing from the bleak uplands to green fields and wooded cloughs with Rivington reservoirs in the background. One forgets how close to Bolton and Manchester we are.

Not concentrating I miss a faint path going right into trees and find myself at junction of paths in Lead Mines Clough which I recognise. I need to be farther north so I head up the stepped track leading to the Wellington Bomber Memorial, remembering a 1943 aircraft crash nearby. For a detailed description and more information I recommend reading – Bomber Zulu – Anglezarke.net

By now I’m well lost, there are paths everywhere and I end up getting my phone out to plot a way back Jepson’s Gate. A final stroll down the road and I’m back at the viewpoint carpark. 

Todays walk felt like stepping back in time with the ancient tracks, mine workings and abandoned farms.  I have a book which paints an intimate picture of those lives only a hundred years ago.  Lost Farms of Brinscall Moors – Carnegie Publishing  What will the scenery look like in another hundred years?

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