No new ways today but I enjoy revisiting others and seeing what has changed since last time, bear with me. I’m up and ready early (for me) as I have an appointment at the hospital late afternoon. ( Junior doctors working on a Sunday to get the NHS back up to speed. Hope they agree to the new governments pay offer). Driving along the Chaigley road a fleet of vintage tractors is coming towards me, I pull in to get a photo. It is then I realise I have left my camera and phone at home. Some days I’m not fit to be let out.
So its back to the start, the tractors are gone and by the time I park up at Kemple End the morning is all but over. I wander past the few houses making up this community. Most are old cottages but the last house I encounter is a large new build, no doubt replacing an old barn. 
Once in the fields I pick up the old sledge way for taking stone from the Kemple End quarries down towards Stonyhurst for construction of the Shireburn family home. Cows are thankfully docile in the heat. The building at the bottom was the stable for the sledge horses. It has been derelict for years but now after major refurbishments is a holiday cottage. 
Up the road is one of my favourite Stonyhurst Crosses. The Pinfold Cross is a memorial to a former servant at the College and fiddler, James Wells. It was erected in 1834 after he died in a quarry accident. On the front is inscribed the telling ‘WATCH FOR YOU KNOW NOT THE DAY NOR HOUR.’ Above this is written, ‘OFT EVENINGS GLAD MAKE MORNINGS SAD’ perhaps suggesting drunken escapades. On the left is ‘PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF JAMES WELLS’ and on the right, ‘DIED FEB. 12TH, 1834. 
The next fields have some of the meanest looking sheep around. Plenty of cows but the bull is far enough away to let me pass. 
The building you can see in the distance is marked on the map as Higher Deer House, a reference when this was the deer park of the Shireburn family who built what is now Stonyhurst College. The buildings are empty and being replaced by those ginormous agricultural sheds that are springing up everywhere. Soon will all livestock will be under cover and our fields redundant? 
I often have trouble finding the hidden stile across the field, today is no exception.
The stile leads into a jungle at the bottom of which is a footbridge over Dean Brook, then back up through more jungle to emerge onto the bridleway next to Greengore, an old shooting lodge. The raspberries are sweet.
Renovations are going on at the old house so I take a picture of the new build in the back garden. 
Now starts my long gradual ascent to Spire Hill some 600 ft above. It is a hot day and I take it slowly. More of those new metal gates keep appearing. The cyclist is a friend of mine trying out his new electric mountain bike. His wife appears as I enter the shady woods, no mountain bike for her – just taking the dog for a walk. 
It was good to get a bit of shade for a short time before walking up to the trig point, 350m. The views were a bit hazy but all the Yorkshire three peaks could be made out but perhaps not on camera. Looking down into Chipping Vale is always a revelation, spotting individual farms and lanes from on high. 
I continue along the ridge into the trees still devastated by a storm a few years ago. This is a concessionary path used my many and should have been cleared by now. A black mark Tilhill Forestry, a letter is being sent off to them. They should consider the recreation value of their holdings as well as the commercial value. Its a jungle up here, it would only take a couple of blokes with a chain saw to clear a way through. 
Mountain bikers have marked a blue trial through the worst, Thank you.
At least the forestry people have cleared their own forest road eastwards, it was a nightmare before. But what a desolate mess they leave behind but given a decade or so all will look good.
Along this stretch I come across a cyclist enjoying the view. Pendle is always prominent from this end of the fell. I compliment him on his Brook’s saddle, a cycling thing, and we get into conversation. Turns out he lives just round the corner from me and we have several mutual acquaintances. 
I escape from the forest road and take an almost hidden path through the trees back to my car at Kemple End. The shade was welcome in the heat of the day. 
With all the stopping and chatting I was a little behind schedule and had to rush off for my hospital appointment. At least I had made the most of the day, as I should every day, but sadly often don’t.
***
I haven’t done ‘that local walk’ this year. The fields, to be honest, have been too wet. It was a walk I repeated many times during the lockdown, remember that? It has always been one of my favourites taking me straight into the countryside. From my front door up the road and into the fields. Across them to Gill Bridge, up the lane and into the Derby Estate. Through Ferrari’s Country House grounds and back on the road past Little Town Dairy and the Derby Arms.
The temperature is hovering just above zero, but we must be under a high pressure there is no wind and the sun is shining. Perfect. I don’t carry a camera for these two days, I’m trying out my new phone.
This week I have been alternating short walks and flat cycle rides with nothing of note to report. Everything came to a standstill yesterday with the collision of cold winds from the north with a front from the south. Amber warning. My son cancelled a lunchtime visit from Manchester and I watched the snowflakes falling in the afternoon. During the night things must have turned nasty as today I woke to a couple of inches of snow. (The radio told of far worse conditions in the Pennines) It was interesting to try and identify the tracks across my back garden, one doesn’t know what transpires in the night. Something I should resolve either with sitting up into the wee hours or more likely installing a motion detecting camera.
I may have used this title for a post in the past. Whilst fellow bloggers are exploring Manchester, White Nancy, Covid and Wildlife crimes I’m content with a walk around my local lanes. After my drubbing, is that a word, the other day on the Guild Wheel cycle route contentment is the prime objective. I live on the edge of the countryside, but only just with all the new developments, so for many walks I don’t need my car – just set off from the front door.
I stop to talk to a farmer about the winters we never have these days. (tempting fate I know). Along comes a car which stops to reveal a dog walking friend fresh off the fell and heading for a nearby farm café, a good catch up ensures. I’m then admiring the hedge layering skills along the way and am lucky enough to come across the skilled labourer himself. A chain saw now makes the labour easier, but he has to be careful with the final close cut. A bill hook finishes off the branch severing, leaving a slender life giving, bent over, horizontal, stem for further growth. The whole process is to keep the hawthorn hedge thick at the base and stock proof in the future. He seems happy in his work and as he says ” jobs a goodun”
Not bad for a local walk of 5 miles.
I lit my wood burner for the first time this winter, more for Seth my cat than myself, and settled in with a new book. Eventually a couple of likely lads in muddy boots knocked to check my meter. I didn’t like the look of the monkey wrench with which they attacked my fragile looking connecting pipe. Then there was some muttered discussion about the age and state of the stop lever. Every step of their work was duly photographed with a phone, uploaded immediately to head office. They then disappeared for half an hour or so to get some other equipment or inspiration. I was beginning to fear the worst. I pottered in the garden in the beautiful weather. Back they came and had another look without doing anything obvious, leaving me to await an ‘engineer’ in a couple of hours or so to reconnect me and check my appliances. As the afternoon dragged on I was itching to put my boots on and get up the fell to enjoy the brightest of days.
