It's been a while since I blogged and then it was a two week mad flurry of activity, but I thought I'd give it a go again. I thought that going for long walks would give me something to blog about and having to write a blog would make me get out there and walk. Win win. So here's the first of many.
We thought it was about time we
started doing some long walks. We've fallen out of the habit, and
although the dog mostly gets her five miles a day, we've been sharing
that out between us and walking only a mile or two each. Half term
seemed an ideal time to begin, but it still took us until Saturday to
get out there.
There was the shoe question. Most of mine have holes in, and although they're comfortable, I thought waterproof might be a good quality for a boot to have on the first of March. So I dug out the walking boots I bought on ebay a few years ago, as heavy and flexible as bricks but impermeable, and I encased my feet.
We decided to walk from the Bridestones to Lumbutts Mill. This was partly because of Abraham Stansfield, one of the previously mentioned madmen who actually lived in the Bridestones. Johnny had been up there mossing recently, and said you could see the holes where the beams were fitted into the stones. Can you imagine that these days? Someone deciding to take up residence in a natural feature, to carve a window in Cheddar Gorge or the Old Man of Hoy. I wanted to see it for myself, and I'd never been up to the Bridestones.
After some faffing we parked at the Sportsman at Keb Royd. It was ten thirty in the morning and no one was about. The stones were ours. We climbed and posed – or Wilf did – and found Abraham's house.
The stones were amazing. They're meant to be brides and grooms petrified in the middle of a pagan wedding, but they actually look like huge stone pacmen, stone monsters and trolls. We could have explored them all morning, but the walk we'd planned was over ten miles, so we thought we'd better crack on, and we headed down the fields to join the Calderdale Way.
John Nowell lived down here just below the Bridestones, the chap with a microscope and no money and loads of children. Maybe he sometimes went up there for a cup of tea with Abraham in his stone troll house. He worked at Lumbutts Mill, and he walked to work – and back – six days a week, with a ten hour shift in between. Over four miles each way. I wanted to try it. I wanted to do his walk to work and see how it felt.
I'd never walked this bit of moor before and I loved it. High above Todmorden, the track led past old stone barns and along causey paving over bogs. Horses and sheep watched us passing and the sun shone. We ate apples. I envied JN his early walk to work on summer mornings. In midwinter dark with driving rain, snow and howling gales, I thought not. Maybe he walked the road way.
The path dropped down through dripping woodland and we took the line over towards Cross Stone past the golf course, then down to the main road in Tod before starting to go up again towards Lumbutts. There were banks of snowdrops everywhere, crocuses too. The sun was warm.
The fishing pond below Lumbutts Mill is joined to the mill pond by a series of waterfalls. I don't know if this is the route John N took, but it was very pretty with little wooden steps and some ostrich plume feather moss which Johnny was very excited about, as well as beautiful reflections in the water.
Wilf had been mentioning lunch for some time. We didn't linger at the mill where John Nowell spent so much of his life. We marched on to Mankinholes, where we sat on a wall below Stoodley Pike, munching sandwiches and gazing across the valley to where the Bridestones sat like jagged teeth on a hilltop unfeasibly far away.
Are we halfway yet? asked Wilf.
We ambled down to the canal at Eastwood and sauntered along the towpath towards Callis. Here we crossed the A646 and then the railway. I've crossed here before. You have to climb some rickety steps – which you can see through – up to a shaky wooden bridge which teeters above the lines and shakes if there's a train anywhere between Hebden and Todmorden. I have to close my eyes, put my head down and walk as fast as I can. I fully expect to die before I reach the other side. Luckily, this time, I made it across alive.
After that the path went up. It went up through beechwoods, with bare ground and bare trunks, the path deep in mud and leaf litter. It went up between stone walls, past concrete barns and stone houses, up through a wet, sunken gulley between fields. It went up. There was no view, but there were midges and the water sometimes came over our boots. It went up through brambles, boulders and trickling streams. We climbed one behind the other, silent and determined.
Then the path joined a lane and turned a corner and there was the view. We were high, high, high, and Stoodley was back on the other side of the valley, a distant marker. There was sun and breeze and no midges. Spring had arrived.
My feet were dry. The boots were indeed waterproof but my feet were entombed within bricks. Hot bricks lined with hot dry socks. My toes were desperate to wiggle, but there was to be no manoevering. Next time I will definitely choose flexibility over impermeability.
From there we walked up the lane, past the Great Stone with centuries of graffitti, past a horse with a beard and moustache, past the moors and the Bridestones and back to our car. The day was now populated with walkers and cyclists. At home tea and crumpets were calling.
All photographs are by Johnny Turner
and here's a link to my other blog: http://watershedfootprints.
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