Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

With all of the attention given to winter hibernation, it is easy to forget that there is summertime laziness too. Regular readers will realise that I prize the period of the year between the winter solstice and its summer equivalent highly and especially the eruption of verdant vegetation that gives us the wonders of May. The trouble with that is that the wind can evade your sails after the longest day of the year and you get to wondering if the year has past its best like I did on here about this time last year. This time around, I am less bothered by the matter and am seemingly more open to the attractions of the time of year and the observation that the countryside still delights even with cloudy skies.

Speaking of last year, July was a quiet month with a perhaps foolish walking trip to Welshpool on an oppressively hot Sunday at the end of the month. Apart from that, it was left to bike rides to capture any episodes of dry or sunny weather because of other preoccupations and distractions about this time; some involvement with dramatic activion in the world of WordPress was only partly to blame.

It’s all too easy to have a bout of mid-year lethargy round about now. For one thing, feeling that you have made ample use of any opportunities that arose can only dull the hunger for thrusting oneself into hill country. That can place your motivation at the mercy of other things like the weather. On one end of the spectrum, you have heavy rain showers like those that we have been seeing recently, the type that makes the idea of mobile roof appealing and the heat emphasises the advantages of umbrellas over raincoats in certain conditions. Then, there’s hot sunshine and my running hot means that I favour cooler temperatures than some. Also, classic summer weather isn’t the best for photography, another mechanism that gets out among those hills. Saying that, pleasant mornings ahead of a rain or wonderful evenings after one often offer the most. These circumstances offer a certain freshness and clarity that is missing from heat haze obstructed equivalents that abound during a heatwave.

The myth may indicate otherwise but July can be a very unsettled month, even in a year not known for a rubbish summer. In 1999 for instance, it was very grey in Edinburgh until the end of the month when a sunny propelled me onto Skye on a multi-day outing that sowed the seeds for many more. Speaking of Scotland, you end up awaiting the departure of the jet stream before settled weather is visited upon the country. In 2003, I called it wrong and had my week up there far too early. Though it felt that I was getting a constant soaking at the time, looking back does highlight its brighter times: a wonderful day spent beside Loch Etive and a dry if dull trot from Kinlochleven to Fort William along the West Highland Way. Staying with hindsight, it might have been better sticking with reconnaissance on the damper days but the soakings that I got while travelling between my lodgings in Banavie and Fort William couldn’t have been avoided by this approach. However, I did keep it in mind for my Western Isles escapade last year and foul weather alternatives will be placed on file for any trip in August. That isn’t to say that July is always damp but 2006 saw a scorcher visited upon us and I extricated something of value amid the uncertainties in 2004 and 2005 too. Last year and the year before were far from inspiring but dry sunny weather was there to be enjoyed too and that’s how I’ll remember them.

All in all, that mixture should tell us that it’s best not to expect much of July and this year seems to be following suit after the dryness of June. Last weekend mixed in downpours and sunshine so I grabbed the opportunity for a day sailing trip from Liverpool to to the Isle of Man. As it turned out, I left a grey Liverpool for a damp Douglas that made me glad that I hadn’t committed to spending a lot of time on the island. Along the way, I learnt a little more about what is offer over there and thoughts are turning to longer trips, more realistically to be occasional but a useful entry on the ideas shelf nonetheless. From what I have seen so far, there seems to be plenty of coastal walking and there’s hill country to be savoured too. Public transport on the Isle of Man looks workable too with good level of service on offer. Sunshine may have been encountered in Liverpool rather than my destination but I am not so easily discouraged. If I was, I might have stopped exploring the British and Irish countryside long ago.

Ideas for that week in August are collecting and they aren’t all Scottish either. For one thing, there’s always the Pennine Way but Connemara has come to mind already and now the Isle of Man. Scottish proposals like the Rob Roy Way, extending out from Mallaig, the Cairngorms and the northwest Highlands remain in the running. The options may be more open this year but it’s good to have them too. Hopefully, something can come of them.

Last weekend saw me across in Éire for a few days and some chances for spending time among its quieter parts were fitted into what was in essence a social visit. The first one was to Gougane Barra on a day that started out looking grey and damp before continual improvement began to become noticeable. That guaranteed some sunshine whenever the clouds got out of the way. Those clouds kept a lid on the temperatures but it would have been nice to have had more sun for photographic purposes. The second escapade took us across the Shannon estuary to Kilkee in West Clare on a day when the weather predictions were even more dubious. Because I was away from the world of Internet connections, television and radio forecast bulletins became important and the trick was to keep an eye on those flashes of time resolved displays and they are never there for very long. For the Gougane Barra outing, the trick was to have the band of grey dampness continue to the north and it didn’t disappoint. The reason for heading to Clare was to salvage some satisfaction before a more concerted band of rain arrived from the south and southwest. Hoping for blue skies and sunshine was out of the question but some pleasant coastal strolling along the cliffs more than sufficed. There may have been drops airborne in the strong breeze but you can cope with that. In fact, steady rain did arrive around 15:00 so we left for home after a good few hours taking advantage of what was on offer; we had got something from the day.

Since the real travels, virtual roving has been going on in my mind. Much of this has been driven by curiosity but poring over maps has increased my awareness of the Irish countryside too. For instance, I have been casting my mind over the area round about Clifden in County Galway. Of particular interest are the Twelve Bens in Connemara (some call them Pins but be aware that others cannot abide that naming) and how walks can be made possible by use of public transport. What led me to this was my discovery of Citylink’s Galway-Clifden-Cleggan/Letterfrack service. It seems far more user friendly of the alternative offered by Bus Eireann (services 419 and 421 if you’re interested), who well may save time, money and effort if they standardised their timetables a bit more in place of the hotch potch that is there at the moment (even going for a "stopping at anywhere safe" modus operandii would be better than the seemingly overly formal state of affairs that exists now). What really caught my eye was the way that the N59 rounds the Twelve Bens and the stopping points on any bus services that would provide access points for walking; Canal Bridge and Letterfrack both look promising. As you might have been able to tell, Connemara is not a part of the world where I have ever been before so all of this action is building up the picture for a possible future excursion. For now, it will remain on the ideas shelf until an opportunity for making something of the proposal comes to pass.

Freed of the constraints of temporal reality, the brain can course back and forth in time at will and so this posting ends up with my casting my mind into the more distant past. The cause was my collecting up a number of island ferry websites for the Miscellany. The more well known suspects like the Aran islands off the coast of Galway and Tory island off the Donegal coast coast come to mind though they also aren’t places where I have been. In fact, I am of the opinion that I have only ever been on one Irish offshore island and that Sherkin island off the coast of Baltimore in West Cork. It was also a while back when I ended up there as part of my first ever school trip, something that was full of new experiences that didn’t mean very much to me at that young age. Lengthy coach rides, ferry crossings and walking around an island won’t phase me these days but it was a big jump for a small lad on that sunny June day. Descriptions such as enjoyment and suffering wouldn’t have been appropriate but it all went rather over my head at the time. Thinking about it now, it’s ironic that these are the kinds of thing that I seek out these days and last years escape to the Western Isles had all of those ingredients. To a point, things have come full circle but you have to be ready for opportunities too.

I have already made one leap from the past to the future in this piece and I am now set to repeat the feat. Looking at Sherkin, Cape Clear Island and other bastions of Irish language and culture has me pondering an Irish island hopping trip for sometime. Unlike some of their Scottish counterparts, the islands aren’t big so there’s no need to bring a car and any of the ferry services that I have found on the web have been for foot passengers only anyway; smaller vessels with a mixture of open and closed decks seem to be commonplace. Even with smaller sizes, the prospect of appealing mixtures of sunlit seascapes and landscapes can only cause one to find out more and I’ll be popping onto the ideas shelf to be pulled off for more inspection from time to time.

One use for all of this mental meandering through the Irish countryside and around its shores would be for that longer summer trip that I have every year. However, I haven’t counted Scotland out of the running at all and I have too many ideas if anything. All in all, I think that setting down a list is in order. The next task is to whittle my way through the options in readiness for setting off…

I suppose that it might be easier if I lived in Greater Manchester but early Sunday morning getaways from Macclesfield are an impossibility if you are dependent on public transport. Buses don’t move until around 09:00 and train companies must regard Maxonians as right layabouts given that nothing runs north until at least 10:30 (saying that, earlier starts are possible, again at ca. 09:00, if you are heading south). The situation may not be the best but I often contend with it in place of settling into a rant.

That reality means that I need to keep ambitions in check so as to get something from a Sunday’s wanderings; staying near to home is best. Saying that, the longer hours of daylight mean that you can gain quite a lot even with a later start and my start on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend’s Sunday was tardy. Still, my mind did turn to the idea of popping over to Baslow for a spot of northward hiking to one of the stations on the Hope Valley railway line. In the event, a late bus ensured that connections were to be missed so I popped down to Leek instead. The idea of a long stroll to Buxton became a plaything for my mind before I saw sense and decided to walk home instead, an equally long hike but any concerns about missing trains or buses home can be set to one side when your own exertions are taking you back to your own doorstep again.

The route was to be a variation on a theme taken for a yomp from Leek home on a December day a few years ago, my first proper outing in Staffordshire as it happens. That time, I got benighted on the last stretches but presence of mind allowed a headtorch to light the way and I also helped my cause by sticking to road walking rather than "fooling" around in fields in the dark. This time around, there was much less of the tarmac bashing and I was well home before light failed.

As ever with starting from a town centre, some street navigation was in order before softer surfaces were reached on Leek’s outer reaches. In places, this can require concentration by my vague recollections were enough to see me as far as Haregate where I found a public footpath. Crossing pasture and meadow, the strength of the sun was by now unmistakable. Benches with health messages were placed at irregular intervals along the way. It’s an interesting idea but I was left wondering if they were preaching about the benefits of regular walking to the converted rather than the sedentary types who could do with seeing them. Saying that, I suppose that a spot of encouragement never goes amiss.

The growing season already had been busily obscuring man-made objects like road signs but public footpaths are far from immune too and it only takes a meadow to obscure the line of a public right of way. Also, my upbringing on a dairy farm makes me feel uncomfortable trampling grassland with there being a need for it and I stuck with the obvious line of trespass. That led me among more of humanity than is usually my habit as I followed a track that hugged the shoreline of Tittesworth Reservoir closer than others that I have followed in the area. Still, that didn’t take too long and the easier terrain was no harm either though the indentations probably added to the distance being covered.

Next passing point for me was Meerbrook and tarmac was the surface over which I went from the shores of the reservoir to a public footpath making up part of the Staffordshire Moorlands Walks. The crowds were behind me at this point as I carefully picked my way to Greenlane beneath and beside the Roaches. From there, it was on past Roach Side Farm, again with some attention to route finding so as not to disturb their Sunday afternoon before I found metalled road again near Roche Grange where I found a mock fortune teller placed out on the side of the road and in the sun. Though there were other (real) folk enjoying the weather like I was, the road was untravelled by traffic until I found a right of way leading to Clough Farm. More of these were stitched together to take me to Danebridge and the late afternoon grew more pleasant. Before I crossed over the River Dane, I found what can only be described as an installation with more scarecrow-esque characters at a fake bus stop and awaiting an infrequent "buz" with humorous signs added to suit. It was all in jest, even if it was a striking reminder of my plans having been changed for me, and has set me to wondering if there was some sort of scarecrow thing going on in this part of Staffordshire of which I wasn’t aware.

After Danebridge, I was back in Cheshire and it was now into evening time. A more direct off-road option was in mind than the one that I followed but it’s never the slips that make for good navigation but the ability to correct them and that definitely the order of things. Even so, I passed through a short piece of shady woodland and reached Hammerton Farm as planned. From there, it was onto the A54 and the Wild Boar pub, which incidentally had opened up the area at its rear for camping. I left the Congleton-Buxton road for more soft surface travel near Longgutter before tarmac bashing took over again. Again, I was following a quiet lane and with good evening views of Shutlingsloe, Sutton Common and Croker Hill. That lane eventually gave me a sidewalk at Higher Sutton (they turn up in the most unexpected places in Cheshire) and my lane took me ever onward towards Sutton, Macclesfield and home. It may have cooled down noticeably by this time but there were still groups of hostelry patrons out and about, a grand evening (or night as one farming chap said to me and I thought that you only said that when it was dark; it was equally ironic given that I arrived home in daylight this time around) for it.

Travel Details:

Service 108 from Macclesfield to Leek.

For some time now, I have been tracking the photos that have been bringing people to the gallery that you find here and the results slightly surprise me. For what it’s worth here’s the current top 20 in order:

1.  Cenotaph, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England

2.  Caha Mountains, Adrigole, Co. Cork, Éire

3.  Valley Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England

4.  Bridge End Hill & Capper Law from St. Mary’s Loch, Borders, Scotland

5.  Ross Castle, Killarney, Co. Kerry, Éire

6.  The Roaches, Leek, Staffordshire, England

7.  Slieve Mish Mountains from Maherabeg, Castlegregory, Co. Kerry, Éire

8.  River Arkaig, Achnacarry, Lochaber, Scotland

9.  Shutlingslow and Sutton Common, Cheshire, England

10. Lackabane, Lauragh, Co. Kerry, Éire

11. Kinder Scout, Hayfield, Derbyshire, England

12. River Ness, Inverness, Inverness-shire, Scotland

13. Conwy Castle, Conwy, Conwy, Wales

14. Innisfallen Abbey, Killarney, Co. Kerry, Éire

15. Y Garn, Llanberis, Gwynedd, Wales

16. Meall na Cruaidhe & Glas Bheinn, Kinlochleven, Lochaber, Scotland

17. Shutlingslow from Tegg’s Nose Country Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

18. Ben Lomond, Rowardennan, Stirling District, Scotland

19. Sgurr a’ Mhàim, Glen Nevis, Lochaber, Scotland

20. Holy Island, Lamlash, Isle of Arran, Scotland

Search engines clearly have their hand in this because the appearance of Harrogate photos at and near the top would make no sense for a site concerning itself with explorations of the countryside as much as it does. It also highlights that while I head for the remoter parts these days, that wasn’t always the case and urban photos appear in the gallery as if to prove it. Strangely, photos taken while I lived in Edinburgh and on return visits to that wonderful spot are conspicuous by their absence but it may be that there’s plenty from which to choose and not so many get as far of this website in search of them.

Apart from the urban interlopers, the largely rural feel of the list should come as no surprise and may even lead to a more critical appraisal of the images in question. That may end up giving me ideas for visits to places where I have not been for a while, never a bad thing. Éire tellingly punches above its weight here but Scotland gets a good showing too as does Cheshire. In no way am I going to let these observations dictate my future plans but ideas are always invaluable.

Of course, using modern technology can allow better image processing but it still leaves me thinking that the output from my scanner is not as friendly to the likes of Photoshop Elements as that from digital cameras. Add to that the fact that I am scanning prints and you might discern that I am putting myself at the mercy of the printing process. Scanning negatives might be a way around this but previous efforts were not so successful but that might have been with an older scanner. This line of thought is causing me to wonder if digital is on the cusp, if it hasn’t already passed it, of finally surpassing film photography. That’s never to say that the latter will not retain its place (niche?) but film is far from being my main photographic medium nowadays and I am even being led to challenge the need to bring a film camera with me on my various and enjoy the weight saving. A decision on that one is something that I’ll postpone for now but it may never go away.

This posting started with a simple list and sent my mind to places that I would not have expected. As if it wasn’t enough to get me thinking about how the destinations for my excursions have changed, I have been let to consider trip ideas and even wonder whether my film photography is worth the upkeep. Inspiration can come from anywhere and an inconsequential list will more than do the trick.

Yesterday, I was up in Cumbria enjoying a walk from Old Dungeon Ghyll to Ambleside and two sets of roadworks made an attempt on derailing my plans rather than the snow and ice that had given me pause for thought. The first was at Troutbeck Bridge on the main Windermere to Ambleside road. The result was that lengthy tailbacks ensued, delaying local buses and other traffic. They may not have caused me to reconsider what I had in mind but they are the sort of thing that could shorten a day among the hills and perhaps take away from the relaxation that such an outing usually involves. The second was at Clappersgate (think Ambleside to Coniston, Hawkshead or Langdale) where deep excavations on the carriageway reduced traffic to single line with traffic signal and convoy control. Whenever I have heard before of this being done, it involved using a tipping truck but this set up had a workman driving a quad bike ahead of traffic and up and down the affected area while work was being undertaken, a slightly peculiar slight to my eyes. I am sure that both of these workings are needed but their being there does cause one to double check the BBC’s travel news page for Cumbria. Also, if they were carried out during the high season, chaos would be the result and it certainly doesn’t bode well the forthcoming half-term school break, particularly with all that attractive white stuff in the hills. Travel news like this may not be the usual sort of thing that I’d put up on here but these workings could have an impact on enjoyment of fine hill country, especially if everyone makes a beeline for the same area.