Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Last Sunday, I did get out to enjoy the unseasonably mild sunny day that was on offer. My journey by bus and train (bizarrely, the first train service to Manchester from Macclesfield on Sundays is 11:26: a fact that must have filled up the 09:05 Arriva 130 service that I used) took me to Hadfield in Derbyshire, where my walk started.

From Hadfield train station, I proceeded along the somewhat disfigured Longdendale valley to pick up the Pennine Way. Flooding what must have been a pleasant dale to create a series of reservoirs might be forgivable these days but setting a line of pylons marching along it seems a contemptible notion. In the days when electric coal trains plied the now defunct train line, they might have thought that few would have noticed, especially given the presence of the busy A628. Now that that the line terminates rather untidily at Hadfield, the former railway now forms the Longdendale Trail, part of the Transpennine Trail. Even with the apparent diminution of the place, the old rail-bed is used by many walkers, cyclists and horseriders who must be able to see past the blights littering the landscape. While photography is a tricky proposition with the wires and the pylons, I have to say that I can see the attractions too.

Once I picked up the Pennine Way, I headed more or less south from then on. The path climbs up beside Torside Clough before swinging west to Bleaklow before turning south again to follow Hern Clough and Devil’s Dyke. However, along the way, I made an unintentional diversion but it was nothing that a sight of the Wain Stones couldn’t fix. This really is featureless moorland country and a GPS would make a useful safeguard, especially when clag comes down. When I got back on track, the stone waymark posts of the Pennine Way served a very useful purpose, particularly around Bleaklow Head and when hopping over and back across Hern Clough (the proofing of my boots was well tested).

I continued along the Pennine Way until it met the Doctor’s Gate footpath that took me to Glossop before the light had faded too much. This right of way is classed as a bridleway but I cannot see anyone cycling along it for a lot of its length and I suspect that the same may apply to horseriding. In some places, attention is needed due to landslips, particularly on the section right next to Shelf Brook though there is a section high up the valley that makes one think. Nevertheless, none of this stopped me reaching the pleasant town of Glossop and its train station, where a waiting train conveyed a tired but satisfied Irishman to Manchester Piccadilly for his train back to Macclesfield and home.

Thanks to the Hillwalk Scotland blog for a link and a mention, a discovery that came to me as a pleasant surprise. Recently, I have not been out and about that much. Other distractions and the lack of tempting weather (we have been getting plenty of rain to make up for the good summer) have all contributed to this. Tomorrow, a dry sunny day is promised in these parts and I am plotting an escape into the hills. Let’s see what happens.

Getting from Macclesfield to Stockport, they’re only 10 miles apart, should be a straightforward affair. On Virgin trains, the journey is 10-15 minutes long and takes 20 minutes on the stopping local Northern train service. In addition, there are hourly buses operating daytime on weekdays with just three services each way on Sundays. Buses take 60 minutes to reach their destination so most use the more frequent trains.

However, when I headed into Stockport for a new laser printer one night last week, the journey by train took 45 minutes. The reason is that I had the misfortune to catch a failing train; it was already an hour late. Around a mile north of Macclesfield station, the Virgin Pendolino from London Euston came to a halt just as the train manager was telling us that Stockport was only 10 minutes away. Thankfully, we were not in a tunnel at the time. 30 minutes of the train driver’s tinkering followed, including the “resetting” of the train. That mean turning thing completely off and back on. Lights went out and doors stopped operating: I was thinking of the consequences if this went wrong. I suspect that windows would have to be broken with emergency hammers for us all to make an exit. Happily, this did not prove necessary as the “resetting” resolved the problem and we were on our way. And I did get my printer but train times were completely thrown out for the rest of the evening. The sight of pairs Manchester-London and London-Manchester trains leaving Stockport was odd, to say the least.

I am currently in the middle of harmonising the designs of my blog and the rest of my website. And it is the latter that is taking up most of time on this. The photo gallery redesign is complete and now features the ability to easily browse thumbnail galleries in slide show fashion. The intro page has also been completed and the information directories will be next, a complex task given the XML to XHTML conversion that happens as part of their publishing.

In the past week, the M6 has been affected by a number of crashes. When cycling home on Monday, I encountered a tailback extended from Congleton but I turned off on my way back to Macclesfield and left the queue behind. Today, though, has been much worse. Today’s cause was a series of crashes on the M6 and when the M6 is subject to delay and congestion, the result is that traffic that normally plies the M6 ends up on Cheshire’s trunk roads. Because it is an artery to Manchester and crosses the M6, the A34 usually is badly affected and traffic chokes the villages and towns like Alderley Edge and Wilmslow. Another town affected is Knutsford, not on the A34 , but not far from the M6. And when the roads are choked, buses and coaches are brought to near-standstill too. The result, like tonight, is that I got home 20-30 minutes later than usual and I was lucky; others had a 60 minute delay and I was left waiting for 90 minutes one evening when a lorry turned over on the A34. Also, being the time of year that it is, we can expect road congestion like this on the approach to Christmas. Curiously, things tend to settle down after then.

Of course, when it comes to traffic conditions, it often pays to know things in advance and that is where these traffic sites come in very handy. The first of these was very useful today. They may even stop me having to stand out in the cold for too long.

Highways Agency

Traffic Scotland

Traffic Wales