Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Yesterday evening and overnight, a white blanket arrived in and around Macclesfield. A company Christmas night out meant that I was out in Manchester to see the white stuff blanketting there and Stockport too. Again the south of England seems to have been affected too with Twitter awash with transport companies telling what services are running and where. However, it seems that hardly anywhere has escaped with Wales and Scotland seeing some too.

There was a time when this sort of weather was enough to have me out doors pottering over the white coverings but it doesn't seem to hold the same appeal for me these days. Was it last winter's snows that broke the spell? Prior to that, snow was a short-lived visitor that never satisfied my curiosity and was enough to lure me out of doors, even to pace over local paths. Now, it seems that there is a feeling of extra effort required to get about instead, not that I don't have the ability of the kit to be able to get where I want to go.

All of this has me wondering if the same sort of becalming has affected my hillgoing. It's easy to point out causes such as changing job, having busy working weeks, not getting alluring weather or being tired at weekends but there may be another cause: have I more than sated my hill country appetite? With that in mind, it might be an idea to see if there are ways around this if it indeed is the cause.

Popping up accessible little hills might be one of them and my visit to Caer Caradoc last month was very much of this ilk; the fact that it wasn't crowded either helped for enjoyment of the walk. Ironically, this months issue of Country Walking has a feature on walking little hills and Hope Bowdler, not at all far from Caer Caradoc or Church Stretton, gains a mention in there as does Ysgyryd Fawr near Abergavenny. Maybe, creating a collection of little hills on my proverbial ideas shelf for easy planning could help to overcome any present torpor. This is far from list ticking because I like to go for walks to enjoy the surrounding countryside and not to say that I have "done" all the tops on a certain list or other.

The word "little" cropped again in my reading, this time in an issue of TGO that I was perusing on the way down to Oxford for a business trip. What I spied on those pages was a review of Cicerone's Scotland's Best Small Mountains. Since then, I have acquired a copy of the said guide as an eBook and discovered that smallness is in the eye of the beholder. With Country Walking, the sorts of heights are in the 300-500 metre category but many of the "small mountains" are in the 700-900 metre range. There are other contrasts too with some of the hills featured in the Cicerone book being out in pretty wild countryside, a counterpoint to the more genteel surroundings of those in the magazine. The guide starts in the northwest highlands of Scotland and works its way south and throws up a number of options worthy of exploring, some of which I have actually walked. Here, Ben Vrackie and Morrone come to mind but there are one or two others if my memory serves me correctly.

It might that both the magazine and the book are highlighting something of which I have grown short: ideas. There also is the need for time to ponder and plan such things, particularly for those longer excursions. Then, I might be able get things going again in 2011 but my ambitions are sure to be modest. After all, I have been developing a certain dislike for lofty terms like summits and peaks and now find referring to such things as tops to be much more amenable. Whatever I call them, there will be no obsession with these because it will be the walking, exploring and savouring that will matter above all else.

Since I first glimpsed the hills around Church Stretton while en route to Abergavenny for a day of walking around there, Shropshire's hill country hasn't seen that much of me. Whether it's because I have failed to find ways of extending my explorations from those visits that I have made or there is another explanation, it's a part of the world that I reckon needs more of my attention.

After there is a copy of Cicerone's guide to the area sitting on my book shelf and it was from this that the idea of a walk around and over Caer Caradoc was put my way for something to made of it the Sunday before last. That it's a short hop within a proverbial stone's throw of Church Stretton at a time of year when days are short added to the appeal of the idea. It also meant that a later start than might be ideal did nothing to spoil the afternoon that it occupied for me.

Though the forecast was more hopeful, the day was to stay cloudy until the sun found a western gap in the cover late in the day. As it happened, it seemed that the North Wales were doing rather better with catching the sun than where I was spending my time. Nevertheless, I putting any such galling thoughts out of my mind to enjoy what I had.

Travel arrangements meant a stopover in Shrewsbury and I took to take another little poke around the town. From a previous quick taster, I wasn't ignorant of its attraction with quite a few pretty old buildings around the heart of the place. This time around, I stayed near to the train station to gawp at Charles Darwin's old school, now a public library, and to sample a little of the town's castle. A bit more sun and blues skies would have made the place that little bit harder to leave while convincing me that popping down there for a few hours would be no waste of time.

Though skies were brightening, I stuck to my plan and I was soon to find how useful near to Church Stretton Caer Caradoc was to be. After crossing the A49, I picked my way through streets to make for what once was the road to Cardington and there even are Cardington Way markers on the route too. Part of what seems to have been the course of that old thoroughfare is now a sunken passageway hosting a stream. The right of way doesn't use this but leaves the tarmac roadway leading to New House Farm to follow the hedge that is by its side. Not unsurprisingly given the often wet autumn, the going was soft and muddy underfoot, something that wasn't unexpected anyway.

It didn't took long for me to pick up the old track where it enters the field and follow it into the dip between the wooded Helmeth Hill and the bare Caer Caradoc. Staying with the track, I went around underneath the slopes of Three Fingers Rock, having some easy height gains as I did so. Here, immersed in rolling hill country, it was hard to believe that civilisation, a railway and a busy modern road weren't at all far away.

Seeing a path rising up the hillside before me, I left the track to pick my way to the top of Caer Caradoc. What the hills of South Shropshire lack in height, they compensate in having steep sides and Caer Caradoc is no different. It was a matter of letting the summit come when it did and stopping whenever more level ground allowed. The sun was struggling to get through the cloudy layer without much in the way of success; if it had done so, copious amounts of photographic activity would have ensued with hummocks like Hope Bowdler Hill, Robin's Tump and The Wilderness (not as wild as the name suggests, incidentally) featuring in resulting photos.

The 459 metre high top of Caer Caradoc was once a fort and you might see why it would be secure if you ever walked up there. To my eyes, the old ramparts weren't so obvious though I was later to see the signs of an old ditch. The name comes from a Celtic chief who fought the Romans only to lose and fall into their hands to get carried to Rome; apparently, he possessed enough guile to ensure that he and his family didn't meet a sticky end at the hand of his captors with his living out his days in that foreign land to die a natural death. Today, the hill is seemingly well frequented though, as I found, not so much as to deprive anyone of peaceful relaxing moments survey the surrounding panoramic views. It was from here that I spied sunlit Welsh hills beyond the Cheshire Plain while making such neighbouring hillocks as The Lawley.

On the way down, I went around the smaller Little Caradoc though that involved a little diversion from what might have been my intended route back to civilisation. That deviation was well worth it with only passing dog walkers to disturb my reverie while I took a breather after the steep descent from Caer Caradoc. Then, I needed to regain some height before picking up the path that was to take me along the lower slopes of Caer Caradoc while losing height all the while. It was while I was trotting along here that I spied the prospect some late evening sun before it did come my way. When it did come, hillsides were pleasingly lit though its time of arrival meant that it was short-lived. That wasn't to be a cause for complaint since it was the icing on the cake for me.

More steep descent lay ahead of me before I was to drop down to the dip between Caer Caradoc and Helmeth Hill. Some of these was to be well eroded too so I took a slight deviation from the direct route so as to be on more trustworthy ground. Before that was to pass, I was tramping along a path that reminded me of a similar approach that I took to walking Place Fell near Ullswater earlier in the year.

Once down in the dip between the two hills, it was a matter of retracing my steps to return to Church Stretton's train station in fading light. When I set foot on tarmac again, street lights had come on but there still was some light in the sky. A tempting public footpath diversion was discounted in favour of being sure of my route and I was at the train station with enough time to spare for a spot of grocery shopping before staring my journey home.

One thing that I suspect after this trip is that i shouldn't be devoid of ideas for further walks in the area. After all, repeating the walk when there is more sun is one option and more hills are there to be walked too. For instance, I quite fancy reaching the top of The Lawley and seeing how things look from there. After that, there's another route that has come to my attention since the walk: The Ancient Portway, a hike from Church Stretton to Pulverbatch and Pontesbury. This would be a day long affair for the full route but it could be cut short at Pulverbatch if needed. It's a refrain that I may repeat too often but it's best to leave anywhere with more things to be doing on any return but it's true of my wandering around Caer Caradoc. All in all, it was a satisfactory afternoon out of doors and in an are that wasn't overrun with folk either. With that, there can be no complaints and there is always that Cicerone guide should these possibilities be exhausted.

Travel Arrangements:

Bus service 130 from Macclesfield to Wilmslow; train from there to Church Stretton with a change in Shrewsbury; train from Church Stretton to Crewe with a change in Shrewsbury, bus service 38 from Crewe to Macclesfield.

Midsummer in 2008 might have been a time when I felt that the year had peaked and the encroachment of unsettled weather may have had something to do with that view. Certainly, the year will not be remembered for having a sunny summer and many were disappointed, even if it did have its better interludes. Personally, I reckon that it’s best to try and enjoy what is visited upon us at any time of year and seem to have come to the conclusion that the traditional summer holiday season is overrated. There may be more hours of daylight but, if the days get too hot, it may be worth sticking to the cooler parts of the day and that reduces the amount of time available for wandering through the countryside anyway, perhaps restricting the time available until it is not that much different from spring or autumn anyway.

Even with the feeling that the second half of a year feels like an anticlimax after the first, I continued to get out into attractive countryside. I found hot sunny weather in July, was extremely lucky with my visits to Scotland in August, had an easier September and October before taking advantage of numerous wonderful opportunities in November and December. There was much to behold so here are a few recollections of it all.

July

In walking terms, July was another fallow month with a sun scorched saunter along the Offa’s Dyke Path near Welshpool at the end of the month being the main trip of note. Otherwise, time limited by other activities ensure that most of my major outdoors activity was to be cycling rather than walking. The month’s mixture of weather contributed too but I was feeling that the best of the year had passed by this time anyway and began to wonder if the timing of the school holidays was more than a little nonsensical. I also got to mulling over island wandering as a possibility for my now habitual longer Scottish walking break. My few hours on Kerrera in May may have had something to do with this inspiration coming upon me and I felt the need for a longer break anyhow.

August

The main even in August was that island hopping trip to Skye and the Western Isles. Though anyone surveying the weather and the weather forecast on the eve of the trip might have questioned my sanity for even considering what I was about to undertake. In the event, I struck the jackpot: while other parts of the U.K. and Ireland were getting a soaking, I managed to find wonderful sunshine and avoid those downpours. That was thanks to the belt of rain getting stuck across the north of England and the south of Scotland. Harris was to prove the highlight of the week without Skye failing to satisfy or the peace of the Uists being forgettable. However, it does need to be said that South Uist felt a little like an anti-climax after Harris so it might be best to journey in the northbound direction on any future visit. A social visit to Edinburgh followed but I still got in a few hours among the Pentland Hills, an area that I surprisingly ignored when I lived up there in that city.

September & October

September and October proved to be pivotal months for a lot of reasons, the economic situation in the wider world being one of them. For me, it was a period lacking in longer walking excursions but shortening days meant that walks at lunchtimes started to take over from evening cycles. Another trip to Ireland in September allowed me to spend a few sunny hours around Gougane Barra. Even though I felt unable to add a fuller narrative for that trip, the photos found their way into the photo gallery very quickly. Alongside this, the realities of writing a longer trip away were made plain to me as producing reports for my Hebridean trip began to take eat up their share of time. It wasn’t just the writing that slowed progress since choosing and processing the photos to be included as part of the descriptions nearly were more rate limiting than the actual writing itself. That experience had been happening throughout the year but it really came to a head with the larger block of writing. Staying with the subject of lessons learned, I started to cast more of a critical eye on the focus of the blog and came to the conclusion that much of the musings on public transport really belonged elsewhere. In time, another blog was spawned for that but travel matters relevant to exploring wonderful countryside will continue to make their appearance here. In time, it may happen that old posts falling outside of this might get moved elsewhere as part of continued content reshaping but I’ll leave things as they are for now.

November

November saw me re-emerge into areas well populated by hills again. The first of two trips to Cumbria saw me embark on an out and back trek from Windermere’s train station to Yoke. I had gone north with a few ideas in mind and this proved to be just as well when public transport and the available daylight constrained my ambitions a little. Neither did anything to spoil my enjoyment of the day. A miscalculation on the following weekend had me walking from Ardlui to Butterbridge a day too early for good weather to do its magic on the landscape. in some respects, the hike echoed my February outing to the area in that showers got going to make things feel unpleasant as I dropped down towards the end of my walk. I may not have seen the countryside in its best light but plans for potential excursions came to mind and they may compensate for this at some suitable juncture in the future. Dullness of a drier variety was set to dominate my walk from Ambleside to the top of Red Screes and back the next weekend. Some sunshine managed to escape from its cloudy prison towards the end of the walk but the intense cold remains in mind, particularly since the turning on of Ambleside’s Christmas lights delayed my journey home.

December

December may be considered by meteorologists to be the start of winter but my walking was not about to go into hibernation, especially with the possibility of sampling some snow. So, the first Saturday of the month saw me return to the Howgill Fells after the briefest of visits a few years earlier. The snow that I met got me wondering about winter skills and such like but the experience was one not to be missed. The day after had me out exploring Macclesfield’s hills with an out and back hike from my own doorstep. I might have been trampling familiar ground but there were some new sides to be seen too. A trip to Ireland for Christmas and New didn’t stop my walking either, even if road walking took up the most of what I was doing. Nevertheless, I got to get off road to explore around Springfield Castle near Broadford in County Limerick and even got to sample a little piece of the Dingle peninsula around Camp and Castlegregory in Kerry. Sunshine enlivened both walks but that part of Kerry was frequented by a biting wind while we were there; nevertheless, it didn’t stop me wandering a little way along a track (used by a tractor to get winter feeding to livestock by appearance of things) through the dunes at Maherabeg (Machaire Beag in Irish) in the late evening sunshine, at least shadowing the Dingle Way if not actually following it. That brought a year packed full of walking trips and opportunities to a delightful close. 2009 awaits.

While 2009 has yet to see its first proper hill outing of the year for me, I have to say that anyone who doesn’t make the most of the first half of any year is missing out on something special. It is nice to think that everything is on the up and your next outing could be more wonderful than the last. You are less likely to be overrun by hoards too and there’s much to admire from the skeletal forms of the trees to the way that fine landscape is enlivened by the gentler light. I can see some being put out by such things as the shortness of the days or the lingering feel of winter but I see wonder in these too and it allows one to be ready for the annual crescendo that is April, May and even June. After that, i feel that the year passes its peak and regard the traditional summer holiday months of July and August as being ill-timed but that means that we are more likely to have things to ourselves, never a bad thing. Here’s how the first half of 2008 fared.

January

Casting my mind back to January, I remember expressing an inclination to stay home when the weather wasn’t so inviting. What had been a tactical device for ensuring that necessary life chores got done had developed a less than desirable side effect: being too choosy about when to go walking among those wonderful hills. A sunny Sunday at the start of the month drew me out on a cycle between Macclesfield and Leek with a diversion round by the Roaches on the way back. It was a good start to the year and I followed it up by strengthening my resolve in order to head to Leek for a circular walk through Staffordshire’s muddy moorlands (encountering clay was rather apt given the county’s fame for pottery production) that took me over Hen Cloud. The need for inner strength was prompted by greyness of skies earlier in the day but that soon evaporated to uncloak blue skies and unleash the sun to do its magic, a sort of reward for my endeavours.

February

That "get out there regardless of everything but personal safety and other much more important things" mentality was to serve me well in February. When a dusting of snow presented itself, I was off to Northumberland to explore more of the hills near Wooler. There was an ample coating of powder dry snow about and that both enlivened the views and brought out a little of the inner child in mind as I bobbed downhill on my return to Wooler. The middle of the month saw that replaced by a settle spell of glorious if nippy weather that allowed me to narrow the gap between Haworth and Gargrave in my Pennine Way hiking project. In line with the "bag-of-nails" approach that I have been adapting, a southbound walk from Gargrave to Lothersdale came first with a northbound hike from Haworth to Ickornshaw following it. The narrow gap between Ickornshaw and Lothersdale remains a possible irritation but it’s also another excuse to revisit those parts, even if public footpath signposting isn’t what it might be. The end of the month saw me undertake my visit outing of the year in Scotland with a wander through the countryside by Tarbet and Arrochar. I needed my new found resolve as the showers started to gang up on me with the aging of the day; it was certainly good weather for any frogs that I saw.

March

In contrast to February, March was a much quieter month when it came to exploring the outdoors. A heavy flu was partly to blame for that but I felt a need to clear out some physical and mental clutter too, an activity that kept me busy over the early and white Easter. The latter fact should have drawn me out because a good walk is often good for garbage clearance but I ended up looking out at the Maxonian (that’s to Macclesfield what Mancunian is to Manchester) hills instead.

April

April’s two excursions mean that I was among hills instead of looking at them from afar. The first of these saw me traipse along part of the Offa’s Dyke Path near Knighton on a day that had me frequenting both Powys in Wales and Shropshire in England. I even dropped in on Church Stretton on the way home for a short sortie that preceded a heavy shower. Another weekend trip to Scotland followed with my exploring around the villages of Glencoe and Kinlochleven. The weather couldn’t have been better and snow still lay on the mountain tops though I remained at lower levels. On the way home, I began to feel that I had seen enough of the pervading browns of the hills for one sitting.

May

May made another good month for wandering through open hill country and its being topped and tailed by bank holidays surely helped. The first of these saw me exploring Teesdale on a grey if dry day with sun struggling to make any headway through the cloud cover. Even so, I got taken along another part of the Pennine Way and it made for a good day out. The next day was a damp affair so my next trip took advantage of the fact that normal weekday train services run on a bank holiday to get to Bethesda in North Wales for what turned out to be a linear hike to Bangor by way of the foothills of the Carneddau and the North Wales Path. Cloud broke to release the sun even if sea fog somewhat curtailed the sunshine later on in my walk. Another Welsh outing followed with my planned walk near Dolwyddelan being displaced by an out and back hike from Dolgarrog to Llyn Eigiau due to transport misinformation. It didn’t matter because a good day of walking followed anyway. Scotland surprised me with perfect weather for the second bank holiday weekend of the month, so much so that I was barely ready to take full advantage of what was offer and I left for home with a certain amount of regret. That’s not to say that a good tramp from Inverarnan to Dalmally or a few hours spent on Kerrera wasted the time that I had but I would have rathered more extensive planning than was done. If I had known what was ahead of me, I might have booked some time off from work and made a longer weekend of it. Having Monday would have avoided the bank holiday traffic and allowed for some very enjoyable walking too. Maybe the weather forecasters were so taken up by what was coming to England that they forgot Scotland…

June

June started well with a walk along the Cumbria Way through Langstrath on my way from Borrowdale into Great Langdale. Though I had glimpsed the Langdale Pikes from afar, this was to be my first visit to Great Langdale and, though cloud got to obscure the sun as the day wore on, a return to these wondrous parts remains in order. A primarily social visit to Ireland followed with my only snatching short strolls on a visit to Killarney on a damp day. Nevertheless, the sight of Torc waterfall retained its appeal and I was sorely tempted by the idea of going further along the Kerry Way.

Now that the leaves on the trees and well into the throes of changing colour and a chill has returned to the air, thoughts turn towards the shorter days that lie ahead of us. It is all too easy after the climax of a summer break like that which I enjoyed on Scotland’s islands (the next installment of that trip report is in the works so it should appear here soon) to hibernate, especially when the weather offers us only discouragement. So, some ideas erupted into my mind while perusing an outdoors magazine on the bus to work this morning. Local hill country always beckons when the days are shorter but there are other options too. For one thing, I haven’t been over the border in Derbyshire for a while and reaching the likes of Shropshire, Staffordshire or South Yorkshire is a possibility too; it often amazes me where the mind roves when the mood takes it. Even this loosely compiled catalog of options could come in useful should an opportunity take me by surprise. The next stage would be to add more flesh to the bones of this skeleton so that I simply could take an idea off some metaphorical shelf at a moment’s notice. It might be the difference between my getting out there and staying put at home.