Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

If you have been here at this part of cyberspace before, you may have noticed a navigation bar at the top with an indication of where you are on the website. In spite of the glorious weather that has been with us over the last few days, I didn't have the opportunity of celebrating its arrival with a trip away somewhere. In fact, I more needed a rest at home after the hectic demands of work over the last few weeks. It was during my little recuperation that I made the little modification that now appears at the top of every page in the website. Hopefully, it helps to make getting around here that little bit easier.

That isn't to say that I never got out at all. As it happened, I stole out of the house for a few hours to stroll from Bollington back to my abode again. What that granted me was the chance to look over familiar hills whose sight I haven't been able to enjoy for longer than really should be the case. My course took me from the top of Bollington into Ingersley Vale and from there to the White Nancy by way of the Gritstone Trail. Surprisingly perhaps for terrain that I have trodden a good few times already, the route had plenty of new twists and turns for me to explore. Given the vantage point that it is and the glory of today, it came as no shock to me to find folk lounging around the White Nancy but that is never to say that the place was overrun. As it turned out, there was plenty of time for undisturbed stopping and staring.

That sense of space for relaxation was very much a feature of the afternoon escape. It meant that details such as my camera batteries running out of charge before they should have done or there being quarries to my right on Kerridge Hill made no inroads into my sense of enjoyment. Again, neither the haze over the Cheshire plain or the drifting sound of a horse show PA system from below me had no impact on how I felt either. The familiar hills to my left were what was holding my attention as I wandered along the Saddle of Kerridge. The sights may have been seen before before they also were a little different in the glorious sunshine and with fresh green foliage in the process of emerging.

Being drawn along the ridge of Kerridge Hill was the cause of changing my intended route. By now, my camera batteries had completely run out of power but I stuck to recharging my own internal batteries instead of getting grumpy. It seems that having to commit scenes to the photographic plates of the mind was a help too. Any sights of freshly emerged greenery or cherry blossom against a bright blue sky were treated much in the same way as scenes savoured of a glorious late July evening on my first trip to Skye. One upshot of that was that an evening cycle from Dunvegan to Portree from quite a few years ago still remains in my memory now.

It didn't take long for me to be dropped on the side of the B5470 Macclesfield-Whaley Bridge road at a saddle between Rainow and Higher Hurdsfield. From there, I followed that road down into Macclesfield with a deviation onto the Middlewood Way and a short section of public footpath on the way home. This had been a walk that never was far from civilisation but there was plenty of time and space during which to relax too. The peacefulness of the evening must have had something to do with it and has put me thinking that I need to get back to sampling experiences like this again. It's just no good feeling as if you are being kept away from enticing areas of hill country while watching BBC programmes on the iPlayer like Country Tracks (the recent one on south Cumbria, for instance) so a spot of re-balancing looks to be well needed.

Travel arrangements:

Bus service 10A from Macclesfield to Bollington.

After the passing of 2010, my only wish is that 2011 brings you and yours good things. The past year saw me distracted by a change of job in the middle of it and I think that it may have reduced my output on here. However, after catching up with a few issues of TGO in recent days, I have come to thinking that I need to keep reading more from the outdoors media because my perusal certainly popped a few ideas into my head for the coming year. What's needed now is to make something of the few flakes that are littering my brain at the moment.

The recent arctic conditions may have made my Christmas travelling more adventure-filled than I'd intended but it also brought me an afternoon spent pottering around the hills beside Glossop gain. There is the seed of a post arising from that little outing but I also got to seeing how Lindow Common and the Bollin Valley look with clumps of snow stuck to everything around them too. Then, there were trots around rural Limerick in Ireland to savour what are rare conditions for the southwest of Ireland. It might be that one posting would suffice to collect my experiences on those little tasters of a whitened world.

Though I also am playing with the idea of a local wander before returning to work on Monday, there also are designs on a quick sortie by Caledonian Sleeper to see what's left of snowy coverings in the Scottish Highlands. That's something with which I have been playing for a while but it'll be a little look rather than a deep incursion. It remains to be seen if I can make anything of it.

Other brainwaves for the year include a longer sojourn in an area new to me (and perhaps others) that results in a number of posting that I can share on here. Firm ideas are few and far between at the moment but I did concoct a scheme centred on Mallaig that has me going out to the Small Isles. Maybe visiting Islay and Jura might be other propositions. Then, there's always the call of my native Éire for a fuller hill country excursion to follow up my nibble of the Wicklow Mountains nearly two years ago now.

With regard to smaller forays, there are hills around Keswick that I'd like to explore too after a few years of struggling to find a reason to go back there. That has come from the TGO writings of others and I am thankful of them too. Looking through old photos has brought thoughts of trying to better them and that could see me exploring Derbyshire a bit more too.

It's all very well making designs for a whole year when it can surprise you in a way that you cannot expect but not having the ideas at all will lead to torpor like what I felt towards the end of 2010. That is something that I'd like not to see happening again. Let's hope that all of us manage to get in some quality hill time over the coming year, even if life has a habit of getting in the way from time to time.

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.

Surely, this winter must go down in memory as one with an early blast of cold weather that brought with it a hell of lot of snow in places. While Macclesfield and Wilmslow came off more lightly than other places, we still have to watch our step while walking about; those pesky areas of black ice can give you a toss before you know it. Nevertheless, the B5470 Macclesfield-Whaley Bridge, A537 Macclesfield -Buxton and A54 Congleton-Buxton roads were shut until last weekend so good dumps of snow weren't at all far away.

While on the subject of places that got more snow, Sheffield comes with its having a covering of several feet of snow in places. In fact, some footways are so trampled that a coffee table smoothness is a threat to life and limb. If I lived over there, I could see my Kahtoola Microspikes being in use every day. Maybe those work colleagues who have been struggling to get from there to our place of work every day might do with something from AutoSock as noted elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Even with all the horror stories, alluring thoughts of seeing hills in full winter garb still tempt me. However, any thoughts of seeing Scottish hills have to be tempered by the recent travel chaos up there. Hopefully, it'll work out OK for everyone caught up in it. Still, Caledonian Sleeper and other train services seem to be heavily hit by the conditions. That mix of fresh snow falling on icy roads really has caused chaos. It's all very well daydreaming of white wildernesses but they have another side.

Maybe that thaw over the weekend will ease things enough to help all who have been marooned by what has been with us for a few weeks now. It even might allow a chance to make good those daydreams with whatever whiteness remains wherever I may go. After all, I quite fancy an outing given that it has been a few weeks since the last one.

At the end of October, I managed to drag myself out of doors for a trot in the Derbyshire Dales. The plan was to walk south along the High Peak and Tissington trails, both part of the Pennine Bridleway network. These are former railway lines that have been converted into useful trails for walkers, joggers, cyclists and horse riders. Temptingly, there are places along the way that offer bicycle hire and refreshments that are operated by the Peak District National Park Authority. Typically, these were situated where railway stations once stood and signage usefully told you how far you were from the next one. Those staging posts include Hurdlow, Parsley Hay, Hartington, Alsop en le Dale, Tissington, Thorpe and Ashbourne with each offering car parking for those seeking only to wander part of the way.

That railway past means that ups and downs are curtailed so easy progress is assured, even if it makes them more attractive to those for whom walking in the countryside is not such a regular activity. Nevertheless, anything that gets more sedentary folk moving in the outdoors has to be a good thing. As it happened, that's what brought my attention to them after what has been a reduction in my explorations of the countryside after that change of job during the summer.

As ever, it took the prospect of what for October felt like a rare sunny day to draw me out for one last hurrah before the onset of winter time and its final demolition of any sense of our having some evening light. For about half the walk, there were blue skies and sunshine but cloud grew more plentiful the further south that I went until it completely took over the sky to give a grey end to the day. That's never to say that I was disappointed by this though it would have been nice to have had some pleasing sunshine for any glimpses of Dovedale that I was allowed.

From Pomeroy's pub, it was a matter of picking up a public footpath in order to reach the old railway. Once on it, I played with the idea of an out and back hike to the start of the High Peak Trail. In the event, that was left for another day and any misgivings that I may have had were quenched well before I reached Ashbourne. As I journeyed south, there were other leisure seekers out on the trail with me but that's not to say that there weren't any quieter interludes because there were plenty of those too. Navigation was going to be a real issue though I was checking the map to see how I was going and useful mileposts highlighting the distances between the former train stations.

What grows many of my trip reports are recollections of the route and the impressions that my surroundings made on me. For the first part of my walk along the High Peak and Tissington trails, it is difficult do much like this. The surrounding countryside was pretty rolling pasture without move in the way of indentations so I wasn't rooted to the spot engaged in photography as often as sometimes is the case with me. The fact that it was easy to walk quickly and that a good distance lay ahead of me might have helped me pass from staging post to staging post until I meet the junction of both trails. That speedy progress is a reminder that these are cycling trails too and the landscape allows you to glide through it, perhaps more easily than it ought to do in some respects.

Beyond the junction of the High Peak and Tissington trails, it was straight into a cutting and then onto an alignment that was raised above the surrounding landscape and away from the A515. That feeling of elevation was to remain the case for much of the distance and the old signal box belonging to Hartington station came into view soon enough. Once through there and its surrounding nature reserve with its attendant strollers, it was onto the long stretch to Alsop en le Dale with the trail nearing the A515 again, much like it is around Parsley Hay.

Misplaced young backpackers ended up being redirected, by me of all people, around Biggin with skies having turned from blue to grey. The terrain does show some light buckling around there but I am amazed by the more striking indentations that I seem to have missed. A look now at a map causes me to marvel at how well hidden the likes of Long Dale, Biggin Dale and Wolfscote Dale seemed to be from me. They look so close to the line that I was taking and wonder why I never noticed them; was I travelling through cuttings when I might have been savouring their delights? As it happened, it was to take until I was beside Dove Dale before I noted any major impression that had been made into the High Peak plateau. Some good walking trips could be made of exploring these natural cuttings and I'll be keeping those options in mind. They may even yield pleasing photos, too, and that's a ruse that I often use to get me out of doors.

After a crossing under the A515, Alsop was reached earlier than expected and it was from then on that my legs began to feel more leaden. As I drew nearer and nearer to Tissington, I was on the lookout for Parwich but it stayed hidden like so much else earlier in the hike. There must be something about the way that the landscape keeps things hidden around this part of the world and makes you go into its dips before you truly can say that have been. At Tissington, a short refreshment stop was in order though I wasn't drawn into exploring the village itself. After, the day was remaining resolutely grey and I'd rather see pretty places with sunshine falling upon them.

Though I did wonder about catching a bus from there, I set off to reach Ashbourne. A certain feeling of fatigue made me wonder at the wisdom of my decision. Could it also have made me that little bit more impatient too? So long as I had a map to tell me how I was doing, this could be contained but an OS Explorer 24 doesn't extend all of the way to Ashbourne and I didn't have OS Explorer 259 to take over after Thorpe. Knowing that there never was any chance of getting lost staved away any pangs of navigational panic. It simply had to be a matter of putting one foot after another and letting the end of my walk come when it did.

It helped that I took a nibble of the Ashbourne end of the Tissington Trail and there was no problem reaching the town centre through the former railway tunnel. That piece of recce resulted from a trip around by a cold grey Buxton that took me to an Ashbourne blessed by blue skies and bright sunshine, a different place to where I finished my walk in the sense that it now was a grey as Buxton was on that other day. The hike had been a long one after which it took several days for my legs to recover but it was an introduction to a part of the world that I ended up ignoring for so long. The next phase is to go exploring those hidden dips to see what delights lie within them. It looks as if I won't be disappointed.

Travel Arrangements:

Bus service 58 from Macclesfield to Buxton, bus service 42 to Pomeroy, bus service 108 from Ashbourne to Macclesfield.