The Edges, Winter Hill, Rivington Pike and Great Hill.
High on the moors overlooking the sprawling urbanisation of Bolton lies the sheer bulk of Winter Hill. Having lived in its’ vast shadow for thirty something years I feel honour-bound to quite blatantly state my preference for this above most other hills that I have ascended and am yet to ascend. Put quite frankly, it’s in my blood as a Boltonian.
This is now an extension of the original walk that did start at Rivington Great Barn, over the pike around the back of some moorland, up Crooked Edge Hill, past Two Lads along the lane to the summit of Winter Hill then back down over Rivington Moor, over “The Pike” once more before limping back to the Great Hall. In itself this was not necessarily a difficult walk, it was however one that was somewhat weather dependent (the clue being in the name of the highest summit – Winter Hill!) and one whereby you could guarantee that your boots were going to get caked in mud.
The extension has come about since my ascent of Great Hill a few miles north of our original start, next to the A675 near to Belmont and Abbey villages.
If you’re thinking of going to this via public transport – think again, although there is a bus service to Abbey Village – it aint frequent and as for on Sunday (when most people do their walking) yeah… ahem, take a book to read whilst you wait. I’m sure that there could be a train to Darwen but do you really want to walk the distance from the station to the start point and thus include your total milage for the day? Then it’s the car for us then and I would recommend the best place to park it at:
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First Steps: Come out of the car park and turn right. Within a matter of less than a hundred yards you should be at the junction of Crookfield Road and Belmont Road (the A675). Take extreme care to cross the A-ROAD as cars tend to be travelling at a minimum of fifty m.p.h. on this stretch and then go to the far side (left) of the main road keeping distant Darwen Tower on your right hand side and heading north. After a couple of minutes walking you should see a gate and style on your left hand side:
Here is the biggest terrain change of the entire walk as we leave behind solid paving and tread now on what is usually damp grass underpinned by a nice thick layer of soil; for a number of miles. The path we take becomes steadily less apparent, eventually once a steady climb has been started the path is then more or less indiscernible as the heather, grass and mud, mud, glorious mud are in the ascendancy. Here one must focus on the distant remains of a dry stone wall (that from a distance are somewhat similar to a neolithic stone circle!) as this marks the summit of the first of our “Edges” – Redmond’s Edge. From this angle and from it’s eastern approach in general; Redmond’s Edge appears fairly indistinct, nothing more that a minor lump on the run up to the much larger massif of Winter Hill. However, seen from a couple of miles further south on the A675 at Belmont Village the summit is presented as a far more impressive and shapely challenge. Keeping the tumbling-down dry-stone wall in sight soon a path of slabs sprawling across the moors will come into view and for a number of miles although the terrain gets notably steeper the going is much better than the previous half a mile have been. We now turn left, heading north with Winter hill as a guide marker. The indiscernible summit of Redmond’s Edge is reached with an hundred yards.
Taking in the scenery for a moment or two at the top of our first and easiest climb one can observe the ubiquitous Jubilee Tower perched atop Darwen Hill a couple of miles to the north east. The distant summits of the neolithic burial ground of Round Loaf to the west, Rivington Pike and Noon Hill are detectable and an handful of reservoirs may all be observed in clear conditions as is the biggest challenge of the day – the north face of Winter Hill seemingly far more threatening when viewed from close up than from a distance.
We now continue to head south, downhill for a few yards on our slab-path which then gives way to the grass for a little distance before the duty of the path ahead being handed to that of the remnants of another dry-stone wall. This path leads us to the second highest summit of the day:
Spitlers Edge.
Along with it’s sister(?) peak Redmond’s Edge; Spitlers Edge is not an hill of outstanding natural beauty. From our start point it looms slightly over the lesser peak and affords no real outline. Like its’ sibling, from a few miles south down the A675, the view presented is much more acceptable – but still not as visually pleasing as many other hills in even this vicinity (the quaintness of Rivington Pike and the sheer enormity of Winter Hill and its’ somewhat irregular shape!). The views from Spitlers Edge summit are perhaps unsurprisingly almost exactly the same as those from atop Redmond’s Edge – given that the two summits are but a lazy ten minutes walk apart this would not come as a shock. The added elevation (Spitlers is roughly thirty feet higher than Redmond’s) does not really have any noticeable effect on the range of views, aside from the fact that Horden Stoops (the bottom of the northern face of Winter Hill) is now menacing close. From here we
