• Category Archives Pendle Hill
  • Any walk featuring Pendle Hill

  • Staggering up Stang Top Moor…

     

    … and barging up Big End!

    This was the walk of Saturday the 16th of September.

    After dropping off Chris at around 6:15 on Saturday I drove over to Barley via the usual, A59 route and arrived at 7:55. I set off with the clear intention of taking in a lesser, but none-the-less important (to me) summit of Stang Top Moor. I first stumbled onto the summit in 2012 on the day of the Pendle Witch walk and was enraptured by the fantastic view offered to me of my favourite hill – Pendle, from the summit of this otherwise diminutive hilltop. A few years later, quite by chance I managed to climb up to the top of the summit without using roads and it was this route that I intended to take on this day.

    Alas, what was once easy was now…not! The path that had stood so proud and clear on my last ascension, was for all intentions invisible and I ended up missing the turning I should have taken and tramping around through grassy paddock after grassy plantation until I spied the road. I remembered the road for it was the same one that I had walked down in 2012, now I had to walk up it. To be honest, it was not that difficult, the sun came out and thankfully started to dry the legs of my walking trousers which had taken in copious amounts of unnecessary hydration! Apparently the weather was going to play fair with me today.

    Within an hour, I had managed to navigate my way to the trig point at the top of Stang Top Moor and was once again flabbergasted at the sumptuous panorama across to mighty Pendle Hill. It was odd that something which I knew to be at least two miles away, appeared to be within reach. This peak is nothing if not a splendid viewing platform.

    On this day I had decided to take lots of photos and to actually create a video log of the walk – incidentally, I refuse outright to refer to them as VLOGS! This initiative would lead to some interesting and interested looks from people who I encountered on route. Admittedly, since leaving Barley I didn’t actually encounter anyone in Rough Lee and it was at the Upper Black Moss before I exchanged greetings with anyone – although I’m certain that the neighbours on route would have heard me keep chastising myself for using the pronoun ‘we’ when referring to which part of the route was coming up next! The drop down from peak number one to the reservoirs is, if anything, too short. One wants to take time and relax in-between hilltops…I charged around like a newly liberated man and arrived at the confusing section of the walk, the part between the reservoirs, Windy Harbour (it really is called that) and Salt Pie (yes!). I never know which is which out of the latter two – the reservoirs are thankfully self apparent!

    I spent a few minutes rubbishing the claims that the ruin of a dilapidated shed is the infamous ‘Malkin Tower’ of Pendle Witch folklore and basking in the sunshine before becoming somewhat agog at the audacity of the man (whoever he may be) that had decided to block off part of the public right of way which should have lead me across a field and no longer did. Undeterred, I stomped up a farm track and headed towards Barley Road, only noticing at the last moment that there was another track across a field…which would lead me to Barley Road (eventually). It appears that there had been no blocking of the public footpath and I had simply remembered incorrectly, the shame of it! I opted not to cross the last field which lay adjacent to the road and took the longer, but less prone to sink-inducing tarmac path towards Barley Road. I do not enjoy the wetness of the fields in this area and as such was more than happy to walk up to the turn off which runs almost parallel to the hill along a dry track to Pendle House. There’s nothing like being in the shadow of the beast.

    If what had gone before had been something of a pleasure, I was now at the privilege part. I love the walk up the slope of Pendle to ‘Big End’, every step is a joy…on the way up, coming down is a whole different kettle of fish – which is why I seldom descend via this route. that’s not to say that you don’t have to watch your feet from time to time, there are parts of the path where it’s all too easy to stumble and take it from me, millstone grit and human skin do not a happy combination make! The walk up the slope terminates, or at the very least gives way and merges with the main drag from Boar Clough and later still the approach from Ogden Clough and Spence Moor. It’s a wondrous thing to have walked practically all routes up this magnificent monolith…I must do the Worston Moor and Mearley Moor routes one day. All too quickly I was at the trig point, 1,827 feet in the air. the summit was very clear and I encountered just one other walker whilst I was there. Not that there were not many people on the fells, they’d all had a get together and let me have the top to myself for a while because before very long, the masses began to appear at the apex of the steps route – my choice of descent for today.

    It’s official, if not yet documented, that it takes me longer to walk down from the top than it does to get up the thing! My ingrained fear of falling (which does not prevent the act at all) imbues in me a snail’s pace when it comes to dropping down the Pendle Steps. I give way at the slightest chance to those who look scarlet in the cheeks and puff and pant…it’s a joy to behold people struggling…it’s like a drug! Alas, all too soon (it feels that way at least), I was at the bottom of the stepped staircase and rounding the bend which leads me to an area of land simply to small to be called anything greater than a paddock. Once, through the gate, (having quite skillfully traversed a patch of mud), it was then down on to those accursed fields – the ones which I don’t like in-between Pendle and Brown houses. For once, I never fell…and this only minorly marred my walk, I’d much rather see the countryside from afar as opposed to glare fearfully at it anticipating each and every step!

    I met and greeted many more walkers on route back into Barley, I’d given up any notion of making a nice well rounded and informative video commentary of the day and was now pretty much snapping everything that didn’t move, my video will serve as a testament to this! The smell of freshly ground cappuccino or latte was engulfing my olfactory sensors, I wanted coffee…now! by 11:16 I was within shot of the Cabin and my well deserved cup of coffee.

    Pendle will always be my most favoured hill, it’s dominated my walking thoughts since 2009 and shows no sign of relaxing its grip on me…this I wouldn’t want to change. There’s something vastly satisfying about regarding oneself as a ‘Pendle expert’ and a little vane! But with regards to walking around this verdant mound I believe myself to be one of the elite few who ‘really know Pendle’, I suspect I’m in good company (a nod to the late Mr A Wainwright of Blackburn and Kendal). The two walks I have completed around this area this year have been immensely rewarding, not least because my nephew Connor is also now a fan of the hill! Some years I have visited here four times, more often than not just the three…quality matters over quantity. I’ll be back in the new year (a year of big changes I expect, but at least hopefully Pendle won’t change – fingers crossed!), I’ve told Chris she has to come with me at New Year…we’ll see.

    Ps. There’s still two more completed walks this year to blog!

     


  • Two more Pendle Virginities taken

    Ha what an ominous title!

    Darren and I had been planning on doing a Pendle hill walk for a number of months. This Sunday served as our chance to finally bag this most noble of all hills, and we had Connor (Darren’s son) along with us for added banter.

    Although I had initially planned one of my almighty excursions around the village of Barley taking in Stang Top Moor, Pendle itself, Spence Moor via Fell Wood and then back to Barley via Cross Lane, I soon came to realise that might be pushing things a bit. Moreover, on the day even a shorter route omitting Stang Top Moor felt like a step too far, this rotator cuff injury has really impacted upon my walking will power. So we stuck to the plan of simply going up the steps around the back of Pendle House then descending via ‘the slope’. Having had our progress cut in half by those God awful slippery fields between Brown House and Pendle House we elected to return to Barley via Barley Road on the return route, going up was one thing, coming back down via the muddy equivalent of a skating rink was just not our bag. We reached Pendle House and began the ascent of the steps.

    And how I had missed walking! My fitness was most definitely on vacation as I struggled with a new found zeal! Of course this was all fine for Darren – he’d been on ‘Park Run’ the day before and was fighting fit. Likewise with Connor, he coped admirably with the steps – each day he walks miles as part of his paper route. The steps were bringing an old sensation of burning back to the soles of my feet and to my poor thighs.

    However, in spite of two unscheduled breaks, brought about by the previously-mentioned thighs and soles, we did make good progress and within an hour and ten minutes were rounding the corner adjacent to the Downham wall at the apex of the stepped path. The going underfoot now got a lot moister but the incline backs off infinitely here, thank goodness. We made our squelchy way across Pendle Moor to Big End (Pendle’s less illustriously named summit)  and once there posed for the obligatory summit photo – I looked like a dwarf. The wind was howling, apparently this was the precursor to storm “Ewan” so I decided we should descend as soon as possible, the guys agreed.

    The last time that I dropped down off Big End towards Boar Clough the terrain was nasty, slippery, sticky and altogether not nice to walk upon. Today, well I think there must have been some path repairs of late as we arrived at the top of the slope without any of us falling over or even turning an ankle. The drop back down was fairly uneventful…apart from the one time that I fell flat on my backside as both feet simultaneously slipped from underneath me – damned wet grass, I hate it! Within ten to fifteen minutes we were back at Pendle House where we took the left hand turn along the track which would lead us to Barley Road, no way was I doing those two damn slippery fields again today.

    Thankfully the road route to Barley was as devoid of incidents as I would have liked and what was heart-warming in the extreme was the looks of awe etched on Darren and Connor’s faces every time that they looked back at the gentle giant whom had just played host to us.  Pendle’s like that, the further away you get from it then the more impressive it appears.

    All told we did around five and a quarter miles and roughly 1,200 feet of ascent/descent. Not bad for a cold Sunday morning!

    Song of the walk (when we weren’t talking): Clean Bandit – featuring Sean Paul and Anne-Marie- Rockabye