Stanza Stones Trail Day 1

The sky was grey and it was just beginning to rain when Jill dropped me off at Marsden station.  Zipping up my waterproof jacket I said goodbye for the time being and set off through the village.  A minor road led up towards the hill and here I encountered my first obstacle: a works lorry blocking the entire road.  Luckily the wall alongside the road was low enough and sturdy enough for me to tip-toe along the top past the truck and find my way out onto the hillside.

The busy railway line drove into the earth below my feet, into Standedge tunnel, as I started the steep ascent of Pule Hill.  A ventilation shaft ahead showed which way the trains were going.  The higher I got the more the wind battered me but at least the rain started to ease and from the top of the hill there were good views to the Colne valley to the east and the wide open moors in every other direction.  In the immensity I felt like what I actually was: a small creature crawling across the face of the planet.

Insect-like I scuttled along the edge of the scarp, trying to take a shortcut back on myself after visiting the top of the hill, back towards the first Stanza Stone.  It was something of a mistake as the grass was wet and slippery, and the drop to my left was precipitous.  Needlessly tiring myself, I finally arrived at the quarry and looked down to see Jill making her own steep ascent from the main road.  The Stone itself, Snow, was tucked into a cul-de-sac at one end of the quarry, carved on a wide lintel in a sheltered spot, so the letters of the poem were starting to become encrusted with green lichen.  Out on the poetry bench – a seat in a curved dry-stone wall – was shelter from the wind while I waited for Jill to arrive.  We admired the work then I marched off again onto the moor.

Shortly along the path I reached the Pennine Way and with it came more rain.  The wind was coming from the north-west so it was driven into my face and my hood was torn at by the storm’s fingers.  Stomping along the flagged path, I passed a couple with their teenage daughter.  ‘Lovely summer’s day,’ I offered.  ‘Well, it is August,’ the lady replied.  The conditions weren’t favourable for any more of a chat.

The Pennine Way ducked and weaved over the high country with moors all around.  The wind nudged me around, though thankfully the high bridge over the M62 felt stable.  At the top of Blackstone Edge, I climbed up to the trig point, perched on a rock right on the crest, and had to grab hold of the pillar to stop myself being blown backwards.  I dropped down a bit to have a bite to eat.

Jill and I had arranged to meet for the next Stone but as I approached the White House pub, I wasn’t sure whether she meant in the pub or at the Stone.  I popped my head in just to check and fought to resist the urge to have a quick pint.  Instead I barrelled along the wide, level path by Blackstone Edge reservoir.  Coming round a corner I could see a pink dot in the far distance and guessed this would be Jill in her cagoule.  It was, and I joined her after crossing a cute, Andy-Goldsworthy-style arched bridge.  The poem, Rain, was carved on a sheer slab by another quarry.  This time the lettering was still crisp and shining, five years after its carving, the golden heart of the rock revealed from beneath the weathered surface.

Jill was off to check out our accommodation at Hebden Bridge while I carried on along the Pennine Way.  Except this was where I was going to take the first of my diversions, first taking a path away from the main one and then, at a collapsed wooden bridge, turning off into rough country.  It was hard going, steering between bogs, stepping onto bouncy heather, stumbling on grassy tussocks.  I could see the trig point, the goal of my diversion, ahead of me but it took for ever for it to arrive.  I cursed and I muttered as I staggered along, the wind playfully knocking me around and making my nose stream.  The rocky outcrop where the pillar was built couldn’t come soon enough.  The trig is on its own rock and I did a Tryfan-style leap onto it from another (not that I have done, nor ever will do, the leap across Adam and Eve on Tryfan).

Given there was no path, I was free to make my own way back to the real route.  I decided to cut a corner and was amazed to find a tiny track slicing its way through the heather.  It was going exactly the right way so I took up its offer.  The path was so faint that it was almost impossible to see it unless it was actually beneath your feet, but it took me reliably westwards to Stony Edge, where I could rejoin a more conventional path.  It had been a tiring diversion and, given the length of the day I was in for, probably a mistake.  Nevertheless, these are the things we have to do for trig points.

The wind continued to kick my head in as I traced the path along the edge above the Calder valley.  I reached Stoodley Pike and glanced inside for a moment, considering whether to climb up to the viewing platform.  And feel the wind even more strongly?  I didn’t think so.  I was on the home leg with the thought of a pint in a cosy pub foremost in my mind.  A sign for the ‘Hebden Bridge Loop’ informed me that my destination was ‘the sixth funkiest town in the world’.  Fair enough.  Funky or not, the paths I took to drop down into it were terrible – overgrown, over-steep and covered in loose rocks.  It took an age until I finally emerged at one of the bridges.  A text from Jill told me she was in the Shoulder of Mutton and I found her outside, nursing a bump on her head where the wind had just smashed her over the bonce with an umbrella from the next table.  I felt similarly beaten up, only all over.

Our pub, the Hare and Hounds, up the hill, didn’t open until 6pm, so we had a couple of drinks (woohoo, Saltaire Blonde!) then drove up.  The shower in the room was beautifully warm and soothing, but I didn’t stay too long as food and beer awaited downstairs.  The slightly mad landlord served everyone efficiently while making puns about my Elbow tee-shirt.  The beer went down well, though it didn’t do much to ease my aching limbs, and the chicken pie refuelled me nicely.  The landlord was replaced by the landlady who called out, to regulars and visitors alike, ‘Right you horrible lot, does anyone want another drink before I shut the bar?’  There was a brief rush before we all turned in for the night.

For more about the Stanza Stones Trail see Ilkley Literature Festival

Coombs Dale December 2015

Coming over the hill and dropping into the valley, I had a sudden moment of peace, one of those periods of transcendence that happen occasionally while out walking.  A few jackdaws were calling from the far side of the valley where a farmer was steering his quad bike across the steep slope and driving his sheep up to the top.  A pale sun shone low through the grey blanket of cloud and the air was still.  I felt then, the word occurred to me, simple.  No particular thoughts in my head, no worries, no hurry and no dread.  No agonising over the past, the future, what I should be doing right there and then.  In the recent few days I had been suffering a recurrent but groundless feeling like my heart was somehow broken.  And then, on that drab day in the Peak District, I had walked away from it.  There was just me, simply existing in the landscape, taking it in, watching the wildlife, feeling my spirits lift with the birds as they took off and wheeled above the gorse.  This is the calmness I’m always wishing for and the grace I feel when I’m blessed with it.

Arnside Hostel Weekend Day Three

Ray’s peremptory ‘Philip!’ finally dragged me out of my sleep.  We were scheduled for another 8am breakfast but I had been sleeping soundly while the others got ready.  In the end I was a couple of minutes early – which had the bonus of my getting a pot of coffee first.

The start of the walk was a little drive away, mostly in the direction of home.  Haydn was heading on his own way to pick up his caravan so we bade him farewell and loaded up our cars.  First port of call was the Bakehouse, where Martin and I picked up pies.  A pretty blonde girl who had been in the Albion the night before was serving us and seemed a little unsure about what pies were available and what each in the stack of freshly cooked ones was.  Maybe she had been on the wine.  Thankfully we each got our first choice of pork and black pudding pie.  Marvellous.

In setting my sat nav, I hadn’t been quite sure where the car park for the start of the walk was.  I had guessed and unsurprisingly, it turned out, got it wrong.  Luckily it was in an obvious place so we quickly turned round and got parked up.  While we were getting ready, Alec kept walking backwards and forwards looking confused.  ‘Anything wrong?’ I asked.  ‘I’ve left my bag back at the hostel.’  Ray then piped up.  ‘I can’t find my trainers, I must have left them at the hostel.’  Eric whipped his phone out, the one phone with any signal, and Alec gave them a call.  Yes, the bag was there.  Weighing up the options, he decided that, as there was nothing he needed immediately from the bag, he would drive back up again later in the week.  We would have to share our water and hope it wouldn’t rain too heavily, Eric’s lightweight kagoule being the only spare.

There was a path out of the car park but it wasn’t the route I had marked on my map (I couldn’t find the maps I had printed off – back at the hostel as well? – so I was using one Eric had handily done).  Instead we walked a short way up the road and out the back of a farm.  It was a bright and sunny day but there was a biting wind keeping the temperature down.  Behind the farm the land rose steeply through patchy woodland.  Our route was somewhere amongst it but at the exact spot I’d marked, we struggled to see a way through.  A quick change of plan was to do the route in reverse and hope to find the path from the other end.

It was a pleasant, gentle stroll, fairly level, that took us to the pretty village of Hutton Roof.  From there we turned sharply uphill for a steady climb to rockier ground.  There was quite a lot of vegetation – thorn trees, bracken, birch – so we were trammelled along a certain route.  Consulting my GPS I saw we weren’t quite on the route as planned, but were going the right way so it was nothing to worry about.  As we climbed higher, the views opened out to the east, from Ingleborough to the south, up through the Dales to the How Gills in the north.  A wall of limestone crags stood to our left though we weren’t on the rock ourselves.  It was easy going and we soon found ourselves on Newbiggin Crag and nearing our turning point.  A knot of paths made the route a little confusing here and for a moment, to Alan’s distress, it looked like the climb we had just done was in vain.  Just then a gate through the stone wall appeared and we could press on.

Nearing Farleton Knott a man and his two kids were coming the other way.  They were dressed for walking and the kids were having a good play, sword-fighting with their walking poles.  When we passed, the little boy turned to his daddy and asked, ‘What are they doing?’  A number of the rest of the party asked themselves the same question as we pushed up the final slope.  Our approach scared off another family who were messing about on top so we had the summit to ourselves.  There were excellent views all round, including the crags of Newbiggin, all the hills we had walked across over the previous two days, and the roaring M6 nearly below us.  The cold wind was making a bit of a nuisance of itself, so we didn’t hang around long, instead dropping into the lee of some crags for a bite to eat.  The pork and black pudding pies proved to be delicious.

We were walking below the tops of the crags along easy grassy ground before turning up along a track to take us to the road that splits Newbiggin Crags from Hutton Roof Crags.  We now traced the original ‘out’ leg as our return leg.  Once again my notion of limestone was confounded.  Instead of the bare, open pavements of the Yorkshire Dale, this area was again covered in beech, yew, bracken and brambles.  A narrow path wound its way through the dense scrub that didn’t permit any deviation from its course.  We weren’t heading towards my path, or the trig point at the summit.  Finally there was a chance to steer in the right direction, but even then that was curving too far east.  A sliver of path towards home seemed to present itself again but this rapidly ran out and we found ourselves pushing through thorns and undergrowth alongside a wall.  Gorse lashed us from below and spikes on the branches stabbed us from above.  Alan caught his hand on brambles and dropped a trail of blood behind him.

After rather too long battling through all this, with a final wall of hawthorn and gorse behind us, we were finally out in open country again.  There wasn’t much of a path but it led us in the right direction and eventually to a stile at a high stone wall.  Not much of a stile though – it was one-sided and we had to jump off the far side.  The path then led towards a fence with another broken stile – two stumps on either side of barbed-wire, plastic sacks wrapped round the barbs where you were to cross, and the top part of the stile lying on the ground.  This, the GPS indicated, was the crossing we should have spotted that morning.

In no time we were back at the cars and ready to head for home.  It had been an excellent couple of days with some good walks in very attractive scenery.  We had seen some wonderful sights and had comfortable accommodation in the hostel.  The pubs were very good, and the fish and chips had been outstanding.  Not to mention the pies.  A success all round.