The Making of Heros!

After not being in the Peaks very much in the past month for one very dull reason or another this week I was very lucky to be treated to a day of Adventure and Heroism by my very good friend TheSurlyGent.


The day was to take place in and around the Dark Peak area - somewhere Im not too familiar with.  We were in the hands of a professional organisation (Trust and Truth Adventure) and were booked to indulge in gorge walking and bridge abseiling.

Bridge abseiling I got, but gorge walking I was less sure about - I gathered it involved walking up a stream and involved wellies, so I was thinking water up to mid calf.  This gorge walking also involved a wetsuit and caving overalls, but I remembered the wellies and didnt much change my option...

Anyway, we rocked up at Cheerbrook ready for the off...

The world is not ready for me in a wetsuit, not even with a set of caving overalls over the top of it, so most of the pics of anyone in particular from here on in will be of the Gent.

TheSurlyGent, in pensive mood, models
the caving overalls while standing in Cheerbrook

The route itself literally was straight up gthe course of Cheerbrook.  Underfoot was mainly rock and stones and, as Malc the guide said 'if its looks wet and slippy it IS wet and slippy'.

 Cheerbrook has a startling number of waterfalls, and climbing them is a nice change to try to avoid going bum over teakettle on heavily biofilmed rocks.  Someone needs to go in there with some Milton, thats all Im saying...

Chest deep! And that wasn't the HALF of it!

The grand finale of the trip (which was probably about a mile) was a jump from a 6ft high waterfall into a 6ft deep pool of icy water.  Awesome - and everyone lined up for a second go...


In the summer we'll be going back on our own for a go...Ill be taking my Vibrams which I hope will be grippier than my enormous wellies!  As you can see my camera coped admirably, despite not being rugged enough not to break its battery door...

After Cheerbrook the peaksdwellers were treated to myself, the Gent and a selection of others disrobing, towelling off and getting re-dressed on the side of a fairly busy road.  What has been seen, as they say, cannot be unseen...


STILL, we had another adventure to do, so we hit the road again heading for Millers Dale and an opportunity to throw ourselves off a viaduct.  I've not managed to find out how high this viaduct is, but Id guess about a thousand feet - or about sixty...between those two anyway.

Ill let the pictures speak for me....

View from the bridge....one for Hazel Deane fans there...

The Gent, who is braver than me, prepares to be FIRST

1/2 hr later and still making sure everything
is ABSOLUTELY right....

I jest...he didn't hang around...well, he did
but in an abseiling, heroic way.

Getting near the edge of the arch - head lower than feet otherwise
you'll smack your face on the bridge when you swing under it!

Yes it IS that big...

And that scary!

A random group member shows us how
done.

All in all a fantastic day was had, two more adventures were ticked off, and we have more skills for our CVs!

Many thanks to Malc of Trust and Truth for getting us there and back alive, and to TheSurlyGent for providing the adventure, and being there to share it with me.

At The Sign of the Wild Boar

With the weather being so inclement currently I thought I'd nip out for a quick jaunt today.  I'm also planning a multi-day hike, so I'm investigating new paths in the peaks that I can string together into a 30-40 mile circular walk, with somewhere to bivvie half way round.

I also wanted to try a new stripped-down setup for my phone - anything I didn't need was removed, synching was switched off, the processor was throttled 50% and I ran in 2G only mode.  I use the phone for GPS and that hammers the battery.  For my multi-day I need to eke as much time as I can out of the battery, so that means as little as possible trying to phone home, or waking up to check on things.  

Not sure how much I gained - next is an experiment to see if an external Bluetooth GPS setup uses less power than internal GPS alone.  I'm not convinced, but I've read conflicting things about this.

Today I decided to pick up one of the paths that starts at the Wild Boar Inn in Wincle.  I took a route that would give me a 3 mile walk round the base of Hammerton Knowl.  Ive done bit of this route before, but it tends to be very wet, so I've always given up.

Not today though, because I was on a mission.  NNE of the Knowl I'd seen the magic word WATERFALL....

The other side of the stile.

I took the path on the Eastern side of the Inn and trekked up a fairly sodden and sheepy field to the first of the more disreputable stiles on this path.  The stile was 6 foot tall, and as you can see in the pic it leads you into a swamp.  The water is actually running, and I can attest that the mud is about eight inches deep.  If you stumbled and fell you would NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN.

 The path was fairly straightforward, and led down to Hammerton Knowl Farm, where I found the most confusing sign post in the whole of the Peak District.  At some point a hilariously drunken workman nailed three random arrows onto each side of the post and called it a day...

 Luckily, after wandering about for a bit the nice man who lives at the farm saw me standing in his garden juggling maps and GPS's and came out to see what was going on.  He put me on the right path - an eighteen-inch gap between two buildings.  I'd imagine the 90% of the murders in the Peak District happen on this path....most of the people who survive the path come a cropper at the entirely disreputable stile at the end of it.

 Thats about a 3 foot drop, and it finishes in a mixture of mud and the bones of the fallen...



From here the path was fairly easy to discern, and past The Hazels I picked up a metaled road that leads over Cessbank Common.

Picturesque...

I think this is Piggford Moor, Mount Pleasant and Shuttingslow

Memorial to a dog...

It was around this point I should have found the waterfall leading into Highmoor Brook, but I couldn't see it from the path and didn't want to  disturb the sheep...

The radio tower on Sutton Common

The next stage - I've just come from the gateway in the background and I'm going to the gateway in the foreground.

How fickle was the weather today?

 Hmmm....cows.  Not monstrously fond of cows.  They always seem a bit unpredictable, and are quite happy to trample you.  Horses are a much better bet.

Didn't find my waterfall, but I did find this delightful little fountainhead just a few hundred yards up the road from the Wild Boar.

The Hills of West Cheshire

Out towards the West of Cheshire lies a footpath - the Sandstone Trail.  The trail runs from Frodsham in the North down to Whitchurch in the South for a distance of 32 miles.

The Surly Gent and myself have been pondering the possibility of walking the Sandstone Trail for a couple of years now, and today we decided to make a start with one of the circular walks detailed in Circular Walks along the Sandstone Trail - not, I might add, a book I would rely on without an OS map as backup.

As we were slightly time limited we decided to pick a path from Raw Head to Larkton Hill - an advertised distance of about 5 1/2 miles.

We started off from The Sandstone (previously The Coppermine) at Brown Knowl, where we left the car, and headed across the A534 towards Park Wood.

The view up to Park Wood

The day was overcast, but not overly cold.  I was using my new Osprey Talon 8 lumbar pack, which is a neat piece of kit with some really nice design features - very impressive, comfortable and with lots of room for storage.  The only downside is that, as a fairly broad lad I find that the pack itself could be wider.  The straps are long enough, but I have to reach further round than I would like to get at the water bottles and side pockets - but thats a minor quibble, and for 95% of the population the fit would be fine.

View from Park Wood.

The gorse was out and looking lovely

As part of our adventuring TheSurlyGent and myself are issuing each other with challenges - mine for today was to make pine needle tea.  Park Wood supplied ample pines and larches, but discretion was the better part of valour and it was decided that it would be more sensible to find out exactly WHICH pines were safe to use for tea before devouring the first tree that came to hand.

Harthill Church

 The path took us into the village of Harthill, where we crossed the main road and into Garden Lane...

White Bells...?

Hale Superbole

...which eventually lead us up the side of Hale Superbole Mountain Boarding, and into some open beech woodland.











It was not long after this that things must have gone awry.  We were trying to pick up the path to Raw Head, the highest point on the mid-Cheshire range.  Somehow we missed the path and ended up in woodland, much of which was given over to pheasant production...but it was worth it.

Sandstone crags

A great prow of sandstone reared out of the woodland, and as we followed the path around it something amazing hove into view.....A CAVE!

TheSurlyGent models the cave we found on the way to Raw Head

Having thoroughly investigated the cave (it was about 8ft off the forest floor, 10ft deep and 20ft wide, so it was fairly easy to investigate) we re-examined our route and struck off for Raw Head.

The view from Raw Head

Making coffee on Raw Head

The Gent prepares to do a headstand for his own blog.

After a cup of coffee, some gymnastic hijinks and a bit of a rest we left Raw Head and continued what should have been a well defined and straighforward path back towards The Sandstone.

Spring Woodland

The Gent in thoughtful mood

Across the Cheshire countryside

More outcrops - it IS the Sandstone Trail after all

Kitty's Stone on Bickerton Hill

The path took us up Bickerton Hill, past Kitty's Stone and Maiden Castle.  Again, at this point something went wrong.

The route

The strange little dead-end on the bottom right hand corner of the route shows where we went wrong, and had to retrace our steps.

View back towards Maiden Castle

The correct path...

 






Eventually we found our way back to the road, and it was only a matter of time till we got back to The Sandstone pub.

The road route took us back Broxton Old Hall - it would have been nice if the guide had told us to expect this - we'd have known we were on the right track.  Walking on the road can always be a bit of a drag, but it was the final leg of the journey.

Spring is well under way, and sights like this makes it all worthwhile.

And thank goodness The Sandstone was still serving - a big, juicy burger and hand made chips really did make it all worthwhile - even more than the tree blossom

 What should have been a 5 1/2 mile journey actually was almost 9 miles!  We will take a map next time :)

For more information about the Sandstone Way have a look at this very nice PDF guide