Out and about - as a pedestrian.....

[MrDavo]

Well if we are only supposed to be out for our essential daily exercise, and the sun keeps shining then we should make the most of it. The skies are especially clear and blue as there's not one contrail to be seen anywhere in what is usually a busy sky.

The bikes stay in the garage apart from the odd essential mercy dash to the off licence, but as they insist that exercise is good for us, me and the Mrs have walked more in the last month than ever before. we may have, er exceeded an hour, but that's only a guideline. It would take a real jobsworth copper to try and pin 'too long a walk' on us, and good luck with that in court, an hour is only a guideline. The wife has taken up baking, cooks me big meals, and we polish off a bottle of wine or similar most nights, so I am putting on weight. The walks make me feel less guilty.  :

We have tramped every footpath for miles around in the last few weeks, we have lived here for years, but most I didn't even know existed. I found some really old maps of the area on the Francis Frith website, and although whole industries and railways have come and gone, those paths were always there.

This is just a couple of minutes from our house, the flags are on an old footpath for workers from one now vanished mill to another. At this time of the year you can see why it is known as 'bluebell wood':



Week two we found evidence of what happens if you take your satnav too literally. There was a note for the police, I think the car is still there, it will probably cost more to recover than its worth. We live on the other side of the Tame valley, just over the ridge in the background.



Once we started to get our walking legs we got further afield and way up the other side of the valley until we were on the moors, looking down towards Manchester. Swineshaw reservoir in the foreground, Walker Wood reservoir behind it.



From here we kept climbing until we were looking down on the Woodhead valley, complete with fluffy baa lambs, which made the Mrs very happy.



We have had several trips up the moors, including the site of Buckton Castle, somewhere I see up above us most days but have never been to. Saturday was another on my bucket list, Whimberry Stones, way up above Dovestones reservoir, which some of you may have visited the tea van, it is popular with bikers. This is the view looking down from the top, it was a long slog to get up there:



One reason I wanted to go up there was to see where, in 1949, a BEA Dakota going from Belfast Nutts Corner, later to be used as a bike race circuit, to Manchester Ringway, flew into the hillside in low cloud. Pictures taken at the time suggest it was behind where Karen is sitting (waiting for old slowcoach, again) but there is no trace to be seen.



Up at the top there is s spectacular view from the rocks, however what got a lump in my throat was a very poignant pair of memorial plaques fixed to the rock, which we noticed just after taking this photo, just to the right of Karen.  I assumed they were related to the plane crash (24 died) but what I didn't expect was that they were bike related, and put there by someone I know...



I met Bill Swallow, a lovely bloke who has won NINE Manx Grand Prix, many times over the years when I was racing and still sometimes bump into him at bike shows etc, he lives in this part of the world. We first met when we camped next to him at Brands Hatch in 1992, we were both racing at a classic meeting to celebrate John Surtees' 60th birthday. When I did the Manx he took me round the TT circuit in his van, always eager to help a newcomer. At the Bungalow we met his son Chris, who had ridden up there on a pushbike. Tragically both his sons were lost at race tracks, David to a barbeque that was still smouldering at night while he slept in a van, Chris in an accident racing at last year's Manx. The two plaques are memorials to his sons, I assume they loved the place, and I'd no idea they were there.



We carried on up the valley until we saw some fit nutcase running up the steep hill towards us, and went down the track into the Chew Valley. At the bottom it felt proper middle of nowhere, it could be Scotland:



We came back along the trackbed of a narrow gauge railway line built at the very start of the 20th Century to take clay up to build the dam of the Chew valley reservoir way above us, that'll be another walk for another day if the lockdown continues. No more pictures as my telephone had run out of electricity, so we didn't have a Google map any more but we could see which way to go towards civilisation.

[Nurse Julie]

Fantastic Dave and such lovely photos.
Im looking forward to the next instalment already.

[motty]

What lovely views. Much nicer than the walks I managed to achieve

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[SteveD CB500K0]

We don’t have hills, mountains, lakes or reservoirs in Berkshire, but even in the crowded Thames Valley there is a remarkable amount of green space.




Agree on the contrails, although most days 06:00 to midday we are on the incoming flight path and get one every 90 seconds. At the moment there are maybe one or two per hour. We look up and wonder just how many people are on the planes.



This is Ziggy’s (Springer Spaniel) favourite park. I wonder why?




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[Laverda Dave]

Fantastic scenery Dave and worth all the effort to get up there. Walking in the steps of history such as the mill path and disused railway encourages you to delve into local history and explore the internet for old photos of the areas you have discovered. What was probably a very busy area has been reclaimed by nature.
Walking is one of our favourite pastimes although we are not ‘ramblers’. We are lucky where we live in the suburbs of London having Ruislip Lido (a natural reservoir) and Mad Bess Woods less than a mile from home. If we are not walking the routes I usually run them 2-3 times a week. I've noticed how the air is much less polluted, I can breath a lot easier when I run and I'm actually running a lot quicker than I did 5 years ago including setting PB's and I'm 58, I thought those days were long gone!
Like Steve, being in the west of London we are used to having a plane fly over every 90 seconds but it’s been bliss the last six weeks, nothing at all and we can still sleep after 5:45am!
Hopefully some good will come out of all this, people will rediscover nature and their natural environment, the air remains less polluted, we get fitter and life doesn’t have to be lived at 100mph, 7 days a week.
Post some more photos if you can, who needs to go aboard when you have all that on your doorstep 

[MrDavo]

Thanks for your comments and Steve's pictures, Ziggy is cute! MCTID pointed out to me that within an hour of Manchester is some stunning and underrated scenery, as good as you'll find anywhere.

From Saturday's walk, here's a rare picture of me, sat down mainly because the drop behind, at Indian Head, was terrifying.



Some odds and ends, here are some white bluebells I noticed. very rare but I don't know how I can sell them on eBay yet.



Walking along the trackbed of the old Micklehurst loop line, we came across a huge derelict goods shed, like finding a lost temple in the middle of a jungle.



Nearby was the engine shed for the little shunting engines for the coal wagons that fed Hartshead power station



Here is the same spot in 1967, when the power station was still in use. There is nothing there now, I watched from a hillside when they blew the cooling towers up. The engine is a fireless steam loco, developed for munitions works originally, they were ideal for power stations because they had free unlimited steam on tap.



The view from Buckton Castle. I and many others always assumed it was an iron age fort, but when students from Salford University dug the banks they found 9 foot thick medieval stone walls.



The whole hill is dominated by a large quarry, around the back we found an older disused one, the rock is sandstone.



Finally, you say sleepy sunbathing piggies, I think 'Mmm, bacon.....'

[MrDavo]

I know, the picture overlooking Dovestones reservoir you can see the road going up to Saddleworth Moor, where Brady and Hindley took their victims, and parked up overlooking the lake. When the police reopened the case in the 80’s I remember vans everywhere up there and groups probing the moors with poles. One lad is still up there, poor soul. We won’t be going up there to walk, they have a general idea where he is but it’s a real needle in a haystack. Sometimes I see old flowers and a teddy bear attached to a fence on the side road to Meltham, I know who put them there and why, it’s a very sad sight.

As a kid  I was lectured over and over never to get in a car with someone I didn’t know, but never told why. They trawled Ashton market for victims and regularly went to our local cinema so it’s all very raw around here.

[MCTID]

Oddjob....years ago we lived in Highgate, London. We were driving somewhere locally and my Sister in Law was visiting us and was a passenger in the Car. We stopped at a junction on Cranley Gardens and my SIL just said, "Oh, Cranley Gardens.......isn't that where Dennis Nilsen cut up all his victims" ! I was a bit flummoxed so I did some research about it....and I don't think I ever drove down that street again while I lived in the area ! My SIL was......a Copper ! There was a joke at the time that Nilsen's house was a 'Boddies House'.......just for us Northerners on the Forum !

[Bryanj]

If we are going macbare i lived in Bury when he moors was going on and forget how many times i passed the Wests hose in Gloucester

[MrDavo]

Correct Oddjob, my neighbour, and his son work at Kappa. When I got my HGV licence, and it was called Dolan's, I was desperate for experience, and the agency I drove for used to send me, as it was local and, having learned how to double declutch I could drive their ancient Seddon Atkinson tractor units. Their tall single axle trailers I hated with a passion, and I lived in fear of getting back over that tiny tight bridge over the river Tame at the factory entrance. It still gets regularly battered beyond belief today, I'm surprised they haven't replaced it with something more suitable, maybe they are waiting for the day it falls into the river so they can claim on some poor trucker's insurance.

I too can only spot the engine shed as a break in the trees, it's so overgrown. It's near the eastern end of the coal conveyor, which now just stops in midair. On this map it is in the 3rd square along, top row, the goods shed is in the square beneath it.



An aerial view of the same area:



This is one of the supports for the conveyor, where it ends with the wife for scale, it gives an impression of just how overgrown it is down there. Behind is where the colossal coal hopper once was, all you can see now is a concrete base with a mass of twisted rebar, it must have been a sod to demolish.





This 1967 picture taken in the rail yard caught my attention, the concrete support at the extreme right is the one in my photo, the coal conveyor is just out of shot above the locos. Also note the Black 5 in the background, 44871, it was on the last ever BR steam train in August 1968, and is now owned by Ian Riley and preserved at Bury. Here's a photo I took of it at Sheffield on a railtour I went on last November, with its sister loco, 45407.

[bobv7]

If I'm not mistaken here is that same Black 5 now doing service on the Fort William to Mallaig line on the trip the wife and I did in 2015.

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[MrDavo]

That’s the same loco again, yes, it certainly gets around, we did that trip a couple of years back when we did the North Coast 500 on the Harley, a great day out, same loco again, Ian Riley supplies the locos for that service.

When I first gate crashed Carnforth loco shed at the end of steam, I’d sneaked across the footbridge, went around a corner, and there was 44871, in steam outside the shed. It seems our paths keep crossing, when I was a volunteer cleaner on the ELR I even got to fire her a couple of times. There were long lines of withdrawn steam engines at Carnforth, waiting for their last trip to the scrapyard. As a schoolboy the shed staff turned a blind eye to me as I climbed on and off every single engine. They were all filthy, I don’t think my mum was too pleased when i got home.

Oddjob, you must have had to negotiate that narrow bridge in an artic too. I get my car MOT’d and fixed (if I can’t do it myself) at the garage on Knowl  St just next to it. I think they have modern trucks now, those were the oldest sheds I ever drove. I broke down in one at the Liverpool entrance to the M62, and made the BBC traffic news! I didn’t know that engine shed was there until we walked the track back from Micklehurst, it is a footpath, but with the odd diversion where viaducts aren’t.

[MrDavo]

Nearly winning the lottery must really hurt! I'm glad its not just me who's savaged that bridge (luckily when noone was looking), although you can tell that as soon as you look at it, it's *&%$ed!

We walked down to Heyrod Village Store this afternoon, so a couple of pictures more for you.

For some reason bluebells smell just like air freshener, it must be evolution



Apparently these are boar, they just look like unshaven pigs to me. When we go past, the wife sings to them and they get up out of their shed to see what the hell all the racket is.



Down in the bottom of the valley are the water reservoirs that used to feed the coolers, drawing water from the Tame. We watched a heron fishing there last week, here's a moorhen with her chick, arty style through the fence.



Here's why you cant find that engine shed in the jungle, Oddjob. I took this from the road next to the Heyrod store, looking over towards Buckton castle and the quarry, believe it or not this is exactly the same area as that aerial shot of the power station, in fact the spot I took the photo from is the road in the very bottom left of the aerial picture. Right in the centre you can see the truncated coal elevator, and above and to the right of that just see part of the goods shed roof peeking out of the trees. Bear in mind from the picture on the last page, that thing is bloody massive! The post industrial greening of Britain is quite something - I've seen a few old photos of the Tame Valley, taken in the days when trees were just free fuel that someone had left carelessly lying around (they had the same attitude to whales, too) where there is hardly a scrap of vegetation anywhere.



Finally, because I'm childish at heart, here's a picture I took of a huge cock!



Those words probably just caused the board to send Steve an urgent alarm message. 

[SteveD CB500K0]

Ziggy would have made short work of that huge cock …

Yesterday he caught a baby pigeon in the woods. They can’t escape so easily in the undergrowth.

He ate it (all)

As he comes from working gundog stock, I’m sure he’s not meant to do that.


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[ka-ja]

You should feed the poor thing.