Great Grinah
It was a limited but distinguished turnout for our expedition from Westend. We were pleased to see Tim again as he recovers from his op and also Dave Markham, long time not able to join the Warts. They planned a walk up the track whilst the remaining five took the remarkably over grown steep climb directly through the forest and to the ruined farmhouse. This was not the Olympic speed climbing currently seen in Tokyo where times to the top were of the order of five to ten seconds! There was speculation on why the substantial farmhouse had been abandoned, it was far too high above the valley to be at risk of flooding by Howden reservoir and, in any case, there are much lower inhabited houses near the dam, so the mystery remains.
Our full moorland experience was about to start, firstly with a contour around the head of Ridge Clough and on to Black Dyke where the going is surprisingly good so we were forced to run! However, leaving it to cut the corner to the shooting cabins in Lower Small Clough, it was normal moorland running with heather, bilberry and a bit of peat, so not quite so fast (a relative term, you understand). The upper cabin in Lower Small Clough was in good condition with table, chairs, a door and an effective roof. In contrast, the adjacent lower cabin had a couple of broken chairs and no door, the roof looked OK though. It was on the way to the cabins that we had the pleasure of the sighting of a hare and a short-eared owl which was the total for the whole outing, no more counts of over twenty hares seen on our recent trip to the Shelf Stones area.
Which is the most remote part of the Dark Peak? This was our talking point (again) on the way to Grinah Stones from the cabins but it depends on how “remote” is defined, is it the greatest distance from habitation or a road or the greatest time (because of difficult terrain) to arrive at such a point. It certainly felt remote and grand when we did arrive at Grinah. A fine place!
We followed a small trod by a few shooting butts down into and across Grinah Grain to follow a path over hung with bracken and grass making it doubly difficult to avoid any of the many ruts and rocks. We nevertheless survived and reached the main Westend track where, after not very long our preferences for moorland rather than track, were soundly confirmed. It was a long way back to the cars but relief was soon available at The Yorkshire Bridge Inn where we were joined by Roy and Marilyn who had cycled out from Sheffield so discussions became centred around Olympic cycling events before deciding we’d had another grand Warts’ outing!
Graham