I don’t think I was the only one who wasn’t sure where we went on our Warts’ run from the Sands car park at Low Bradfield. I’m not sure whether it was the low temperature that befuddled us or the various apparent changes in direction we made. During the outing, the low crescent moon was seen in front, behind and to the side, and so were the twin towers of Emley Moor which were each prettily lit up with strings of red lights.
This disorientation took our minds off where we were going, or had been, to allow us to keep our eyes on the underfoot conditions which were more varied than the moorland routes we have been used to. Even from the start and in the first few hundred yards, we were faced with flagstones, a footbridge, stone steps, a stile and, oh, horror, a road. Then, we were able to enjoy some frozen and crunchy trail and field interspersed with rutted agricultural soft and slippery mud.
This account is subject to the amalgamation of disordered and unreliable memories of the evening, so please don’t try and reconstruct the route taken from this information, it may even be verging on semi-fiction. To add to the variety, we skirted around the edge of a large wood which provided plenty of opportunities for tripping over tree roots, being lashed with low branches and wading through some quite deep non-agricultural mud though the intermittent soft pine needle ground made up for these excitements.
We were faced with more excitement by our visit to a Site of Special Scientific Interest in South Yorkshire (declared in 1990), i.e. Canyards Hills. These and the nearby hamlets of Wigtwizzle and Canyards give the area a rather mysterious feel especially emphasised by their Wikipedia description of the Hills as being “tumbled ground” and “a chaotic mass of sub parallel ridges separated by narrow areas of marshy ground”; there are also some ponds there. The presence, also, of a 10m cliff, bracken, mud, reeds, rocks and possibly heather must surely give DPFR the opportunity to designate the area as a site for Warts’ Special Training or maybe as a test for qualification into the Warts?
We were promised more interest by our leader, Andy, this time of the running type. His challenge was to run without stopping or walking up a long (and runnable) sloping track through a wood (though not sure which one). Because of a natural break, I missed the instructions and ended up both running and walking, though whilst keeping up with others who were running. Andy did however promise another opportunity, this time as part of a run from Broomhead.
Having seemingly gone round in circles for some time, we descended to the road around Agden reservoir for the last leg to the car park. Such was our anxiety to get back, that a short cut was taken. We had thus far kept reasonably dry feet but, to complete the set of underfoot conditions and to wash the mud from our shoes, some of us plunged into knee to thigh high water for some extra refreshment to round off tonight’s rather cold excursion.
More refreshment was provided at the Plough where, besides proposing a (inverse?) correlation between age and “feels like” temperature, we agreed it had been a good outing with plenty of variety. Thanks all.
Graham
For those unsure about where we went, with the benefit of modern technology, and hindsight, we can share a map with you (we went anticlockwise):
