From this title it shouldn’t take long to guess where we started from on our Wednesday night’s ramble. Heather and rocks are pretty common but the other items pin point our location near and over the river Ewden. As always, there were comments about working parties with saws and secateurs to clear what remains of the trod optimistically described as a path. Even the rhodo king himself wavered briefly by turning right instead of left at the beginning of rhodos. Having established that right was wrong, which aroused some deep (?) philosophical discussions, we staggered along mostly avoiding roots, branches and slimy rocks to the girders over the river.
The girders are continuing to rust so the traditional questions about their condition and the number of people they can carry, are asked, though without coming to any conclusion except after the last person has safely crossed, when the condition question is dropped. The avoidance of being the sacrificial tester had understandably caused Moz to investigate the wet option through the river. We all but one regathered on the other bank and waited for Moz who’d not reappeared. There was some grumbling about it being too early in the run to lose anyone but fortunately a search party (Tom) went back to search and, in time, Moz could be heard explaining his delay caused by the change to the girder crossing. The dark and possibly deep waters of the Ewden were far from inviting so in the interests of self-preservation, the girder crossing was taken as the lesser of the two evils.
So with two challenges down and four remaining, we climbed out of the valley through the bracken, still tall from the summer’s extraordinary growth, there was even a request that the leading Warts should tamp down the bracken more, for we tail runners. This was either not heard or ignored, such teamwork! However tall the bracken, there was a feeling that it needed to be well and truly flattened by a decent covering of deep snow which happens to have been forecast for the following week but we’ll see. Once we’d reach the track which was not a challenge though uphill did prove to be not runnable except in our golden memories of this route to Pike Lowe. Heather and rocks did challenge us, as always, and there was also a group split, again as always, to reach the summit.
At Pike Lowe
Some of those taking part in the recent Club Championships, had a yen to revisit the isolated shooting butt (CP 2), a mere 500m at 174⁰ from the summit with plenty of heather to cross, oh joy! There was a “handrail” of a grough, helpfully with stream, for us and because we had spread out, it was found. We were reminded of the marshals Barry and Kris who kept watch there, thanks.
Though the plan was to visit either the lower or upper footbridge in Oaken Clough, our post run drinking time was now being reduced so a pragmatic decision to make another crossing of Ewden was taken and then head for the Broomhead Cabin track. It seemed nevertheless a long way and included a slippery descent into the Ewden and a deepish dip into its black waters followed by an equally steep climb out and through yet more gigantic bracken (the longer the outing, the taller the bracken becomes or is it just me!)
A sprint along the track or, at least, as fast as we could struggle to manage after two and a half hours of challenges brought us to Broomhead.
After all this we did manage a record at the Plough where one of the staff commented that she’d not seen so many people sitting at one table so there’s life in the old dogs yet!
Another memorable evening, thanks all.
Graham
Track thanks to Chris