It is with regret that I must report that few if any of the thirteen of us had wet feet at the end of our run from Westend. Whether there were any withdrawal symptoms has not yet been disclosed but it may take some time for the effects to become manifest. Rehabilitation will possibly only take place with the return of prolonged rain which seems unlikely, as yet another day of bright sunshine dawns. So the Slow Warts will have to just grin and bear it.
To help the group in these difficult hot conditions, Andy had carefully considered options for the first climb and spared us the deep heather and bilberry out of the Ditch Clough plantation, for a track, considered as a road by some Slow Warts, up towards the edge of Alport Castles, thereby avoiding descending it on the return. Such consideration! This climb started a bout of nostalgia for the days when the original Margery Hill race included the final climb up this track which, in our youth was run up. Today we largely rambled before cutting off through the heather to Birchen Hat for a knee testing descent to the rocky jumble of the Castles for the climb up The Tower. This is where the Slow Warts convert from ramblers to scramblers up the path (?) to the sunny summit ledges where basking was allowed before the descent.
Contemplating the descent into Alport Castles
On The Tower
More Tower scramblers
The view from The Tower
In the dark, the view is restricted to the limit of the torch power, which is useful in any tendency to vertigo, the heights just can’t be seen. So in the bright sunshine we bravely tottered down the dusty and surprisingly slippery rocks whilst youngster Louis skipped over them like an alpine chamois. A path of sorts weaved its way through more rocky debris, it must have been a spectacular earth-shattering landslide at the time.
By this time we’d been enjoying ourselves for about an hour, not long enough so, in the interests of maintaining Dark Peak ruins and curiosities (a fitting description of Slow Warts), we extended the run via a contour to include the stone pile at Whitefield Pits. A few stones were piled on but possibly still not enough to reach cairn status but it may assist competitors in finding this check point on the Rowlee Zig-Zag Summer Series race. There is a fine view of the edge from the bowl of Whitefield Pits and of Andy descending into it from his alternative higher line which provided a clearer aspect of the check point.
By now, we had done enough extra time so our target was now to return via a pond (not on the map) near Green Clough. Up to now we had been mainly on paths or tracks but any sense that this would continue was quickly shattered by an extended tramp through deep heather, tussocks and bilberry. To quote Moz, “At least it’s character building”, someday, someone will explain this to me. To avoid being drawn into Ouzelden and Cote Cloughs, a grand contour was taken towards Green Clough near where Bob took us to a well-hidden, from above and below, pond. A final descent brought us to the bottom of the ascent “road” and the car park.
Though almost full, the welcoming Yorkshire Bridge Inn, our next check point, managed to open their conservatory for our use. As always discussions ranged far and fairly wide for we fell ramblers, scramblers and occasional runners though the evening’s light and clarity was truly memorable and spectacular.
Thanks to all.
Graham
Track thanks to Chris