The season’s last winter Warts’ outing saw ten of us at Birchen Clough for a classy and strenuous outing, crossing and recrossing the Alport valley on a splendidly clear evening. Even at the start, our paths diverged through the wooded clough, high and low lines were followed using the trace of a path to steep open ground, Whilst woods provide shelter and shade, it was a relief to get out into the open albeit deep within the clough which splits in two. We took the right hand one to line up for our target of a descent down the firebreak in the Alport plantation.
But there was the small matter of crossing the moor between us and the firebreak top. There are very few contour lines on the map of the moor, so it appears essentially flat, perhaps. Of course, the devil is in the detail, the ground is crinkly with many small ups and downs to be climbed out of and, the downs are usually part filled with water or swamp all making for relatively slow progress. And it is tiring. However, a few nimble Warts (there are some) crossed the moor with apparent ease. The usual motto applies as we descended the firebreak to the river, i.e. when you’re going down, it’s worse going down and when you’re going up it’s worse going up. Adding to that, the flat moor can be troublesome. However, we do really enjoy ourselves otherwise we wouldn’t keep coming back to the Slow Warts.
If you go down, you usually have to go up, steeply in this case, a fate for all fell runners and so we did, searching all the way for easier terrain, sheep tracks, if possible, to reach welcome fewer contours for the final trek to the Alport trig where the Fast Slow Warts were waiting,
The sun was now setting, so to avoid being benighted (as last Wednesday), torches were fixed on heads in anticipation of darkness. Our descent to the river was steep, again, and whilst some ways were obvious, Andy found a significantly quicker line to leave the stragglers behind for the river crossing.
Many years’ experiences have taught me that the underwater stones can be remarkably slippery whilst the dry stones above water are usually safe. Despite that, I slipped into the water in front of the waiting and watching Slow Warts. I emerged sheepishly and dripping wet and squeezing my gloves out. Nevertheless, there was no time to wait and we started our climb out of the river towards the western edge of Alport valley. Such was my water shock, that I sadly took to using a random stick to help me climb up and it was useful. Oh dear!
The long crossing to Birchen Clough was a bit of a tease in that we could see the trees near the path entrance but we never seemed to get any nearer despite running most of the way with trees in view. In fact, we ran parallel to the trees thereby increasing our enjoyment of the “flat” moor. Having spent some time on soft peaty ground, we were finally confronted with the shock of a steep rocky descent through the trees to the carpark. But what an outing, arguably, two and a half hours well spent and rewarded by our return to the YBI. With ten of us there were many different discussion groups including one on dibbing and possible back up methods for checking whether all race runners had been accounted for. One method was to put all collected race numbers on a spike, simple?
Without any doubt, we had a wonderful outing to celebrate the Slow Warts winter season’s end.
Thanks to all.
Graham
