The Great Three Reservoirs Walk of 2nd January, 2022
Ask any walker who has spent any time at all wandering around the hills and moors of the West Pennines about which walks to try out and sooner or later the “Three Reservoirs” will be uttered. These are The Jumbles, Turton and Entwistle and Wayoh – a somewhat evocative name in itself. Combined, the aggregate of the three when traversed comes in at just over ten miles – sixteen kilometres, not exceedingly far, granted, but far less innocuous then you might imagine. Should a census ever be taken to ascertain which area of land plays host to the highest density of footpaths; Turton, stretching from Edgworth across to Bromley Cross, Bradshaw and dare I add Egerton; would surely trump any other contender. There are hundreds of them! So much so that I’d wager more hikers deviate from their walk’s primary objective in this local than those who might abandon any other long distance route in the country. The landscape is literally dotted with footpaths varying in quality to broad tarmac tracks to quagmires and all in-between.
Sunday the 2nd of January was my first attempt at circumnavigating a route that simply has to noted as “a classic”. I had some misgivings prior to the start of the walk. As referenced above; there are so many footpaths and offshoots in these here parts that it can become all to easy to wander off track and by way of contrast it’s not impossible to completely overthink the problem and become confused in a wash of indecision, it had taken me more that one attempt to finally conquer the giant which is Cheetham Close a couple of years ago! The first half of the route, on paper makes for a far more higgledy-piggledy amble than ever need be. All that needed to be done was to exit the car park, head uphill towards Ousel Nest, re-join the path which circumnavigates the Jumbles and then cross Chapeltown Road and onwards to the next reservoir at Entwistle. the authors of my intended route seemed to have become somewhat foggy-minded in their descriptions and I do believe if I had followed the route verbatim, I’d have once more ended up on Turton golf course – a turn of events I would not wish to bestow on my worst enemy. Instead, I chose to join the Witton Weavers Way. Those intelligent men of Bolton who seek to create walking routes for us lesser minded souls should take note from what has gone before, NOT EVERY ROUTE HAS TO BE CIRCULAR! Not does it have to be as confusing as can be. These individuals are stuck in a frame of mind that insists each published footpath must continue in a circular pattern, or else name separate routes the same thing – there are no less than four Witton Weavers Way footpaths, and the Rotary Way is indeed circular, for reasons which defy my comprehension!
I toyed with the notion of ascending Cheetham Close once more but gave way to the fear that I may again back a lame horse and end up circulating the fields in the rain. No, this time I would stick to the prime objective of getting my behind over to the next reservoir. Even though the rain was very much on-again, off-again, the scenery did its best to please and I was awestruck with breath-taking views across to Holcombe and Musden Head Moors. At times I was awash with optimistic yearnings that the rain might finally cease… It was a genuine pleasure to see more walkers on route, as can be perceived by the general tone of this writing, this was not a day for the fair-weather walker, yet still I spied around twenty on route to Green Arms Road and my surprise at the sheer volume of cars at the car parks was practically tangible. Reservoir number two could now be ticked off the list.
From memory of my first ‘long Amble’ I headed off in the direction of the Strawberry Duck – this is a pub, in case you might think I’d be ingesting some of the local mushrooms (I was not far from Tockholes!). This was potentially the trickiest part of the route if only because of the abundance of errant drivers who appeared to have gone a little off-piste and were seeking out all manner of pockets to practice the art of reversing around pedestrians. Luckily no one was hurt! Pub located I then spent five frustrating minutes over-thinking the decision of a way forward as the book referred to the railway station and to pass it on the right, it didn’t mean that I was to walk to the right of the pub and eventually this sank into my somewhat literalistic brain!
And now for a long downhill section. The older I get, the harder going downhill seems to become as it genuinely feels like my backpack is trying to urge me forward down a 1:3 slope, not an ideal situation! A few moments and one never-ending corner (that obviously did end or I would have died of hypothermia by now as I would still be there!) and I was presented with the biggest-looking reservoir that I’ve seen in Lancashire. Wayoh is a whale of a size, actually it could play host to a whole load of whales, it’s vast and yet doesn’t appear any bigger than its neighbours in digital format! I should add that by now it has been raining for the last hour, with virtually no stop, just a couple of minor easings of the continual flow. The light has faded even though we’ve not truly said goodbye to lunch time.
I round a corner, then another, this pattern seems to go on and on, the south side of the reservoir remains an epoch away and I’m at the northern end. People pass and eventually I ask one couple as to the whereabouts of the Jumbles and they respond like I have presented them with an insurmountable task. I follow their advice and ascend the gentle slope to what I will later come to realise is the long road through Chapeltown. But the rain increases in magnitude, it’s officially “throwing it down” now with no sign of any abatement. I’m beginning to grow cold, and tired, and hungry and very, very, irrational. I implore to nature that the rain “just stop!” to no avail. I’m now shivering and beginning to fluctuate between drowsy, scared, tired and foggy-headed, this last state of mind is anathema to me, it’s frustrating and dangerous. Outside a restaurant: Giuseppe’s I stop to make a phone call. I know that the most sensible plan of action now is to get me back to the car park at the Jumbles, but I don’t know the names and numbers of any local taxi rank, so I call my sister’s and plead with her husband to order a taxi for me.
The restaurant owner must have heard me because soon he opened the door and indicated where I could stand whilst I waited for my transport. A few moments and a phone call later and it occurred to me that I could just wait inside the place and have a warm drink at the same time, so I did this. Ultimately a taxi from Metro arrived and transported a sodden walker back to his dry but cold car from where I drove to my sister’s house and changed into my dry spare set of clothing.
Lessons to be learned.
1: This is an easy walk, which is not that easy, I don’t think I covered ten continual feet in distance which were all flat, this drains the legs and makes one use up all of one’s carbohydrates fairly swiftly. – The lesson, stop and eat! To be fair I might have done this if I could have found somewhere dry!
2: Rain will never, ever, ever, not ever, stop because you want it to do so. The lesson: dress according to the anticipated conditions, I knew it was going to rain but thought that it might only get me for an hour or so and then I’d have finished. In truth this did happen, I aborted the walk within 1.5 miles of the car, but the earlier rain had caused the initial soaking, after this I was only ever going to dry off if the weather did the same… it did not!
3: Reservoirs are wet places because this is ultimately where the rain goes. I should have learned this lesson years ago when (with Southport Ramblers) we walked along a flood-zone, whilst it was still flooding, in the rain! That day I inadvertently waged war with hypothermia and just about managed a victory, the older I get the less likely to be triumphant I will become.
I did enjoy this walk, just not the ending. I have every intention of going back and soon, and I will still attempt this in spite of any rain – I’ll just pay attention to the afore mentioned lessons above. The path (Witton Weavers’ Way) from the rear of Turton Tower to Green Arms Road is so lovely I’d go on to describe the scenery as exquisite and that’s not a word I bandy around recklessly (because I cannot spell it), the environment is captivating and inclines are gradual (if somewhat unrelenting over the course of ten miles) in short; there’s a lot of good here! As tempting as it is to post several of the myriad of photographs I took, I’ll leave it as just one…until after a successful return and completion!
And here is most of the walk on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JCT4QRLc-EI