The walk of Sunday May 7th, 2023

My previous post alluded to my desire to ‘tick off’ all of the West Pennines summits (to which I can legally get) and today was planned to be a day for taking in another two: Whimberry Hill and the curiously named Egg Hillock.

Having arrived at my usual parking spot near to the Great Hall / Barn at Rivington I was off and on  route at a little before ten-o’clock with Rivington Pike in mind – not that I was planning on ascending  the mighty mound, just to traverse Rivington Moor / Smithills Moor from this location. The weather was nice, overcast but clearing to reveal a beautiful blueing sky with parting clouds, a slight nag took hold, did I have my factor 30 with me? The title of this post might give a hint as to the answer!

Having taken a grand old time to get to the start of the moors – I had probably taken thirty photos by 11:00, I rounded the final corner on the approach to the gateway at where my long walk over the moors would begin. I had hoped for decent weather having now arrived at the opinion that our weather forecasters appear to exercise about as much skill at weather dowsing as I do at corporate financial projections! I was wary of water still standing on Winter Hill and to be fair although there was still the odd pool of something which was truly awful smelling, the sun had done a splendid job of drying out what can be marshy ground. Progress was never going to be fast with the state of my joints these days, but at least I was not taking on too much of the terrain on the lower sections of my legs and feet! I glanced back often and after a while noticed I had followers behind. But these were not the pounding pelotons of any group from the LDWA or even a ramblers party, just the odd group of two to four people enjoying time-out in the West Pennines – like me. In a little over ninety-minutes (ninety-three to be accurate – having set off at 09: 51) I arrived at the top of the moor and on to Winter Hill (the Road!) within a hundred metres of the main TV mast. And I was sweating, profusely. The crossing of the moorland is a good and varied walk, but easy on the muscles and joints it is not, and I’d rather not have it any other way! I tottered off over to the end of the road – almost and turned almost 120 degrees to the right in order to get on the path which would lead me over Counting Hill, the Dean Ditch and towards my intended duo of summits.

 

I stopped often to take in the scenery and to refresh myself with water as I was aware of how soaked my forehead had become. I had decided to lunch at my favourite spot in the entire environ – the micro tarn on Counting Hill which is not large enough to feature on any O/S maps and is even missed off plot-a-route and google maps, shame on them. However, apparently it was not missed off the local vandals’ to do list and some (expletive deleted) had taken it upon themselves to dump part of the nearby green plastic fence in the middle of it, I was mortified! I strode on, not wanting to sully my mood for the day with the sight of my special place being subject to thuggery – or strong winds, it may be that this was nature and not human malevolence! After a while I found some seats – rocks at where I could consume my two Chicken Katsu wraps – they were delicious! I did keep one eye fixed on my left hand side during the climb down Counting Hill but could make out no signs of my two intended quarries – Egg Hillock and Whimberry Hill. I did not want to stray too far downhill towards Belmont for fear of having to come back up again empty-handed, so to speak. Ultimately I decided to ask for advice from Sue and Karl the next time that I see them with regards to just

 

exactly where these two minor tops resided. I took a gamble on the next stile’s path leading me to Dean Mill’s reservoir – which paid off and of course from here witnessed what I believe was  Egg Hillock and Whimberry Hill, due North of me and down a quite bumpy and somewhat steep organic path. By now my right knee was giving me grief, the trudge up Winter Hill had used up a lot of my energy and in all honesty I didn’t feel that the two little summits justified the price of another drop and back up again! It is only now, some days later that I regret this decision as I feel that the walk was incomplete.

Which of course it was, I rounded Dean Mills Reservoir and decided that I did not want to walk up the trudge back to Winter Hill road passing Ainsworth’s shooting hut – 2021’s Winter Hill 125 has really instilled in me a certain loathing for this route for reasons I can’t describe! I said hello to a couple and joked that it was serious now as I got my map out – I wanted to find another way of getting around to the back of the Rivvy Barn without doing much uphill work – by now it was bloody roasting at the top of that slope! The man helped – well, he tried to help. As things go, his advice was spot on with how to get back around to the front of Adam Hill – not that he knew it was named such, it was just so funny to watch pointing at places on the map as if they were within five miles of where we really were – he was pointing at White Coppice and then at Withnell Moor, then at Darwen Hill – that would make for a hell of a good walk, just not today thanks all the same! I ambled down a long broad track and turned right on to Coal Pit Road, confident of where I was going.

At just one point did I manage to stumble upon some shade, a lovely little bridge with a beautiful little glade and stream either side of it, I must go back to this. Then it was back to the blazing heat once more, passing by Roscoe tenement and the oddly shaped Brown Lowe – or at least what I believe to be Brown Lowe as it looked a good couple of hundred feet less than the neighbouring Burnt Edge (both of these are also on this spring’s to do list) yet they are supposedly the exact same height! More people came within earshot, the path down from Adam Hill had around eleven people dropping down it – practically a supermarket aisle at Christmas relatively speaking! One had a yapping dog, I may never return!!!

Finally I arrived at the road, considered trying to navigate a way down Crooked Edge Hill, decided against it and then bumped into a tall Irish man. And did we have a good old natter about all things walking and football managers and well most of the news whilst we descended the road down to Georges Lane at a speed that I was never really intending to do! By the time I hit the road I was almost ready to hit the road quite literally and crawl my way back to the car. I was so hot that it was depressing to think that I still had over two miles to drop down to the car. And I just knew that by now I would be looking like a part-boiled lobster! Things were looking bleak! Fortunately I took advantage of a shaded wall and took a good few minutes to rest my weary legs / body and to get out of the sun. So many people walked past me in both directions, and they were all much, much more suitably dressed – none of them being adorned in a Winter coat! I decided that I would take advantage of the Café at the bottom of the Crooked Edge Hill slope for water supplies and ‘necked’ what little I had left, before it got too warm and before I went into dehydration – again. My spirits lifted after the stop and in due course I made it to the café and bought two bottles of water – fifty-percent of which I had drank within five minutes. This was enough to spur me on, to complete the rest of the walk – not that there was any alternative. As with last week

I took the sloping path which detours from the main track and avoids the throng, in less than a mile it lead me to the pivotal junction which can lead left and head off to pastures new – and as of yet unexplored by yours truly or right which goes uphill for a hundred metres then drops down to the bridal-way that cuts through Brerers Meadow Pit – a name of which I had no previous familiarity in spite of having walked here many, many times. A few more turns and a lot more “Ouch” noises – or words to that affect and I was back at the car by 15:45 – five hours and fifty-hot-minutes after setting off on route.

Summary

In spite of the sunburn this was an amazing walk which took in a lot of the scenery that I’d hardly seen in the last eleven years, up close and personal!

The other side of Winter Hill is well explored, that nobody can deny, and yet I felt like a relative stranger to the area! I am a little dismayed with my lack of drive to drop down the slope from the reservoir in order to bag the summits of Egg Hillock and Winter Hill but I really didn’t have the heart to re-ascend after their completion, I guess I’m still knew to this unplanned-detour type of walking which others seem to readily embrace with much gusto! I’ll be back.

I do love how I am now making sense of how the various sections of the entire massif are now connecting to each-other, it’s a really, really big mound of earth and prior to these two visits this year the various summits and sections all seemed somehow disparate, that’s rapidly fading. If I’m good I do hope to traverse Rivington and Smithills Moor, ‘the great western ascent’ as I used to call it another few times this year, the feeling of solitude is intoxicating – perversely I do yearn to do this crossing in mist as I imagine the atmosphere will be out of this world, not something that I’ll be able to predict or control.

Until next time…