LEJOG Day 46: Diggle to Mankinholes

Weather: Partly cloudy with stiff, chilly westerly

Distance covered today: 20.8km (12.7mi)

Last night's B&B: Sunfield Accommodation (£35)

Cumulative distance: 897.8km (557.9mi)/ % Complete: 46.9%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 46 (click!)

Despite increasing obstacles, I’m still just about able to get onto the net. I’m in the local pub for a bite to eat, after struggling a little at the B&B. It is intensely frustrating when there is a strong wireless signal, but the owners have simply forgotten their logon code and have failed to write it down! In mitigation, they generally admit that computers are just a mystery to them, but when I interrogated them, they did admit that an increasing number of people want to get connected. It would be so easy to fix it, but they do not. Ah well! This evening, not much else worked in my room either, and when I arrived my landlady was expecting me to be camping, despite an originally clear request to her for B&B facilities. Her husband ignored me completely despite the fact I was standing almost next to him.  I think I can deduce that their hearts are not in their work. And they can readily anticipate that there will be no return business from this customer!

Today’s walk was really a walk in two parts. The first bit involved a steady climb onto some lovely moorland from Standedge to Blackstone Edge. The way lay along a stony promontory of blackened rocks as the hills divide one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, though on top of the ridge, there was a real sense of wilderness. The views of the urban areas below constantly changed. At one point I could clearly see the tall buildings of Manchester far in the distance to the South West, but in most cases my maps were too local for me to identify the towns. It is remarkable that these moors have remained as remote as they are. Almost anywhere else, they would have been subject to gradual development. Every so often, the peace would be shattered by a howling motorway or other arterial road carrying unbelievable amounts of traffic from city to city, but otherwise the peace was pervasive, interrupted mostly by a vast number of skylarks.  The second part of the walk was very different, with the path essentially flat and bordering a series of vast reservoirs supplying the towns and canals below.

I think I am still coming to terms with the Pennine Way. For a start, there are a lot more serious walkers here. Possibly for this reason, they are a lot less friendly to each other. I think I can say that my attitude to others hasn’t changed at all, but the response here is distinctly cooler. I accept that the volume of people walking must make a difference, but I can’t help feeling there is something else in the atmosphere as well. Maybe I am overreacting to the brusque northern manner and maybe it is just that I am alone again after a couple of delightful days in the company of special people. Certainly, here in the pub tonight, I am invisible, even to the people at the next table, in a way that didn’t happen further south. If it carries on like this, they’ll be shooting at me by the time I reach Scotland!

It is though still too early for me to comment on how I will feel about walking the lonely Pennine Way. I think I need a few more days of solitude and contemplation to reach the sort of equilibrium in which I start to ignore little irrelevances such as those I have been talking about so far.  But I did have a moment of reverie today, following the walk with Richard and Ellie yesterday. I think I mentioned that Richard B served in the Armed Services for a period and subsequently in the Territorial Army.  I have no doubt that he served with distinction, very much in contrast to my own undistinguished service as a conscript in the South African army many years ago.

It all started well enough. Soon after basic training I applied for and was selected for officer training. I worked hard at it, and after the Jesuits, I thought the Sergeant Majors were really a little soft. In fact I did extraordinarily well. We were marked on all aspects of the training, and eventually I received my commission with the second highest mark, behind a fellow whose name, John Bryant, I can for some strange reason, still remember. Bryant was brilliant at rugby and cricket which of course gave him an advantage in South Africa! As an officer, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I was still too young to drive, but I had a driver and a Landrover to inspect the guard and on my nights off, I could visit the pubs of Cape Town.

I did though seriously blot my copybook shortly before we were released. It was 1967 and everyone in Europe and America was getting high in the “summer of love”. As usual, with my admiration of all things foreign, I was reading everything I could find on the subject. As conscripted officers, we were asked by the senior permanent force officers to prepare and deliver lectures on a variety of subjects to the troops.  Most of my colleagues chose fairly safe subjects, but I decided that I would present a lecture on the virtues of marijuana. Of course I knew almost nothing about it and hadn’t at that stage even tried it myself, but I was full of all sorts of ideas about it, some reasonable, such as the case for legalisation, and some simply barmy, such as “the path to peace and love”. My statistics were gleaned from the pages of Newsweek and Time. My authority was my youth. I had no idea that many of my audience were regular smokers of “dagga” (marijuana in South Africa), and although I knew that dagga was illegal, I had no idea how big a problem it was seen to be by the army authorities. After all, the Vietnam War was reaching a climax and apparently half the American army was high on drugs. Of course the army was interested.

The result was complete chaos. My lecture was warmly received by the majority of troops in the audience, but when the Major in charge realised that I was not condemning the drug, but actually arguing for its legalisation and suggesting that society would be the better for it, all hell broke loose. At first he tried to argue against me, but I had all the facts, and it was clear I also had the audience! The meeting was broken up and everybody sent packing. I was sent to see the colonel. He tried to reason with me, but I had the bit between my teeth. Eventually, all that happened was that he decided that the series of lectures should be allowed to cease, after a decent interval, so the connection wouldn’t be too obvious.

It marked a distinct change of relationship between the army and me, but that is another story.

Looking at Richard yesterday, understanding his sense of duty and tradition, I just couldn’t imagine a similar thing happening in this country, under any circumstances.

The view from my bedroom window last evening, just before sunset

A straight bit of Pennine penance

Windfarms all over the horizon

Manchester, to the south west, at full zoom

Somehow today I went from Derbyshire to York to Lancashire to West Yorkshire. All in a day!

A graceful and slender little bridge built specifically to carry the Pennine Way over the howling, whining M62!

Apparently the area below is one of the most densely populated places in Europe. This old guy seems to have been complaining about it for milennia!

This is a mediaeval signpost, called the Aiggin Stone. It led to a Roman road, itself built on an ancient road and now improved by great granite slabs. I went the wrong way at the stone and missed the lot!

Looking down on Mankinholes, my resting place for tonight

Stand-off on the way down to Mankinholes

Stoodley Pike. Yet another monument to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo!

LEJOG Day 45: Torside to Diggle

Weather: Steady rain, relenting late on

Distance covered today: 24.4km (15.2mi)

Last night's B&B: The Old House (£50)

Cumulative distance: 877.0km (544.9mi)/ % Complete: 45.8%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 45 (click!)

Exhilarated just won’t do it!  Firstly, I survived it, but much more importantly, despite persistent rain and low cloud, I thoroughly enjoyed it! My first day on the Pennines was as long and as hard as I had expected, but three things made it much easier and more enjoyable than I had anticipated. For a start, I was joined by my good friend Richard B and his absolutely delightful daughter Ellie. Richard is an old colleague of mine from those dark days of work, who has consistently made the effort to keep in touch despite the overwhelming demands of a very busy, international career and bringing up four delightful daughters with his lovely wife, Wendy.  The whole family came from southern England to the start of the Pennines partly so that Richard and Ellie could walk the first leg with me, and that is nothing less than an enormous compliment.

It has to be said that there were times when I believe that secretly Ellie was asking herself just what on earth was she doing on top of the moors in the driving rain, with water in her boots and two old men talking about really boring work stuff, but to be perfectly honest, she never showed a bit of it. She was the perfect companion for the entire trip and a credit to her parents.

But I digress. I said there were three things that made the difference today. The second was that I took Veronica’s advice and swapped my very trusty and hugely comfortable old boots for a new pair that I had walked in shortly before leaving home. For me this was a difficult decision. My old boots have become so comfortable that they really feel like a second skin, and I was reluctant to change them for a new and potentially rather stiff pair, but the tread of the old pair is now almost worn out from all my road-work, and as I am nearly half way, it did seem sensible to change them so that I had good, grippy tread and sound waterproofing on the Pennine Way part of the journey.  Veronica was very forceful on this point, and how right she was! Today, I waded through ankle deep fords on a very regular basis and my feet remained as dry as a bone. The old boots would have been sopping! Additionally the extra tread was a welcome protection against some very slippery sections of the path.

Thirdly, yesterday I gave way to the consistent advice of both of my daughters and bought myself a couple of walking poles. Today they were lifesavers. Not only did they keep me upright in the streams but they very greatly assisted my ascents and descents, although it has to be said, they were a pain on the flat. I haven’t quite sorted out my walking technique and I need to be able to stash them away more easily, but that will come. My only problem now is that with all that upper body work, it isn’t just the nether regions which are suffering! Your correspondent is a wreck from the neck down, and after a couple of delicious beers, he isn’t much good from the neck up either!

So, the first day of the Pennine penance is over!  It was really reassuring to have Ellie and Richard with me. Richard is an old hand with much experience of the English wilds and a deep love of the countryside. His phlegmatic and practical approach to all the obstacles we faced was hugely motivational and it was delightful to be in the company of someone who so clearly enjoys the wild parts of Britain. He told me many tales of his experiences on the Monroe’s, and in the army. He spoke movingly of the permanent beauty and peacefulness of these wild places and how they help to put the business world with all its ephemera in perspective. Most importantly, he also made me feel confident about the test that lies ahead of me. I think I can see how I will cope.

He and his family’s arrival coincided with Veronica’s departure. That too was fortunate, as my parting from Veronica was also likely to be a little emotional. From now onwards, I will be too far north for Veronica to visit me, so we will be apart for the rest of the journey. We spent frantic hours last night, filling in spreadsheets with phone numbers and grid references, poring over maps and books and generally trying to sort out my plans for the rest of the trip. It is all much more complicated than it sounds, driven amongst other things by the constant need to keep the weight of my pack down at critical points in the journey. In the end, with her dedicated assistance, the plan has come together and is looking robust, at least until 16th July, which is a huge step forward and takes a lot of the pressure off me.

Despite all this effort we also managed fascinating trips to Edale and Buxton to see some of the sights that would have eluded me as a result of my shortcut to Torside. Both of these places were interesting, but particularly Buxton fascinated me, because it seems to have been arrested in its nineteenth century splendour, complete with pavilions, the opera house, the crescent and its lovely gardens. It is quite clear why so many genteel and polite people came here to “take the waters” in the nineteenth century. There is even a place where one can drink the genuine Buxton bottled water that is so expensive in the cafés of London straight from a water fountain below the pavilion.

In those days, the genteel folk just enjoyed the delights of Buxton. These days, their successors head for the moors! Finally, I have finished my first day on these moors and I am not feeling as intimidated as I had anticipated. Let us see what tomorrow will bring!

Oh dear! He should have stuck to walking!

Veronica and Marion chilly in the Peaks above Edale

Marion enjoying Buxton spring water from its source. It was warm!

Marion enjoying tea in the pavilion

An elegant row of houses in Buxton

Mary Queen of Scots spent two years in this hotel

Yours truly with Veronica

Richard and Ellie setting out on the Pennine Way this morning!

A sign warning us off the bogs. Ignore it and one can sink to one's neck and do lots of environmental damage!

Today's rain brought forward torrents of water!

Yours truly in full rain gear with Ellie

A river through the Peaks

The colours of the moors

The white flowers of the grasses on the moors

Like a lightshow at Christmas

The black peat which was laid down as a result of the pollution of the industrial revolution in the north of Britain

Richard, Ellie and I at the top of Black Hill (581m)

Richard fording a stream on the way down

All of a sudden, plenty of water!

On our way down to Diggle, a view of two of the cooling towers that connect to the railway and the canal that tunnel through below the Pennines

LEJOG Day 44: New Mills to Torside

Weather: Cloudy with blustery westerly, then some sun

Distance covered today: 18.1km (11.2mi)

Last night's B&B: Packhorse Inn (£67.50)

Cumulative distance: 852.6km (529.8mi)/ % Complete: 44.6%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 44 (click!)

Yet another first for me!  I’m sitting in a laundrette in Glossop waiting for Veronica and Marion to arrive, because Marion is intending to walk the last few kilometres to Torside with me. They are still a couple of hours away, so I decided I might as well make use of the time and the laundrette to wash my clothes so that this sort of chore doesn’t waste our time together tomorrow. The trouble was that the only clothes that needed washing were everything I was wearing. So I took myself off to a public loo, stripped naked in the booth and changed into a fresh, clean set of clothes. I felt something between a thief and a spy and I wondered on exit whether the bobby on the beat that I had seen on the way in would have noticed this transformation and decided it was just a mite suspicious; “’ullo, ‘ullo, ‘ullo, wot ‘ave we ‘ere! And just why might you be feeling the need to change yer identity at 12:30 in the day?” Well, disappointingly, he wasn’t there on the way out.

Today’s walk was pleasant and undemanding so far, though after the past few days of flat walking, the return of the hills is a significant change. The moors are now all around me, looking very high and very forbidding. The weather is also a little intimidating; low scudding cloud and a blustery and very chilly wind. I will now be rather pleased to actually start the Pennine phase of the journey. It has been looming in front of me for what seems like ages now, and the anticipation is generally worse than the reality.

At least last night’s B&B was a real pleasure. It was the most expensive night of the journey so far, but it really was equivalent to staying in a 5-star hotel, only with personal service and really good beer!  It was so good that I’m sure that when I look at my final ratings of all the B&Bs that I have stayed in, it will be up there at the top, achieving a rating of “Make a special trip to enjoy this B&B”. The food last night was almost up to home cooking standard! The wifi connection was the strongest and fastest I’ve had away from home, the bed was extraordinarily comfortable and the breakfast was superb (though I limited myself to fruit, toast and tea. I did feel a wrench turning down the smoked salmon and scrambled eggs)! I also felt guilty enjoying it all in Veronica’s absence!

While sitting in the laundrette, as one does, I have been busy on my netbook! I have made a minor administrative correction to the statistics of my trip to date. I now have to hand at last a reasonably accurate estimate of the total distance from Glossop (where I am right now) to John O’Groats, following the precise route that I intend to take from here. This means that I can now calculate a more accurate percentage of the total distance covered to date. My calculations show that I will walk a total of 1,913km, rather than my initial estimate of 1,760km. As of last night, I had walked 835km, which means that the percentage complete reduces from 47.4% to 43.6%. This is about what I had expected and is the result of the rather eccentric route that I took through Cornwall and Devon and my decision to walk up Offa’s Dyke and across Shropshire, rather than take a more direct route to the Pennine Way. In effect, it means an addition of about 3 days or so to the journey, which isn’t very much.

By the next post, I will have completed my first day on the Pennine Way!! Tally Ho!

Those are the Pennines glowering behind the friendly hill!

Now we are in stone wall country. The hedges of the south have given way to the walls. Why?

Cloudscape with wall....

I kid you not! Pistol Farm is situated in Gun Lane!

As is Gun Farm. These must be aggressive people!!

Wherever I go, even in the loneliest of places, the posties in their little red vans are always cheerful, always courteous and always present. It is inconceivable that rural Britain could survive without them.

They are trying to make me homesick!

LEJOG Day 43: Macclesfield to New Mills

Weather: Cloudy and cool, tried to rain, but failed

Distance covered today: 20.2km (12.9mi)

Last night's B&B: Moorhayes House (£45)

Cumulative distance: 834.5km (518.5mi)/ % Complete: 47.4%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 43 (click!)

This is a fantastic adventure!  There are times when I can scarcely believe this is happening to me.  Earlier today, I was wandering around a labyrinth, preoccupied with its design. A dog-walker came past and he must have noticed the look of boyish preoccupation on my face.  Suddenly I caught sight of him, smiling ruefully at me!  In retrospect, I can hardly blame him. I should act my age!

Interestingly, the thing I have found is that my moods change more rapidly on this walk than has been my previous experience. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is the obvious fact of being essentially alone for an extended period, or at least with the company only of strangers. Another factor is the physical demand on my aging bones. I tend to be in conversation with my body most of the time, and when it is complaining, I tend to feel a bit down. This morning, though, I was in the very best of moods. Yesterday’s heavy rain, which had most conveniently coincided with my impromptu rest day, gave way to cloudy but dry weather, and contrary to my expectations, the route today was full of interest and variation.

My eternal spring is continuing. I thought a couple of days ago that it was beginning to wane, but I have noticed with great interest the point that Julian made to me earlier that wild flowers tend to be absent from the side of busy roads. I don’t know why this should be. It could be a lack of insects for pollination, or just that the seeds are unable to settle and germinate, but the effect is increasingly obvious. As soon as one returns to rural paths and canal towpaths, the flowers, and my spring, return. I have now been looking at spring flowers since the start of April! Though to be fair, it has felt as if I have been advancing into winter! It remains a matter of wonder to me that advancing northwards by a matter of a couple of hundred miles (much less, of course, than I have covered from the extreme South West) can possibly result in so dramatic a change to the climate. Also, I do feel I had better enjoy the present, because as I watch the weather forecasts on a nightly basis, the message is always the same: rainy, windy and cold in the north, dry and warm in the south. I am looking for a supreme example of Kevin luck!  As we advance into June, I need a change to the Jetstream, sending the cold fronts over the top of Scotland. Watch this space!

But, back to the present, or as I am about to describe, anything but!  As I was wandering along the easy routes of the last couple of days, I had time to let my mind wander, and, not for the first time, it wandered on to the subject of cosmology. For those of you uninterested in the subject, though I simply cannot imagine anyone who isn’t interested, look away now!

I have been puzzled for some years by the repeated observations of eminent and credible scientists of their discovery of stars that exploded soon after the big bang, the light of which is only now reaching us on Earth. Consider this recent report from the BBC, “A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope. Scientists believe the blast, which was detected by Nasa's Swift space observatory, occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang. This means its light has taken a staggering 13.14 billion years to reach Earth.”

Now the thing that has puzzled me for ages is that if everything started at a “point” at the time of the Big Bang, then, by definition, we must have been very much closer to the star that “cataclysmically” exploded than we are now. According to Einstein’s theories, nothing can travel faster than light, so that means the light from the exploding star should have reached us a very long time ago; in fact long before our galaxy existed!  So what is it doing only catching up with us now?

This problem has fascinated me for years, but I often feared that the answer would be caught up in the “curvature of the space-time continuum” and other Einsteinian conclusions, and would therefore escape my simple reasoning. But the glorious advantage of long distance walks is that one is able to frame one’s questions precisely and then use the wonderful web to ask them. Last night I found out that my assumption that nothing could move faster than light is wrong! It is true that no information can travel faster than light, but that doesn’t mean that relative to each other, two bodies cannot recede from each other faster than the speed of light! They just will never be able to see each other doing so!

The other fascinating thing I discovered was that in the very early universe, “expansion” was happening at such a rate that indeed gas particles, etc. within it were receding from each other at a speed much faster than the speed of light. This early expansion eventually slowed, by which time the distance between objects was already prodigious. It was after this that the light from the exploding star set out towards our shores and 13 billion years later, it has only just caught up with us!

The other fascinating conclusion from this insight is that there must therefore be an “envelope”, even more distant from us containing untold galaxies receding at such a rate that the light from them will never reach us. I also understand that for some inexplicable reason, to do with “dark energy and dark matter”, the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating! This must mean that as time passes, progressively fewer heavenly bodies will be visible from Earth and at the edge of that “window” galaxies currently visible will simply fade and disappear! If there are advanced civilisations out there, we will never know!

I have no doubt that the Professor of English who once commented that this blog should restrict itself to a few distinct themes will, if he were still reading it, be horrified by my inexcusable lapse into layman astrophysics, but I am comforted by the thought that he will long ago have passed on to more interesting pastures!  For those of you still toiling through these passages, I can only apologise!

For myself, I am delighted by the fact that I am now very close to Sheffield, and that means, to Robin Hood country. And who should be materialising tomorrow? None other than my darling daughter, Maid Marion! How appropriate is that? She will accompany Veronica, who will be visiting me for the last time on this LEJOG, because henceforth I will be too distant for Veronica safely to get to me.

I can’t wait to see both of them!

An extraordinary footbridge leading to the Middlewood Way

As I get closer to Manchester, so there are more and more reminders of the industrial revolution, such as these mills, which looked almost like a castle

Hacking on the Middlewood Way

The Bollington Labyrinth is based on a Classical Greek unicursal design: the seven rings of the single path are contained in eight concentric walls. The history of labyrinths stretches back thousands of years across the world.  Walking into the centre of the labyrinth is supposed to allow one to discover a sense of inner calm and contemplation. It didn't work for me!

I was fascinated to find an information board marked in kilometres in England!!

A dog rose; dedicated to Veronica

The Middlewood Way, yet another disused railway; easy and attractive

Back on the Macclesfield Canal; feeding the geese

A tranquil stretch of the Macclesfield Canal

My first view of the Pennines

The architecture is changing. There is a distictly northern feel to the blackened stone and the style of building

My very comfortable B&B for the night, The Packhorse Inn outside New Mills