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The Pennine Way | |
| Introduction Edale Crowden Globe Farm Slack Top Ponden Thornton Malham Horton Hawes Tan Hill |
 From above Laddow Rocks, down Crowden Great Brook |
Bowes Middleton Langdon Beck Dufton Garrigill Alston Greenhead Twice Brewed Bellingham Bryness Uswayford |
I was dropped off at the Crowden-in-Longdendale Youth Hostel by my landlady from the previous nights B&B on an overcast and dull morning. From the youth hostel, I walked along a lane to cross Crowden Great Brook on a bridge and meet the PW as it left the Longendale valley on a stony path. The path rose steadily to the Oakenclough Brook. Here the PW climbed a sharp 100 metres up a sandstone ridge to the top of the cliffs leading to Laddow Rocks where there is a cairn. If you would rather look up at the rocks there is a faint path contouring below them that branched off just after the brook. A path headed straight ahead for Greenfield but the PW followed the cliff edge closely before descending to join Crowden Great Brook (and the lower path). The valley opened up here and the rolling moorland ahead became obvious.
The going got a bit wet with a number of crossings of sidestreams until I branched away up the grassy slopes of Dun Hill and then climbed up a more eroded path onto Black Hill. The OS pillar on Soldier's Lump (Black Hill) has the reputation of being surrounded by a 200 metre wide quagmire of naked black peat. I found the going surprisingly dry and managed to get to the pillar dryshod. The area around the pillar is called Soldier's Lump to commemorate the efforts of the Royal Engineers who surveyed the region in the last century.
Note that the old route NW over Wessenden Head Moor to the A635 road and over the peat sponges of Featherbed, White and Broadhead Mosses to Black Moss is not recommended. The path where it exists is very boggy and the terrain is not inspiring. The only good thing about it is that it avoids the descent and climb involved in the Wessenden alternative.
I dropped slightly to the shoulder above Issue Clough (Black Dike Head) where there are good views in clearer weather. Ignore any path that drops into Issue Clough - they are traces of an old route. Note that the track goes down the left hand side of the clough - there were a couple of lads wandering around on the other side (I hope that they were not fellow PW hikers). Remember to look back up the clough to a nice waterfall. The path lead sharply down the slopes to a drainage ditch and wall that went ruler-straight to the A635 road. This is where I had lunch - not much traffic on the road and dry ground to sit on. The stone enclosure that the PW passes through is the site of the Isle of Skye Inn which was demolished in the 1950's to ensure that the waters of the nearby reservoirs could not be polluted.
After lunch, I followed a faint path downhill to a track giving quick walking past the 2 Wessenden reservoirs. The PW was diverted over the dam at the second reservoir where a good path contoured around the hillside to a weir on Blakely Clough. There is a lofty waterfall on a stream just opposite Wessenden Lodge (which seems to no longer offer refreshments and thus the diversion). Across the weir the path become thin but well-defined as it climbed up to Black Moss and its 2 reservoirs (all these reservoirs supply the cities of Manchester and Huddersfield). As the PW passed the reservoirs, it became wet but not too muddy. A footbridge over the outlet from Black Moor Reservoir sent the PW along the reservoir embankment to dry and sandy paths . The weather also cleared enough to get good views of Redbrook Reservoir with a sprinkling of sail-boats.
An unseen achievement of the 1800's are the three massive tunnels that lie deep under the A62 road. These consist of the longest canal tunnel in Britain (about 5 kilometres long) along with two railway tunnels of similar length. The last 500 metres of the PW paralleled the A62 road (which was not too obvious in it's cutting) on an old packhorse road with the reward of a refreshment van parked at the south end of the cutting. With a good cup of tea inside of me, I crossed the road and followed it around to Globe Farm Guest House and my B&B for the night.
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