Blackstone Edge and The Tour de France

Ever since I found out that the Tour de France was starting in Yorkshire this year, I wanted to go and see it live. Not because I was mad about cycling, I hadn't been on a bike for many years but it is a massive world famous event and it seemed a shame to not see it considering how near to home it would be passing.

The problem was where to go to see it, without getting there ridiculously early or not being able to see because of the crowds. When I checked the route I found it would be passing Blackstone Edge Reservoir on the hills above Littleborough, near Rochdale. Looking at a map, I realised that Blackstone Edge was on the Pennine Way, which passes close to the Ripponden turn off on theM62 and only 3-4 miles from Blackstone Reservoir, so it seemed like a good idea to incorporate a nice walk with seeing the Tour.

An early start saw me drive to a parking spot had found near the M62, when I arrived it was apparent that many others had had the same idea. Fortunately I found a parking space and set off with the masses to walk over up to Blackstone Edge. The path was full of others, I doubt if the Pennne Way has had so many people on it at one time in its entire history.

The walk was relatively easy going as the path ascends up to the Edge itself and while it s not as dramatic as some of the ones we have walked n the Peak Distrct it certainly gave great views, from the Peak District, over Manchester and round to Winter Hill and even Pendle.

Once the path reached the top of the edge it dropped until it reached a “roman road”/old packhorse road and at this juncton stands the Aiggin Stone, a 4 foot medieval waymarker that had stood for around 700 years. At this point it was hard to follow the trail and everyone seemed to pick ther own route down towards the reservoir. Once the reservoir came into view, we could see the masses of people making their way up from Littleborough as well as hundreds who had arrived already.

It was impossible to get close to the road the race would take and so we found a nice hillock a hundred yard back which offered a good view of part of the road across the reservoir. Although it was still over 2 hours until the riders passed there was plenty going on, with processions of cars, motorbikes and sponsors vehicles which made a long cavalcade that preceded the cyclists themselves. As the point where we were waiting was just after a long climb, we were unable to see anything until the riders would actually appear but everyone knew that helicopters followed the riders and so everytime a helicopter appeared expectation rose, only to subside, when the riders did not appear.

Finally we heard cheers and suddenly the leadng group appeared surrounded by a group of cars and motorbikes making the few cyclists hard to spot and soon they were round the corner and going away from us

. Three minutes late the main peleton appeared, all closely bunched together, and travelling qute slowly giving everyone a good view before they too rounded the sharp corner and vanished from sight.

This was the signal for a mass exodus, which we joined and followed a long procession back over Blackstone edge and back to the car.

The weather was lovely and it was a really good day, and although it only took a few minutes before the first and last riders passing by it was a great experience and I am really glad that I made the effort to witness it.

Its been a while -The Roaches and Lud's Church

                                                                     The Roaches

I have rather neglected this blog, not because I have not been walking, I have, when golf have not got in the way, but I never seem to get around to updating it.

Since the last entry about a year ago, we have done some really nice walks. We finally walked the real Froggatt Edge, this was a walk we did a couple of years ago but by mistake we walked White Edge instead. How we could have confused the two s a mystery to me as they really are completely different.

We have walked round Mow Cop, a village on the Staffordshire Cheshire border, Darwen Moor, n Lancashire and Waddington Fell in the Forest of Bowland, We have walked from Bakewell to Chatsworth House and back and  Formby beach and woods, as well as also several canal walks as my walking partner as found an interest in canal travel. They were all  lovely walks however the best and most surprising of the walks was over the Roaches and through Lud's Church in Staffordshire at the Southern end of the Peak District.

Mow Cop, not a run but a folly but in the 18th century

                                                           The Old man of Mow

                                                    Ingleborough from Waddington Fell

 

                                                            Red Squirrel at Formby

 

        

We had a little trouble finding the Roaches, mainly due to me entering the wrong post code in the sat nav. We did finally get on the correct road and we drove a few miles out of  Leek when we were surprised to see the rocky hill of Hen Cloud appear in front of us. I say surprising as we were driving through faierly gently countryside and to see a large rocky clad hill was quite unexpected.

                                                                   Hen Cloud

The Roaches are a series of rocky ridges that run from Hen Cloud, which itself stands apart from the Roaches and its rock faces are popular with climbers .

We parked on the road side, and set of on our walk. The track took us between Hen Cloud and and Roaches and we were soon walking uphill as we neared the first of the climbing sites. The route took us along the bottom of some of the climbs before we picked our way up and onto the top of the ridge.

These ridges command some great views, from the Malverns in the far south to Winter Hill ,and from the Welsh hills over to various heights of the Peak district.

We walked along the top of the ridge and came to Doxey Pool, a small pool on the very top of the ridge. The Roaches used to be home to a small colony of Wallabies, that were released into the wild during the 2nd World War. Sadly there are no reports of any being seen over the last 15 or so years although they did successfully bread here for a number of years.

We continued from Doxey Pool and when we reach the point where we had to descend, we stopped for our lunch. After a break we descended form the ridge and then followed a path down until we reached a wooded area and we set off to find Lud's Church.

After a nice walk through sunlit woods we fnally arrived at Lud's Church, this is not a real church, but is infact a deep cleft in the rocks and owes its name to the fact that it was used as a secret place of worship by the Lollards n the 15th Century. It also has legends surrounding it claiming the likes of Robin Hood and Bonnie Prince Charlie used it as a hiding place to escape capture.

The entrance to the church is almost a pothole, a small hole n the ground where you scramble down to reach the floor and find yourself n a narrow passage with lichen covered rock faces rising around 50 feet above you. It is certainly an atmospheric place and well worth a visit.

                                                          The entrance to Lud's Church

                                                                    Lud's Church

We walked the length of the "church" around 100 yds before continuing on to the far end of our route, we were now out of the wood and back onto a sandy path. This is where we first encountered the flying ants and there were thousands of them, the path was just covered and they filled the air as were started out homeward leg of the walk. This part of the walk was along a low ridge covered in heather.

We eventually reached the path we had taken when descending from the Roaches and instead of climbing back onto the ridge we followed a road that ran at the base of the rocks and after a couple of miles we arrived back at our starting point.