Alone Beneath The Sky: Todmorden to Haslingden 06/09/15

My Faithful Companion of 5+ years,
Dead but not yet Buried.

Late Summer Jollies come around at last, and I might have started with a eulogy for my green walking hat, my near constant companion over the last four years of rambling, badly damaged in the laundry after having finally gotten too disgusting to wear, but it's still coming with me despite two severely frayed seams and significant shrinkage, it deserves to see both coasts in 2015, as well as my tilt for 2,000 miles before I'm 41. So load up with My Parents, and spend Saturday heading over the top to Lancashire, and making a surprisingly short trip to Finch Cottage, Primrose Hill, near Mellor high on the edge of the Ribble Valley, conveniently placed for three of my drop off points on the trail to the Irish Sea coast, but not really well placed for the start. Fortunately, a ride can easily be obtained back to Calderdale from Blackburn, thanks to the reinstatement of the Todmorden West Curve and the atlternative route to Manchester Victoria, so my folks don't need to have a long early morning odyssey back to Yorkshire before I can get going again.

11.4 miles, via Todmorden Moor, Bacup, Rossendale & Rawtenstall.

Hop off the train at Todmorden just before 10am, and the trot down from the railway station leads me under the end of the viaduct and onto the first ascent of the day without having seen much of the town beforehand, quickly into the shade of the trees of Buckley Wood with the lungs bursting early in the day as a steady drag of the traditional 150m ascent seems to all come at once on Doghouse Lane. Away from tree cover, the rise continues, but yielding the pain somewhat as the track starts offering some views, back the way we came, down the valley towards Summit, and over to Whirlhaw stones and Bridestones Moor, the latter not seen in quite a while, like seven years. Pass out of the loop of the Calderdale Way at Todmorden Edge, over the 300m contour and finally achieving the High Moor altitude, with the moorland way to come becoming apparent as Parkin Lane rises to the hamlet of Sourhall, where new houses have been built, and a new development grows within the footprint of the partially demolished pub. Flower Scar Lane is met, and it peels off from the tarmacked surface, heading roughly out to the prominent lump of Flower Scar Hill, passing remnants of the quarrying industries, including the site of a primitive rock breaker before starting the ascent on a broken stone surface, with some cobbles still in situ to show that this was once the route over to Rossendale before the turnpike, now the A681, superseded it. Another challenging pull uphill, dodging Highland cattle for space in the early going and startling sheep further up, and feeling the breeze is distinctly cool once you have reached the top, over 400m, with the lane claiming that it is not accessible unless you have reason to be visiting the Todmorden Moor Wind farm, and that's a direction I will be ignoring. It's nice to walk among the turbines, only four of them at this hillside, but one of many that fringe Rossendale, which comes into view after the trail's summit has been met, 440m up, and after admiring this new and unfamiliar vista, the track descends to meet the A681, and the end of Calderdale district and our entry into Lancashire, and I haven't even brought my passport as the English Watershed is crossed once again, the first time in more than a year. The view to the moors south of Rossendale is immediately enticing, and despite having plotted a route that keeps to roads for most of its duration, I'll be sticking to the higher lanes so that I might keep the views coming, and to see if this quarter of Lancashire really is its own version of Calderdale.

So keep high on the northern side of the valley, following the well-metalled but utterly superseded Todmorden Old Road, rising behind the hamlet of Sharneyford and gaining views and sightlines into the sprawling town of Bacup, well as sprawling as a town can be when contained by high valley sides. Drop in behind the houses as the lane slips steeply down into the town, and have to navigate a bit as Greensnook Lane passes around the cricket club and past the terrace ends, before Lane Head Lane, so good they named it twice, drives me sharply down to arrive at the side of Yorkshire Street, right on the main crossroads in the middle of the town. Bacup town centre hardly looks thriving, but late Sunday morning isn't really the best time to judge, and despite sight of a few mills hidden around the place I get little feeling for why the town is here, but it seems to keep its population, despite being nearly 300m up at the remote end of Rossendale. There's more of the town to be found up Bankside Lane, another pull uphill after all that altitude lost, presenting more terraces and council houses on a lane that feels like progress should have forgotten about it, the rough track not being found until I hit Newchurch Old Road, rising behind Huttock Top farm, and eventually shifting to moorland grass cover as new vistas emerge with Rossendale swinging westwards. A broken track drops through the trees down to the council houses around Osbourne Terrace, and down through distinctly Lancastrian terraces to the edge of the A681, progressing along it without a footway despite being residential on both sides, and this middle part of the valley gets confusing as I'm sure I'm not in Bacup anymore, but none of the settlements in this vicinity seems to be large enough to be a single town, or well defined enough to be a village. So I'm puzzled as Booth Road rises away from the largest mill met in the valley, and instead of gaining views down the valley on the elevated Old Road, we have a lot tear races and leafy suburbia on the rise and fall down towards Waterfoot, and if you were to ignore the occasional hillside view across the valley or up to isolated ancient farmsteads, you might convince yourself that you were in a plush Leeds suburb, like Gledhow or Roundhay. A wildly leafy break comes with the woods around Newchurch, up on its hillside, and our drop to meet Whitwell Beck and the crossing of the Pennine Bridleway's Mary Townley loop, one of two ways of making a circular tour of Rossendale, kept on the distant 'to do' list.

Rise on the old road up to Newchurch, home of at least four churches in a very small area, and at the end of the pull, outside The Boar's Head, is a good spot to stop for lunch, knowing that there won't be much more uphill battling on the day's going, and feeling that I'm making good time, I amble a bit as Newchurch Road offers a few more enticing vistas up and down before slipping into full-blown suburban mode again on both sides of Higher Cloughfold. It seems that my impression of Rossendale as a forgotten post-industrial corner of Lancashire is completely off-base and unfounded, and it all starts to feel a bit desirable, if it wasn't for the total lack of rail transport, all the L&Y's lines falling to the Beeching Axe, and the efforts of the East Lancs Railway to revive them between Heywood and Rawtenstall. That's the only part of this corner that I have visited previously, and I won't be seeing much more of the town as I meet the Old Road - Burnley Road crossroads, where the Ram's Head has become a beauty salon, and a small industrial building has a somewhat outsized chimney, and the last rise of that day comes up Haslingden Old Road. Another long pull, and more suburban semis, on the ascent behind Whitaker Park, and below the artificial ski slope, and past even more desirable residences to get to the views at the angle of the valley as its westwards trend ends, looking south to Whittle Hill and Cowpe Lowe on one side and Ramsbottom Peel Tower, whilst the M66 runs down the valley of the Irwell, which is the prime reason for Rossendale not being On The Moon, as it were. The road swings around Height End, the valley going north and Haslingden appears down below, with the eye already having travelled up the clough to the west, the way out of the valley to come, but we need to make a transit through the town first, and we hit the rough track downhill when the Old Road loses its footway, quite inexplicably. New houses are found at the top of Hillside road, council houses in the middle and terraces at the bottom, giving a good slice through this town's history in one road, which brings us down to Manchester Road and the way past the Memorial Gardens and the Empire of Takeaways to the main crossroads in the town with Deardengate Draw my finish line outside the Black Bull hotel, one of the pair still active at the town's centre, just before the 3pm firing of a cannon, laid out of part of a street festival that has closed the road to the north and brought the town out to play, and thus as my parents arrive to take me away, I find all my expectations of Rossendale have been turned over, for the better!

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 1891.4 miles
2015 Cumulative Total: 489.2 miles
Up Country Total: 1731.7 miles
Solo Total: 1679.4 miles