Hebden Bridge to Burnley 31/07/21

14.7 miles, via Calder Holmes Park, Hebble End, Mytholm, Rawtonstall Bank, Pry Hill, 

 Blackshaw Head, Well Hill, Pole Hill, Hawk Stones, Stiperden Bank & Bar, Coal Clough 

  Wind Farm, Long Causeway, Mosley Height, Mere Clough, Red Lees, Brunshaw, Turf Moor,

   Burnley Town Centre, Sandygate, Barracks, Central & Manchester Road stations.

As we find ourselves on the cusp of August, you might have the hope that we have something like a Summer climate in the air, but we're not seeing anything of the sort as we approach the high season objectives around the moors to the northwest of Calderdale and over the English Watershed into East Lancashire, instead of sunshine and warmth,we've got a cool and white cloud-y sort of day to face, hopeful that the proximity to the Pennines is not going to bring the rain at altitude as we join the old road out of the Calder valley for a proper trek into the unknown. We're not up with the lark today, instead riding out to Hebden Bridge for a 9.15am start, in the hope that predicted rain on the far side of the Pennines might have blown itself out by the time we get there, aiming ourselves towards the high roads by keeping low initially, departing the station to make a passage through Calder Holmes park, where its gloomy and early enough to only have dog walkers for company as we track its paths over to the side of the Rochdale Canal, where we cross Bridge 17 to follow the towpath west, past Blackpit Lock and over the Calder aqueduct. There's light drizzle in the air as we make our way along the back of the factories and terraces of Hebble End that are squeezed onto the narrow island between the river and the canal, keeping to the path until we meet the site of Calder Mills, where we split off to Robertshaw Road, taking us over to the other end of the ranked terraces in this space to follow Stubbing Holme Road as it follows the channel of the Calder, markedly narrower here as it flows down from its confluence with Colden Clough, where a footbridge takes us to the north side again, and up alongside the interceding stream channel. This leads us up to Bank Foot Bridge, where we land towards the western end of town, crossing over the A646 King Street to get on our route properly, starting our ascent of Church Lane as it passes behind the old folks home complex and into the district of Mytholm, passing the church of St James, which confirms itself as Hebden Bridge's parish church, on the closest plot of level ground large enough to accommodate it, as well as passing the local school and starting our climb in earnest as Bank Terrace and Glen View Road start their steep, twisting course uphill between the terraces and semis that cling onto this hillside, among the rising woodlands.

Calder Holmes Park, Hebden Bridge.

The Rochdale Canal, Hebble End.

Colden Clough meets the River Calder.

Ascending Bank Terrace - Glen View Road.

Shelter is gained as we pass under the tree cover, but the walk get no less forgiving as we hit the elevation of Rawtonstall Bank, taking us up two long hairpins on the shortest plausible road distance out of the immediate Calder Valley, where wits need to be kept against the descending traffic, and the legs get a good burn on as we ascend, passing quarry remnants on the upper stretch and feeling like the footpath options around would probably not be any easier to pace and wouldn't necessarily direct us along the trajectory that we are seeking. The rain has passed as we reach the top, emerging onto the high field plateau as gloom fills the skies, all looking markedly worse than last week's mediocre weather, and thus we pause to don my waterproof, mostly as a windcheater as we'll be trekking into the teeth of a westerly wind as we rise on along Badger Lane, which itself offers a fine view back of the downstream Calder Valley, with its steep sides rising above Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd, with the trains passing on the railway line plainly obvious along the straight mile between the two towns. We've a rise to come on, with Heptonstall receding behind us, and the hamlets of Slack and Colden visible among the branches of Hebden Water's valleys before the rise of Pry Hill obscures them, and we press on above the Rawtonstall and Pry farms, with Stoodley Pike sitting on the southern horizon beyond the field apron and across the valley, as is almost customary in these parts, as we roll up over the Pennine Way path as it passes up the driveway from Scammerton farm, and meet the signs welcoming us to Blackshaw Head beyond. As observed last week, it's only a modestly compact hamlet in reality, but it does seem to claim a number of farmsteads and rural terraces within its parish, with the High Top and Cally Hall terraces lying ahead of the uphill passage of the Pennine Bridleway, ahead of the Lane Head and Height Top farms, with every house the Woodland Hall terrace further along having had a staring porch attached to their north faces to get a view across the way, down the Calder valley and over to the ridge rising westwards from Staups Moor.

Rawtonstall Bank.

Downstream Calderdale from Badger Lane.

Badger Lane on the passage around Pry Hill.

Lane Head farm, Cally Hall hamlet-let.

Blackshaw Head itself lies beyond, and the arrival of suburban living in this hamlet seems even more baffling on a grey day like this, again approached from the end by the chapel, though this view from Badger Lane is the only angle where it looks like one, and we arrive at the start of the Long Causeway as the #596 bus terminates and starts its return trip to Hebden Bridge, offering me the last viable escape route before we commit to following the old pre-turnpike roads that hang high above the uppermost Calder Valley and into Lancashire, through a virgin landscape of a whole lot of not much. Leaving our field of walking experience bubble, we find there's a good few farmsteads along the old road, around a dozen or so still ekeing out a living or repurposed as country getaways at well above moorland altitude, so its barely uninhabited but there's a mass of bleakness too. as the valley of Hippins Clough and Daisy Bank Clough beyond, sit devoid of life below Staups Moor and Chisley stones, and interest is drawn ahead to spying the VOR aerial navigation range on Pole Hill some way ahead, a peculiar circular antenna structure which transpires to be not visible up close. Beyond Higher Moss Hall farm, we rise with the road onto Well Hill, passing over the 400m barrier which marks the outer edge of habitability, where the reverse view gives us a last proper look down Calderdale, while Stoodley Pike optical illusions itself onto a different hillside, and our interest looking forwards has Bridestones Moor rising on the southwestern horizon, with the rock outcrops that sit above Todmorden being barely visible when regarded across the level moorland, looking more like a set of broken dentures, even when as close as we can get to them on the rise up Pole Hill. We hit the 430+m road summit here, at the top of Eastwood Road and down from the beacon complex, but some way east of the watershed, but suddenly gaining the northern flank of Rossendale, with the wind farms atop it on our southwestern horizon, with the upper Calder valley below, while ahead and to the northwest, we have Hoof Stones Height and the Hameldon ridge rising, the actual water-shedding moors that I'm going to need a boldness pill to approach (anxious about their peatiness and lack of clear tracks), below which we can find the former Sportsman's Inn, miles from anywhere and only useful for refreshing the lost traffic doing a slow traversal on the high road.

The Chapel, Blackshaw Head.

The Long Causeway and the Pole Hill VOR.

The Downstream Calderdale view from The Long Causeway.

Blackstone Moor.

Uppermost Calderdale and the Sportsman Inn.

Heading slightly downhill past the Sunnyview kennels and cattery, the Rossendale horizon resolves to put the Carr & Craggs Moor rising above the conifer plantation below, and directing the eye west to Heald Moor and Thievely Pike beyond, while we find ourselves some way west of Todmorden already, looking an horizon with an unfamiliar order before we find ourselves below the Hawk Stones, another range of gritstone outcrops that are less accessible or well known than the Bride Stones to the east, while being much more visible as they loom tall over Kebs Road. The trees planted in front of the rock formations are rather frustrating though, and its worth pondering how an ancient motor garage endured up here too, but as the road pushes straight westwards, we get a good look that revealed the Hawk and Bride Stones are plainly part of the same ridge exposed at the moorland edge, before we meet the last road junction that we'll be seeing for a while, as Mount Lane rises from the south and New Road takes a sharp right to hang on the contour while the old alignment dives into depression formed by Pudsey Clough. We'll stay high up, as the road sits just beneath the 400m contour, taking a long sweep around the fields of Bank Top and Stiperden House farms below, and clinging onto Stiperden Bank at the heather moor fringe as it approaches the Lancashire border, met at Paul Clough, where the Hameldon Ridge might be most easily accessed, and the stream marks the boundary, still a way east of the actual watershed, which convinces me further that the Calder valley has somehow managed to claim a whole bunch of land which really ought to be west of the Pennines. With the next wind farm on the horizon being our next target, we carry on with the road as it takes us around to the Stiperden Bar house, isolated on the moorland edge, and no longer purposed for collecting tolls on Yorkshire - Lancashire traffic, but still habitable at the apex of the this wandering detour along the contour line, as it makes its long way back towards the original alignment, with the turbines drawing ever closer as the air fills with dampness, indicating that things are going to be less pleasant on the western side of the Pennines, beyond the sheltering rise of Stiperden Moor.

Hawk Stones.

Pudsey Clough and Coal Clough Wind Farm.

Paul Clough, Stiperden Bar House and the Lancashire Border.

The last Downstream Calderdale view, from Kebs Road.

Once we turn back onto the Long Causeway alignment, beyond the depression we've traced a ways around, we stand in the shadow of the Coal Clough Windfarm, with its many turbines filling the high fields above the Calder's water-shedding point in the valley below, and the awesomeness of the sight is somewhat diminished by the low cloud blowing in from the west, dampening the air and dropping the visibility, whilst it buries the the moorland ridge to the north, meaning that it's been a good idea to stay low, away from the high paths, on a day like today. Pausing to take lunch in the shelter of a wall and hoping that the weather will blow itself out, leads us to reflection the Pennines Proximity Problem, as even a white cloud day on the western face of these hills could easily bring weather that isn't being experienced lower down, and up here, barely below 400m up on the English Watershed, we've gotten greyness bleaching out all the views we might have had to the north, across Wortshorne Moor and Sheddon Clough, while the way ahead on the high road leads into a frankly invisible horizon. Encounter the Pennine Bridleway again as we drop with the road into the marshy depression above Green Clough, where the waters now flow west into Calder valley, that being the Lancashire Calder now, the groove of which can barely be discerned as the Rossendale boundary hills are themselves shielded by waves of cloud, and we can be glad that this lane hasn't brought out the boy racers like might have been expected, as its rolls and blind summits between  its long straights might have made it feel rather treacherous for the foot traveller. Meet Causeway House, an austere sort of farmstead at ate return of the rural landscape, with the road settling into some deep grooves that suggest further its ancient heritage as a pre-turnpike road, as the landscape falls away to theoretically reveal the western side of the Pennine range to the north, as well as the way ahead towards Pendle and its hill, but there's little to grasp beyond the clouds, which is frustrating, as is the roll of the landscape as every drop indicates that this might be the way down from the high ground, only for the road to rise again and present you with another crest to traverse.

Coal Clough Wind farm and the English Watershed.

The Pennines Proximity Problem, and The Long Causeway.

Downstream (Lancashire) Calderdale, from the Long Causeway.

The ancient groove of the old road, above Causewayside.

That's the case as we pass through the depression at Causewayside, with its farmsteads and 'urban' woodland, and just to add insult to the day's business we get a flash of rain passing over as we rise around the edge of Mosley Height, where we ought to be getting a grand view over the Calder valley to Thievely Pike and Crown Point, with the Bacup Road rising up Easden Clough between them on the Rossendale side, but the weather is instead giving us conditions that confirm so many of our prejudices about Lancashire, before it suddenly blows itself out. So dryness is thankfully restored as we start our steepening descent off the high fields, getting our view towards Burnley, in the spread of the merging valleys below before we take on the sharp kinks of the lane as it leads into Mereclough, the first village that we've seen since Blackshaw Head, and looking like a rural community that's had the full-on suburban arrival treatment for its cottages crammed in around its streams and road junctions (also the first we've seen in a while), and the Long Causeway route ends as we alight on Red Lees Road, by the Kettledrum inn, named for a racehorse, not a musical instrument. Towards the town we roll, with the cloud finally elevating above the Rossendale flank as the main road leads us into greater Burnley, with the signage indicating its extent as we pass through the farm hamlet of Red Lees, with the town to be found beyond, having recently started growing beyond its boundary of some years vintage, where we can get a nice frame of Pendle Hill ahead, before the road drops to obscure it from view and we look north and east instead to get a fix on the moorland horizon in our wake and the ridges over which the Bronte Way brought us in this direction back in May. Pressing into the town, suburbia soon arrives on both sides of the road, dressed in unfortunately drab shades that are not aided at all by the still pervasive gloom that the breeze is failing to break apart, with mostly semis forming the Pike Hill and Brunshaw estates that sit on this elevated fringe above the valley and town centre below, and despite our deep penetration into virgin territory since leaving West Yorkshire, we can still feel relatively close to home as the #592 bus breezes past us on its long route to Halifax.

Lancashire's best weather greets us at Mosley Height.

Mere Clough, returns us to civilsation.

Pendle Hill and the swelling boundary of Burnley, Red Lees Road. 

Suburban Burnley, Brunshaw Road.

Terraces arrive at the roadside ahead of the decline of Brunshaw Road, taking us off the high apron above the town and revealing our next point of interest ahead, teased since we first got sight of the town, and we'll slip down toward it between the rakes of council houses on the steep hillside, clearly land which urban development didn't want until the latter part of the 20th century, before we land among many of Burnley's vernacular terraces, built in golden stone, which has evidently needed a lot of cleaning to get the historical dirt scrubbed from it, or got painted over. The floodlights rising over the rooftops soon indicates the proximity of Turf Moor stadium, home to two time champions of England and current Premiership irritants Burnley FC (which I mean as a compliment, btw), which will fill the Harry Potts Way roadside along the length of the south stand, where fans drink in the neighbouring Park View tavern, despite the football season still being weeks away, and the cricket field endures having not been turned into a car park, and beyond we can meet the town proper. Cross Todmorden Road to meet Yorkshire Street, passing the RC church and convent of St Mary, and a parade of townhouses that seem stylistically out of sync with a provincial Lancashire town, before we meet the trio of Burnley supporters pubs (with the Royal Dyche amusingly fashioning manager Sean in the style of Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII) and pass under the long embankment of the Leeds & Liverpool canal via the aqueduct known locally (and incorrectly) as the Culvert, ahead of passing around the A682 traffic island by the B&M store that has the whole history of Burnley life illustrated by metal silhouettes on its end wall. Thus we arrive in the town centre, immediately recognizable from my sole flying visit to these parts some 25 years ago (the details of which ought not be shared here), with St James's Street forming the main shopping drag, looking like it's had a recent campaign of prettification dropped upon it, and not looking at all depressed after a long year and more of pandemic and lockdown, and the local folks are out in force, determined to make the best of the commercial opportunities and the pavement cafes, despite the gloomy weather, and we'll trace our way west along its full length, as a first foot visit to the town deserves more than just a cursory examination.

Vernacular Terraces, Brunshaw Road.

Turf Moor stadium, Harry Potts Way.

'The Culvert' Aqueduct, Yorkshire Street.

St James's Street, Burnley.

Thus our town tour starts with the intent of visiting all three of Burnley's railway stations, an excessive number for a small town, with the first being sought by rising beyond the B6240 loop road, passing up Sandygate into the town's former industrial band to meet its contemporary reuse with the Sandygate Halls complex stating ahead of the footbridge over the canal that links it to the Victoria Mills site of the University of Central Lancashire, beyond which we meet Trafalgar Street which leads us to the southwestern edge of town by the A671 Westway. This needs to be crossed, which is done via a subway that is ankle deep with accumulated silt, before we can approach Burnley Barracks station, by far the least of the trio, which endures as a rare request stop in an urban setting on the East Lancashire Line, and demands only a couple of minutes to receive its viewing before we return to the side of the main road, to press east over the canal again and towards Westgate, feeling that the lane can't decide if it wants to be commercial, industrial or residential before we detour off down Ashfield Road to get a close look at Burnley Bank Top viaduct. Here's another impressive structure that almost hides in the landscape, with its 15 arches taking it over the Lancashire Calder and Royle Road, before we are compelled to reach track level to the northeast by rising up Active Way and Curzon Street to find our way Railway Street to find Burnley Central station, for many years the primary location for rail traffic in the town, but now feeling rather isolated by the ruinous Adelphi hotel and a retail park. To conclude our trip, we need to pass by the later to get us over the dual carriageway of the A679 and back through the town centre, with Kingsway taking us south and feeling like it used to be a main road hereabouts before the development of the Charter Walk shopping centre landed on its path, and thus we pass through that, incongruously among the shoppers, past the market hall atrium and the Covid vaccination centre before emerging again across St James's Street and on up Manchester Road, past the the Mechanics Institute and the Town Hall, shrouded in scaffolding. It's enough of a trip to make you think you've seen all that town has to offer, but rising to the canal for a final time, we meet Burnley Wharf and the museum of the Weavers Triangle, just to send that extra helping of history your way before we get tangled up with the A682 - A671 island and make our way across the other end of Trafalgar Street to meet the rise up to Burnley Manchester Road station, reestablished when passenger services returned to the Copy Pit line in 1986 and now the primary route for train travel out of town, from where services are available directly to Leeds and Manchester, away from the odd sense of isolation at the angle of the East Lancs valley, and where our day wraps its long trip into the unknown at 3.05pm.

Sandygate Bridge, Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

Burnley Barracks station.

Burnley Bank Top Viaduct.

Burnley Central Station.

Burnley Mechanics and the Town Hall, Manchester Road.

Burnley Manchester Road station.

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 5092.8 miles
2021 Total: 350.7 miles
Up Country Total: 4629.8 miles
Solo Total: 4761.2 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 3690.6 miles

Next Up: Walking the High Moors looks increasingly weather dependent.

~~~

Pandemic Thoughts: July 2021

On reflection, it looks like July 2021 isn't going to be the month that the Covid-19 Pandemic came to an end vin the UK, despite what HM Government seemed to want us to believe as they planned for the ending of all the remaining protection related measures, and the right-wing press repeatedly bleating their demands to have their so-called Freedom Day on July 19th, as the reality of the situation of the ongoing spread of disease absolutely failed to sit with their projections and plans for everything to 'get back to normal' as quickly as possible. Of course, when faced with a rising infection rate in the opening half of the month, surging up to 50,000 new cases per day, the natural response of those who would govern us is to totally commit to the lifting of the remaining measures in place to restrict contact and contain the spread, as the reopening of clubs, theatres and venues would go ahead, along with the ending of all contact and capacity limits in social settings, despite it having been demonstrated that the increased amount of social interactions over the preceding months had sustained the infection rate. The real addition to the capacity for stupid decision making is to also end the rules on the wearing of face coverings and ending any direction towards continued social distancing, which seems like a particularly foolhardy measure and one that is easily misunderstood as multiple government figures then spend a lot of time and energy back-tracking and trying to emphasize that these measures are still recommended for all but are now voluntary, rather than backed by the weight of legal requirement, which virtually guarantees that they will be ignored by a large chunk of the population. It seems baffling to me to act like this in these circumstances, as if we hadn't already seen what happens when we trust the common sense of the British public in the face of this pandemic, as it's gone all kinds of wrong twice over now, and when our new health secretary is talking of us 'having to learn to live with Covid' and warning us to expect potentially 100,000 new infections daily, as if maintaining mask-wearing and social distancing wasn't the most straightforwards way off offering continued general protection to the populace across the Summer and beyond.

It's almost as if they have regarded the death rate staying low compared to the infection rate of the third wave and consider that if people aren't dying in the numbers previously seen, then the pandemic situation is clearly no longer the concern that it was before, as if death was the only possible negative outcome of an infection, ignoring the total of people still afflicted by the effects of Long Covid (approaching 1,000,000 cases according to the ONS estimates) and the fact that letting a disease continue to spread increases the risk of it mutating further. We've already witnessed four mutations occur, with the Delta variant proving to have replaced the original strain as the dominant one, with it sweeping around the world and even arrive in nations that had done well to contain the disease during he previous year, most notably China, and there seems no good reason to run the risk of developing the Epsilon variant whilst trying to re-fire the economy, or to send the population abroad in vast numbers in the hope of locating the Omega variant that will doom us all. I'm being sarcastic here, obviously, but it has proved confounding to witness the amount of discussion and horse-trading that has gone on with the talk of the necessity of reviving foreign travel and attempting to work out which countries are supposedly safe to visit, and whether isolation would be necessary when visiting along with the amount of testing and vaccination clearance which might be needed, when the reality is that it's honestly more sensible to sit this year out at home and let the potential for further cross-infection pass. It's again so easy to be cynical in this situation, as if HM Government is far too eager to bend to commercial  pressures, especially from the travel industry, and again you find yourself wondering just who might be making the money from all the testing that's being done, with huge amounts of capital vanishing into someone's pockets in the name of reviving the economy, putting pressure on the national health budget that is stretched enough as it is, while people who have their fingers in the right pies make bank at everyone else's expense.

One unforeseen consequence of the ending of social restrictions, coupled to the start of the Summer holidays comes with the number of people making increased amount of interactions causing the NHS contact tracing system to set off the so-called Pingdemic, as self isolation instructions are sent to many people who have unintentionally made close contact with someone who has been identified as Covid positive, causing issues with staff availability in a number of sectors and forcing venue closures mere days after they were permitted to fully reopen. I'd have thought that if all the restrictions and protective measures were being removed, then all the consequential measures would be removed too, but they do remain in place and again it appears that those would would govern us have been caught out again by factors they hadn't considered, and despite having had months to prepare their planning, along with an additional four weeks caused by the initial delay, and you realize that they're making up the rules on the fly, acting without having fully considered the consequences. That's how we end up with food supply issues caused by a shortage of staff in the distribution sector (coupled to the Brexit shitshow that is conveniently masked by the continuing pandemic, a whole nother matter that I'm not even going to scratch here), and having the government pondering the need for vaccine passports for busy venues, as if some of us hadn't been stating the wisdom of having them months ago, as if having allowed, and continuing to allow, the unvaccinated to rub up against each other was a terrible idea all along. And this all goes without us having scratched what's going on in the education sector, where the fact that the school year ended with about 1.2 million pupils in self isolation after making close contacts with the Covid positive being somewhat under-acknowledged, with schools having sent pupils home early going into the holidays in order to reduce the infection risks for the kids, and looking forward to the next year when teaching staff are being expected to perform regular mass testing, at a considerable cost in time and money, naturally, none of which impress my teaching friends at all when we have our mid month catch-up.

So the month ends, with us regarding a significant drop in the national infection rate, halving to around 25,000 new cases daily, which is almost certainly brought around by the end of the school year and the amount of contact among kids dropping off markedly, again demonstrating that it was educational establishments that were among the highest risk intuitions in the country, and that we probably be deep into August before we start to see the real consequences of the ending of all social restrictions and if we really are right to anticipate the worst. HM Government can trumpet the fact that 88% of the adult population of Britain have received at least one vaccination, which is indeed a considerable achievement, but the reality is that we are soon going to have to dig into that percentage of the population that are utterly resistant to (or are incapable of) having a vaccination at all, under any circumstances, when the hospital population of Covid case is showing up that 60% of patients are among the unvaccinated, getting seriously ill when many had anticipated that everything would be fine and it's really no worse than flu. I'll not be doing anything to mark 'Freedom Day' though, as my mood towards social interaction has me doing my first shopping trip of the year on a damp day ahead of the schools breaking up when it's possible to tour the town and make all my necessary purchases (of mostly trousers and new steam iron) while normal people are sheltering from the rain, and when I do talk with colleagues about resuming some dinner or drinks scenarios for the future, we're all still happy to defer until the end of Summer just to see how things pan out. Indeed, even travelling away for a week in Leicester doesn't have Mum and myself doing anything more sociable than having a trip out for dinner in the super-spacious cafe at Gates garden centre in Somerby, well away from the crowds of the city (though the heatwave conditions of that week did much to restrict us), and when it came to work again, the mask stayed on when riding on the trains and buses, knowing that our IPC in the Leeds TH trust will be keeping protective measures in place for staff and patients until 2022, which gives me a small grain of security to enjoy as we move forwards.