ASHOP HEAD TO WINDY HILL

Tuesday 11th. May 2010. PHOTO: Erosion Control on Kinder Scout.
With my evening start yesterday, I only managed a couple hours or so of walking up Jacob's Ladder over Kinder Scout and camped on the col above the Ashop Head to Snake Pass track, it was snowing when pitching! The morning was crisp clear and compelling and I'm mustard-keen to get some dirt on my boots and miles on my legs and boy there is nothing to impede. It's thirty or so years since I first tramped these hills and moors and over that time there has been a lot of work aimed at reducing the erosion caused by boots and now the authorities are engaged in a long on-going campaign to lay old paving slabs across the worst of the moors bogs and what a difference it makes. The ground is very dry and this is encouraging, I have had this walk in mind for over 25 years but the thought of the bogs (and of course Wainwright's moaning about them) has provided a rich source of excuse material. Too late now and with the exceptional dry weather in April I have got the conditions right for a fast traverse my target is to complete around the ten day mark. I will be wild camping throughout. Today's walking will take me over familiar terrain and after crossing the Snake Pass onto the once feared Featherbed Moss followed by a descent to Crowden and it's reservoir. Here I detoured to find water adding a good half hour's walking, water, water everywhere but so hard to get a drop to drink! but still, the sun shines. The next leg from Crowden to Standedge is 12 miles in length passing Laddow Rocks where I remember ticking off some rock-climbs thirty years ago, and a pair of Peregrines and some Ravens are nesting today. Black Hill comes next and fast too all that flag-laying has tamed the bog, time was that the Black Hill trig point was an island protected by a deep and potentially lethal moat of noxious liquified peat, horses were rumoured to have disappered in it's murky deep! At Standage I made my first route finding error where the Way leaves a tarmac lane on a sign simply marked "public footpath" whereas the lane it leaves continues signed with a white acorn marker for the Pennine Way Bridlepath, taking that I wasted half an hour or more before being rescued by a knowing local who observed "everyone makes that mistake" Indeed I was later to meet a fellow Pennine Wayfarer who had done exactly the same (but with a much more serious consequence unfortunately). Keen to get the miles in I carry on walking till 8.15pm and camp on a pitch just above the M62 north of Windy Hill, by which time my distance walked was about the thirty mile mark. Even if the faint rumble from the M62 had been as loud as thunder, my sleep would be quite undisturbed!