it’s taken Clare and I over a year to get round about four-fifths of the Calderdale Way’s 50 miles, after today. Still a couple of legs to go yet. Today introduced us to the side valley of Shibden Dale, a beautiful spot and, somewhere previously unknown (except as a brief glimpse now and again from the train, as the line crosses the dale not long after leaving Halifax) despite having lived here 21 years now. The cow looked happy to be there too.
Having done Craig Airie Fell the day before, today I continued walking and bagged two more County Tops. This cairn marked the second one of the day, Kirriereoch Hill, high point of Ayrshire. Apparently its name translates as ‘Hill of the Brindled Quarter’, which to me is no translation at all. When I came up over the final slope and saw the cairn sitting next to the vast granitic lump of Ailsa Craig out there in the Irish Sea, the photo was immediately assured. A mild shame about the wind turbine poking up to the right but one can’t have everything.
After coming up the M6 yesterday, we turned left as soon as we hit Scotland, and headed for Galloway, the south-west corner of that country. There were various motivations for doing this, but getting some walking in was certainly one of them. This is the view from 1,050 feet above sea level, on top of Craig Airie Fell — not a substantial eminence in its own right, but it has a great panorama of the surrounding area, as a proper County Top should. Read all about it on the other blog, if interested.
Driving along roads not taken before, on the lookout for photo opportunities: this was a good one. Huddersfield is apparently Britain’s largest town (as opposed to city), and it looks pretty sizeable from up here.
“Please. You’ve gotta get me out of here. I didn’t ask to make my life here, a day’s journey from the nearest grooming salon.”
I might think the same if, like this critter, I was living at Scalderskew in the Lake District — I do not know of a more isolated dwelling in the country. If you’re interested, the most prominent peak in the background is Seatallan.
Wales is the nearest bit of the world to my house that is not England. All the same, thanks to its particularly pervasive Covidnoia, it has only appeared three times on the blog in the last two years. One of these was as the background of the shot I took from the Wirral in January, and I think, in turn, that spot is the hill in the distance here. Connah’s Quay — which is where this shot was taken from — is a rather sad-looking place, oppressed as many electrical pylons as I’ve seen anywhere: shuttered up and closed down. The bridge rejects it too, taking people past it, not through it.
This trip down to London also offered the chance to pick up a County Top (see the other blog); specifically Bushey Heath, the highest point in the historic county of Middlesex, swallowed up by London in 1965 although at least it still retains a county cricket team. It wasn’t major mountaineering, though. Clare here strolls through the woods near Bentley Priory (an ecclesiastical relic? no, a premium housing estate) in one of those shots that chews up the bandwidth thanks to all the foliage.
The Emley Moor TV transmitting station can be seen from almost everywhere in West Yorkshire, particularly anywhere even vaguely elevated: but then again, that’s the reason why it was built where it was. It’s still the tallest free-standing structure in Britain. Except that it has a companion at the moment; a temporary mast designed to take the load while repairs are conducted, apparently. Yes, I am frustrated by the electricity wires on this shot but this was another day with not much to see, so I’m taking what’s there.
The hoped-for walk duly happened — leg 6 of the Calderdale Way was completed, with Clare, over four months after the last one. But we are getting round, and somewhere just before this shot was taken (from Norwood Green, a village on the outskirts of Halifax) we turned generally to the west and started heading back home. There are a couple more days’ walking to do before it’s finished, at some not-yet-determined future date.
Base Brown lies in the upper reaches of Borrowdale, in the Lake District. I realised today that this place constitutes my third longest-lasting love affair: we’ve been going at it regularly since 2009 and I’m certainly not getting tired of the place.
(Seeing as I mentioned it.. Clare [1996] comes in second and, as I can still be moved to care now and again, Brighton & Hove Albion [1976] being the leader.)
Being 42 