colne valley

Wayfaring the Colne Valley Circular Walk..

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Colne Valley Circular Walk hike Crimble Clough

I say’ wayfaring’ in the post title, rather than plain old walking, as it’s mentioned on the back of the Colne Valley Circular Walk booklet which Jenny (fellow walker and also stargazer) had lent me:

“Thirteen miles of fascinating wayfaring in the beautiful South Pennine countryside of Kirklees, West Yorkshire.  A walk full of history by moor and mill, clough and canal, weaver’s cottage and ancient hamlet.”

That saved me a job explaining the landscape we traversed through on Sunday. Except to say there’s no mention of the word ‘mud’ or horse / cow ‘slurry’ – and we splodged through a fair amount of both on the day.

We (Jenny, Taru and myself)  were getting in some miles as part of a training schedule (which is also an excuse to meet in the pub and plan some nice walks) for the 22 miles of  NSPCC North HACK challenge in June (that’s a link to our team Justgiving page).

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The Secret Signs Of Marsden

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new Colne Valley Circular Walk signs

I had a walk up above the Wessenden Valley and reservoirs at the weekend and noticed a new (to me) sign on some of the stiles. Bright yellow and clearly just applied with a stencil. And some of the posts that punctuated the wire-topped dry stone field boundaries also sported fresh yellow caps. Hmm. They were obviously marking out a route but I wasn’t sure which. The mystery (for me anyway) was solved via a Facebook discussion later that day. Turns out to be a refresh of the waymarkers for the Colne Valley Circular Walk.

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March Hill and Cupwith Circular – a hike to the wild north

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Views across to Pule Hill from Buckstones
march Hill and Cupwith hike route map
March Hill and Cupwith hike route – via viewranger App. I started bottom right on the map in Marsden, heading to March Hill across the moors and back around to Cupwith Hill and reservoir.

The Wild North is a bit tongue in cheek .. head south from Marsden, up Wessenden and over to Black Hill on a winter’s day and that’ll give any kind of wild a run for its money. But the moors area north of Marsden, to my mind, feels a bit wilder than the areas I normally walk across, to the south and west.  I fancied a bit of a change and wanted to have a mooch around March Hill and also to check out Cupwith a bit as it’s the planned home for a couple of wind turbines at some stage.. so I combined the two with a circular walk last Sunday.

8.3 miles over 5 hours or so, according to viewranger. At that pace you can see that some of the going was a bit slow, as Brodie and I picked our way across large grassy knolls and semi- bog in the area south of Cupwith Hill. But other than that it was a good day for a walk, with some excellent views across the upper valley and the sun finally came out in the last two hours.

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A path less trodden

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“Let’s go off road today” .. silent stare … Yep I talk to my dog but sometimes forget she isn’t Scooby Doo. Though she can sound like Chewbacca when she is begging for food. Much of my walking is done in my own back yard, the moors and hills that form a horseshoe around my home town of Marsden. And … read more >

Reservoir Round Trip

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I knew it was going to be a bright, frosty morning so despite having over-Guinnessed (oh dear) from the night before, I headed off up onto the moors with the dog. I’m joining some others in february to walk up Snowdon – so any and all exercise at this stage has got to be good 🙂 I had a vague plan to head … read more >