Snatching words on the Marsden Poetry Trail

March Hill Marsden Moors hike Hiking Yorkshire Walking rambling

I set out last Saturday with friends Jenny, Karl and Taru, after the Hare surveying training, to walk the Marsden poetry trail that I put together last year.

Taru and Jenny had wanted to do the ten mile circular that navigates Pule Hill, Close Moss and March Hill. The weather looked like it would be pretty good to us. Although good in Marsden is relative: ‘fresh’ or ‘blowy’ would be kind euphemisms.

But as Simon Armitage says in ‘Snow’ (a great piece and a stop along the trail) : ‘We should make the most of the light”. That’s a pointer to the poet’s birthplace and conditioning right there.

The poems that we took turns reading out at each ‘waymarker’ (yes, I sprang that on them) were frequently snatched from mouth and hand.

And the winds crashing against the industrial cliffs of Pule Hill quarry knocked Taru and Jenny over at one point. Then threatened to snatch at least one of the three hounds off and away into neighbouring Lancashire.

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Mountain Hare Surveying with the National Trust (@marsdenmoorNT)

Millstone Edge Close Moss Marsden Moor hike

I met up with a few other folk (including walking compadre, Jenny) above Marsden, early on Saturday morning. We were going to be shown how to spot for signs of the (elusive, as it happened) Mountain Hare. Signs that will help us complete an NT survey within the individual 1Km squares of Marsden Moor that we have been allocated.

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A choice of sleet or sun.. a walk around Close Moss

Photograph of Close Moss on Marsden moor Pennine Hike

I had a choice this weekend: go for a long walk around the Marsden Moors on Saturday (forecast: sleet / snow and low cloud on the tops) or Sunday (forecast: sunshine). I went for Saturday, as I’m perverse like that and I fancied a bit o’ weather to get me in the zone for a trip in early February up to Crianlarich.

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Crossing The Pennines – a new Heritage Trail

Marden Packhorse Trail

I’ve been talking recently with the folks behind a great new Pennines heritage trail that’s been devised in my area (the Colne Valley in West Yorkshire). They had incorporated a couple of my photos in their social media updates (very flattering) and I got in touch to find out a bit more about what they are doing.

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Tree Hunting on Marsden Moor

Millstone Edge Close Moss Marsden Moor hike

I stumbled across a tree stump a couple of weeks ago, which was remarkable, as the higher parts of the Marsden Moor estate are now a treeless landscape. That wasn’t the case 6000 or 7000 years ago. I know that because peat is everywhere; testament to the fibrous disintegration of tree trunk and branch, leaf and root as well as grasses and moss.

I’ve seen bits of wood sticking out of some of the peat channels and cloughs during my wanderings over various parts of Marsden Moor. Some of it so well persevered through lack of oxygen, buried feet below the surface, that you can tell it’s birch by the still-visible white bark. Those branches or roots are occasionally exposed through the action of water and peat bog creep.

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Featured in the @FieldandTrekuk nominated Top UK Walks

Eastergate Marsden Moors

Looking Over Castleshaw Reservoirs

I took part in the recent Field & Trek recommended walks feature – where they asked various UK outdoors bloggers to nominate their favourite walk / hike. Not that easy to do, as a few of us said in our responses.

There’s some great walks in there (well, all of them by the looks of it) – seventeen have been featured. Some from blogs I already read and some new ones too which is cool.

After some deliberation I went for one of the loops I like to do around the Marsden Moors. Here’s what I said:

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