Crowden to Stoodley Pike: LEJoG Day 32

A sunny day of moors and reservoirs.

For some 36 kilometres I walked exclusively over moors, sometimes climbing to flat summits with white painted trig points like those of Black Hill and White Hill, sometimes descending on paths and tracks, and other times walking along escarpments marked by blackened gritstone rocks. Moorland vegetation has varied from acres of blackened heather, to bright green whimberry bushes or sphagnum moss. Bleached rushes, which scratched my legs, grew in wetter ground. Other moors were of tussocky grass, new green growth pushing through the dead straw left from last year. In places the rough grassland was densely spotted with the fluffy white heads of cotton sedge.

Trig point on top of Black Hill (or was it White Hill?).

Moors dotted with cotton sedge.

Wessenden Reservoir.

Of reservoirs there were plenty, starting with Crowden reservoir where I began today's trek to Warland reservoir which I wearily walked the length of at the end of the day, in between the Wesseden reservoirs were stacked above each other in the same valley. There were many do not swim signs, but there were a few people defiantly paddling. Today's Pennine moors were squeezed between the many urban areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire, the tower blocks of Manchester visible through the haze with many other towns. No doubt the reservoirs, dating from Victorian times or earlier, were needed to supply the people and industries of these areas. I crossed the busy M62 motorway, the key connection between the two sides of the Pennines.

One unusual sight to the east was the Emley Moor Transmitter. There was a thin aerial typical of TV masts and then a tall, thin, vaguely sinister cylinder. A fellow walker I asked said the later was the TV transmitter, but it was being repaired and the thin one was a temporary replacement to maintain transmissions. After a morning of walking up and down moorland missing my breakfast coffee, I spotted in the distance a trailer with a hatch on a road I was to cross. While hoping it would be a stall selling coffee I feared it might be an RSPB stand or similar. Not that I have anything against the RSPB, but when its coffee you want... To my great delight on closing in I discovered it was two Yorkshire ladies, flying a flag depicting the white rose of Yorkshire, selling bacon baps, hot drinks and the like to passing motorists, people out on their motorbikes and bicycles for a weekend ride, and Pennine Way walkers. I bought a beefburger, Eccles cake and a coffee, and relaxed in a plastic chair provided to enjoy them (and to respond to a fraud alert concerning my credit card). The sustenance was much appreciated as I was relying on my own supplies for the rest of the day, not passing any metropolis of note.

Stall selling excellent food, note the Yorkshire flag.

Nor was I passing any campsites or any other accommodation that was open and accepting bookings. Consequently, tonight I am wild camping. I have set up camp a little before the monument at Stoodley Pike in what I assumed was an old quarry, the mounds of stone long since clothed in vegetation. Finding a flatish area of grass, hidden from view I have pitched my tent. On the rocks above someone has placed a ram's skull, but I am ignoring the thought that devil worship took place here!