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Rhodeswood and Torside Reservoirs
After losing my hiking mojo since the COVID lockdown (which explains the absence of recent posts on this website), this was my first walk for quite some time (I think I’d done something like 4 walks in almost 4 years!). Hopefully I’ll get back into the swing of things now and do many more this year.
This particular one didn’t get off to a good start. After finally arriving at the reservoirs on the A628, I saw that the entrance to Woodhead Road (and therefore the Torside car park) was closed. I didn’t really fancy the extra walking distance involved by starting at the Crowden car park so I drove around to the opposite end of Woodhead Road via Padfield only to find that was closed too! So Crowden car park it was. From the car park I crossed over the A628 and followed the footpath around to the right and towards Rhodeswood Reservoir. It was a fairly pleasant walk through woodland that eventually brought me to the dam crossing between Torside and Rhodeswood Reservoirs.
Torside Clough
After crossing the reservoirs, I headed straight up the Pennine Way track towards Torside Clough. It initially ascended very steeply and that got me out of breath very quickly. The views looking back towards the reservoirs were beautiful. Eventually the slope levelled out a bit and that’s where the fun bit started. Bog! I’ve missed this.
Pennine Way above Torside Clough
Much of the upper part of the Torside Clough Pennine Way section was like that. It gave my boots their first good test in a few years and thankfully they passed with flying colours. Eventually the path crosses the head of the clough and begins to follow Wildboar Grain towards Bleaklow Head.
Bleaklow Head
I continued following the Pennine Way towards Bleaklow Head – the boggy section was at an end and it was fairly easy walking from here. The sun felt hot considering the time of year and I was glad I was wearing a hat. Mounds of exposed peat were steaming in the sun, which made the landscape look a little alien (or at least more than usual anyway). I made my way eventually to Bleaklow Head which is marked by a wooden post and a large cairn of stones. I’ll be honest and say it’s not really the most visually striking summit around. It’s usually worth the fairly short trek to Bleaklow Stones if you’ve ever reached this point – however on this occasion I was short on daylight hours and decided to head straight back down via Near Black Clough.
Me at Bleaklow Head (thanks to the camera timer).
Near Black Clough
It’s very difficult describing where to go on Bleaklow using landmarks or visual cues. Even on a sunny day when visibility is at it’s best, it’s a very disorientating place when it comes to navigation. The defined paths come to an end and the landscape looks the same in every direction. Once you start weaving in and out of groughs and around ponds, you very quickly lose all sense of direction. You can imagine how much worse it is once the mist comes in. It’s map & compass time (or whatever your high tech navigational preference is). On this walk, I used a gps route loaded onto my Garmin watch. No maps, just a line to keep me on track. I had backups both in the form of a map, and also my phone with a mapping app in my bag.
Here’s an example of how samey and disorientating the landscape is (please don’t watch it all – it’s quite boring).
Maybe I’ll record the entire walk one day to help those suffering from insomnia.
It’s hard to tell if you’re following the right track at first. One stream looks much like another. It’s quite some time before it deepens enough to know you’re following a proper clough. The path alongside the clough also becomes more defined the further you get – and just like the track above Torside Clough, this one is very boggy too. The cloud had also decided to block the sun for much of this descent, so my photos from this section didn’t look quite so colourful. I continued following the track all the way to the bottom where it turned sharply and descended steeply through woodland to the stream below where the three Black Cloughs (Near, Middle, and Far) had merged.
All that was left now was the walk back along the Longdendale Trail. The Longden Trail was built on the old Woodhead railway line, is 6.5 miles long, and runs from Hadfield to the Woodhead tunnels. This is probably a nice walk on it’s own on a nice summers day. On a ‘not quite spring’ day though, when your feet are tired, the sun is rapidly going down, and you just want to get back to your car… I’ll be honest, it felt like it went on forever.
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