Etherow Valley

River Etherow 

It was a bright, sunny morning promising to cloud over later. All my joints ached and I was being reminded, and not gently, that walking involves the movement of articulated bony stilts. I decided to listen to the morning session of the Test Match and then try and walk some cooperation back into the component parts which is how I came to be sitting on the train to Hadfield with a view to a nice gentle potter along the Longendale Trail.

Moss Lane

I got off at Broadbottom. I'd wondered about the road running down to the River Etherow and I decided this was the time to go and have a nosy at it. I climbed the steps up to the main road then turned into Moss Lane and started the steep descent. I didn't envy the locals driving or walking up the road in icy weather! The singing blackbirds and woodpigeons were joined by chiffchaffs as I walked down and the chattering of magpies outshouted by a couple of quarreling jays.

Broadbottom Great Wood

The road became a country lane. To my right, beyond the houses, I started to see the edge of Great Wood and ahead, beyond the trees of the valley, the hills of Derbyshire. At the bottom of the lane I could turn left and walk up Hodge Lane back to Broadbottom or turn right to Terra Incognita. So I turned right. At the crossroads a little way along I could have taken one of the paths into the wood but decided to go down Leyland Lane. 

Leyland Lane 

The lane runs beside Hurstclough Brook to the river. At the top of the lane a grey wagtail quietly shuffled into the cover of the waterside vegetation. Blackcaps, chiffchaffs and goldfinches sang in the hedgerows and a flock of rooks were doing something involving a lot of noise a couple of fields away. Blackbirds, dunnocks and woodpigeons joined the songscape. A couple of very noisy buzzards wheeled above the trees but were only fitfully visible from the path. Black-headed gulls flew overhead and for the life of me I can't think where they'd been or where they were going.

Great tits, chaffinches and chiffchaffs flitted about between the trees. I saw two small birds sitting in a tree on the other side of a field and spent five minutes trying, and failing, to identify them. I judged that they were youngsters by the way they were sitting still with their mouths open but nothing came to feed them while I was watching. I could eliminate many suspects but not identify them. They might have been chaffinches, or chiffchaffs, or even spotted flycatchers but the distance defeated me. Even when they're sitting still in plain sight birds can be an identification nightmare.

The large whites, meadow browns and ringlets fluttering about the verges were mercifully easier to spot and identify.

Ringlet

River Etherow and Broadbottom Beach

The path curved round as it approached the river and started to run parallel to it. I walked past a gate submerged in the hedgerow and came upon a ford over the river, evidently used frequently by farm vehicles judging by the tracks. I wandered down to see if there were any birds on the river (there weren't, and nor were there any on the beach downstream) and noticed a footbridge just upstream. That gate was evidently entrance to the path leading to the bridge, a metal footbridge must go somewhere… I walked back and crossed the bridge into Derbyshire.

Upstream from the bridge

The path on the other side rose steeply up a wooded bank. I'd promised myself an easy dawdle along the flat. More great tits, goldfinches and blackbirds passed between the trees and every so often there'd be a clattering of wings as some woodpigeons decided I'd got too close. A sign nailed to a tree told me I was walking the Cown Edgeway. Another sign told me a side path headed for a scout camp. I carried on up the Edgeway, conscious that I had a Sid James mask in my pocket.

Joining the Cown Edgeway 

Nearing the top of the climb

As the walk got steeper the birches, alders and occasional oak trees started to give way to elderly hawthorns. Thirty or forty years ago I'd have been scanning these with a reasonable expectation of finding a flycatcher or redstart. I looked anyway, just in case, you never know until you've tried. I didn't find any.

Cown Edgeway 

Longendale in the distance 

I reached the top and the path narrowly followed the edge of a field with a sharp drop into the woods on my right. I stopped and tried to work out where I was without looking at the map. To the left Broadbottom jutted out of the trees and stopped abruptly at the steep drop to the river that surprises the first-time traveler on the Glossop line. Dead ahead in the distance Longendale passed between the hills. To the right were the hills above Glossop and the Snake Pass. As the crow flies, on the map I'd travelled about half a mile.

Honeysuckle

Swallows zipped about the sheep's and lambs' ankles, goldfinches and greenfinches twittered in hawthorns and blackbirds sang in the trees. The path reached open country just before it reached the farmstead, behind me was the rolling green hill hiding Ludworth on the other side. I passed through the gate and walked down Far Woodseats Lane to Marple Road. Swallows and swifts passed low overhead. Blackbirds and goldfinches sang, greenfinches squeaked as I passed by, robins furtively disappeared into hedge bottoms. The brambles and honeysuckles of the hedgerow were busy with butterflies and bees. It was a rather nice walk.

Far Woodseats Lane 

Fortune favours the stupid so I had a five minute wait for the last bus to Stockport from the invisible bus stop by Sandy Lane.