An accidental walk: Strinesdale

Looking down the Medlock Valley

I thought I'd have a lazy dawdle of a day and took a Pennine walk instead.

It's easy to forget it's June, what with the cold nights, the cold winds and the low pollen count. And it's easy to get a bit cavalier about remembering to put on the Factor Thingy and taking precautions before waltzing about meadows in bloom and freshly cut fields. I got away without sunburn after yesterday's walk, I didn't get away without the hayfever and today the get up and go didn't even leave a forwarding address.

I still had the fidgets so I thought I'd do a bit of passive birdwatching. I've hardly touched Yorkshire this birdwatching year so I thought I'd take a leisurely tour around, stopping off and having a dawdle round a couple of places along the way, taking the air more than going out birdwatching. There's a bus service between Ashton-under-Lyne and Holmfirth that only runs on Tuesdays. I could get the train to Greenfield and it would be about ten minutes' wait for the bus. I've done it before a couple of times, it's a nice ride over the tops and there are plenty of bus connections when you get into Holmfirth.

Half an hour later I gave up on the bus. Something must have happened to it, I assume it had been cancelled. So I got the 350 to Oldham, it being the next one not going back to Manchester. I've struggled to find many walks in Oldham that don't involve striding up onto Saddleworth Moor. I keep meaning to visit the Denshaw end of Piethorne Valley and Strinesdale Reservoir was on my list of possibles when I was scouting round the maps at the beginning of the year. The 350 passes nearby, I decided to go and have a look.

I got off at Church Street, crossed the road and walked past Waterhead Academy then up Holgate Street to the Strinesdale Country Park car park by the reservoir. Five minutes' walk, there's no excuse for my not having done this before, I've been through this area often enough. 

River Medlock

It took a few minutes to register that the pretty little stream bubbling its way past the car park is the River Medlock. Nowhere along its length is it a big river but even so… Blackbirds, blackcaps, robins and wrens sang in the trees and a grey wagtail called and flew into cover upstream. 

Lower Strinesdale Reservoir 

Almost immediately I was on Lower Strinesdale Reservoir, which is one of the smaller local reservoirs. I think Upper Strinesdale Reservoir is slightly bigger. The two are relics of a larger Reservoir built in the early nineteenth century which covered the whole of the country park area. Birdwise it was pretty quiet. I could see a Canada goose lurking in the reeds and that was about it. I got the impression it's a busy angling pool.

Strinesdale Country Park 

I crossed over the bridge where the Medlock escapes the reservoir and followed a path through open meadows girt with alder scrub. Song thrushes and willow warblers joined the songscape and blue tits fidgeted through the trees. The magpies bouncing about probably gave them good cause to fidget. I thought the wind too cold to see much in the way of insect life other than bumblebees. Painted ladies, meadow browns and a banded demoiselle proved me wrong. I noticed that common spotted orchids were starting to poke their way through the grass and buttercups.

Common spotted orchid

I got to a convergence of paths and took one going uphill past Upper Strinesdale Reservoir, which I caught glimpses of through the trees. About halfway up chiffchaffs took over from willow warblers. 

At the crossroads 

I emerged from the trees at a crossroads of sorts and was thoroughly rattled at by a mistle thrush in the tree at the centre. Dead ahead I think the path becomes Green Lane with roads radiating out from The Roebuck. A path to the right eventually joins Holgate Street. And the path to the left follows the Medlock up the valley to Turf Pit Road. I decided I'd go this way and get a bus to Oldham from Sholver.

The mistle thrush escorted me on my way and handed my supervision on to a pied wagtail as I set off on the path between the trees above Upper Strinesdale Reservoir and the pasture land above. The wagtail sat on the wall and watched me pass by then settled back to rummaging about in the wayside. I ducked instinctively every time a swallow sailed over the wall and rose inches above my head. 

Walking up to the river

The singing blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and woodpigeons of the woods gave way to whitethroats, willow warblers, goldfinches and wrens in the rowan and heather scrub of the riverside. I crossed the bridge by a drover's ford, both only necessary to stop the bank becoming a muddy quagmire, and walked up the path heading North. 

The ford across the river

Looking upstream

The river became hidden by trees and bushes in contrast to the open pastures surrounding the little valley. Jackdaws and carrion crows bustled about then exploded into a fury as they chased off a sparrowhawk. The sparrowhawk put up a flock of a couple of dozen lesser black-backs foraging on a freshly manured field by the lane. They quickly settled back down again — any one of them would be a fair match for a sparrowhawk — but they were skittish and rose up again as I passed by.

Starlings and house sparrows commuted between the houses on Turf Pit Lane and the fields. Swallows buzzed round, greenfinches and goldfinches bustled about in field margins, somewhere a couple of cock pheasants were gearing up for a fight. Blackbirds and blackcaps sang in the trees and somewhere in the rank grass at the top of the opposite bank a grasshopper warbler was reeling its song. It's been a week for surprises and it's only Tuesday. All the places I've been expecting to hear a grasshopper warbler, not a sausage, yet here on an unlikely hillside… Birdwatching wouldn't be fun if it was always predictable.

The view from the bus stop
Stockport's getting some filthy weather. 

I didn't need to walk into Sholver. The path brought me close to the bus stops for the 356 and the next bus was the one to Ashton-under-Lyne due in five minutes. It would have been rude not to. While I waited I looked over the rolling landscape and marvelled that some dirty great glacier had gouged out this wide u-shaped valley and left the tiny River Medlock to carve into it just a little more.