Longendale Trail

Juvenile robin

I was frankly knackered after yesterday's trip out but I had to get a new monthly travel card (I didn't bother over the weekend as we had no public transport on Sunday and I'd planned on using up the free ride yesterday). Seeing as I was out and seeing as the immediate choice was between the train to Hadfield or the train to Greenfield I chose the former as the walk proper starts round the corner from the station and is dead flat, both being factors for consideration when you're not sure if you're awake or not.

The mid-afternoon train journey out to Hadfield was oddly thin on birds, I was seeing more butterflies and not many of them. The pigeons within the M60 gave way to the jackdaws without and by the time we got to Glossop the woodpigeons were coming back to the trackside trees.

Robin, Hadfield Station 

The collared doves were singing at Hadfield Station and blackbirds, robins and spadgers were rummaging round. I walked round to the car park at the beginning of the trail where woodpigeons and a chiffchaff were singing. Each time I do this I think it a puzzle and a pity the trail doesn't start at the end of the platform in the station.

Approaching the Padfield Main Road bridge

Walking down the trail through the old railway cut was an odd mixture of song and silence. For the most part it was quiet but every so often a woodpigeon, blackbird or wren would sing. A blackcap sang near the car park. A song thrush sang near the bridge. I could hear the contact calls of small birds under leaf cover, mostly robins but also blue tits and great tits. I wondered if there had been rain locally, the trackside stream was running and here and there there was run-off from the cut. 

Blackbird 

Another blackcap sang a little further ahead then a garden warbler joined in, their songs the same but different: the rushed, scratchy quality and lack of bubbling undertones of the garden warbler obviously distinct when the songs are heard together but close enough to the blackcap's tone and tune to easily second-guess if heard on its own. I've heard blackcaps tuning up for a song that sounded very similar for a few seconds.

Juvenile robin 

I'd become used to the robins and blackbirds rummaging in the verges and hopping across the path. One robin was just sat on a twig by the path and it watched me very carefully as I walked by. The reason became immediately clear: a young robin was flying solo and was hunting by the stream under parental supervision.

Bottoms Reservoir 

The jackdaws that had been flying to and fro overhead were feeding in the fields above Bottoms Reservoir with the sheep and Canada geese. A few woodpigeons grazed, a pair of lapwings showed off in display flights, a couple of rooks rummaged about. I wonder where the rest of the rooks are. There were a few more Canada geese on the banks of the reservoir and a handful of black-headed gulls bobbed about on the water. The effects of the recent lack of rain were apparent.

Bottoms Reservoir, showing the effects of a dry Spring

Walking on past Bottoms Reservoir 

Rabbits ran in and out of the bramble patches as I walked by. Chiffchaffs, dunnocks and blackbirds sang in the trees, robins and wrens in the hawthorns. A curlew glided over and headed for the hills. I only managed to see one of the calling pheasants, as it strutted through the gateposts of a dry stone wall.

Looking over to Valehouse Wood

I walked through the trees as far as the seat overlooking this end of Valehouse Reservoir. I'm going to have to give this walk a proper visit, it'll have to be on a Friday when I could get a bus back to Glossop or out to Holmfirth. Still, I'd not done bad for sleepwalking. A swallow twittered its song as it passed, the only one of the day.

Looking back on the way back to Hadfield 

Departing hares

On the way back I was too slow to get a photo of the boxing hares but the rabbits were more accommodating. The rabbits were frankly astonishing, disappearing at the last minute whenever one of the many dogs on a walk snuffled past and reappearing almost as soon as their back legs had passed the entrance of each run.

Rabbit

Walking back to Hadfield 

At Hadfield Station yet another carrion crow gave yet another buzzard a hard time overhead. Apparently I'd missed a little gull and an osprey over Bottoms Reservoir, I didn't mind not having a cherry on top of the cake.

The view over and across Bottoms Reservoir 

I appear to have gone for a walk by mistake

Woodpigeons, Hadfield 

It had been a wild, wet and windy night. Having had two hours' sleep the night before I felt mortally tired and, unsurprisingly, overslept and missed the trains for the planned day out. Earlier the dawn chorus, or what I heard of it, consisted of the usual two duelling blackbirds and a couple of woodpigeons. At least one lesser black-back flew overhead heading for Salford Quays.

It was a cold and miserable day and a large part of me was for spending it in bed with a pot of tea and a stack of Tiger Tim annuals. I decided I needed to get some value out of the last day of my monthly travel card so I headed out to Hadfield for a brief dawdle round the beginning of the Longendale Trail in the half hour between trains, just so I could say I'd had a little exercise.

I travelled light, leaving the camera and bins at home. It was unlikely I'd be missing anything, I wasn't having much of a walk and the light was awful. It was one of those days where the trackside woodpigeons sit on the branches near the bottom of the trees out of the wind. It's already getting difficult to see the birds for the leaves and it's only half past April.

Jackdaws and woodpigeons flitted about the chimney tops of Hadfield. Blackbirds, great tits and a chiffchaff sang in the trees. I walked round from the station and started along the trail. It was blowing a hooley so I thought the most sensible option was to walk the length of the cutting and turn back before the open country above Bottoms Reservoir. That would probably get me back to the station with five minutes or so to spare.

Starting along the trail

Woodpigeons loafed in the trees along the trail. A couple of chiffchaffs sang, a couple spotted me and squeaked alarm calls. Great tits, blue tits and coal tits essayed little snatches of song, one of the blackbirds made a fuller effort though its heart didn't sound in it. The weather was putting us all off. 

The robins were seen but not heard. On the way back I stopped and watched a courting pair, less than a yard away from me by the path. They stopped, had a look at me, decided I was nothing important and got back to the job in hand, she looking winsome and making tiny begging flutters of the wings and he hunting for food then flying over and feeding her. I was glad I didn't have my camera, I'd have scared them off trying to get a photo.

I'd dawdled too long watching the robins and just missed the train so rather than hang around Hadfield Station for half an hour I decided to walk to Dinting for the next train. Then I wondered where a path went and ended up walking down into Dinting Vale and Glossop Brook. The way you do.

I was five minutes from Dinting Station when I saw a path leading off the road into some scrub. I had half a memory of a path round here that led to the station by a slightly roundabout route, the train was due in ten minutes, I decided to take the path. It wasn't the one I was thinking about, or else I missed a turn off somewhere along the way. A hundred yards from the station it emerged from the scrubby woodland with its singing great tits, goldfinches and chiffchaffs and lurched down the hill, eventually meeting Glossop Brook at the foot of the viaduct. Halfway down the hill I thought I heard a whitethroat but whatever it was shut up sharpish so I couldn't be sure of it.

Dinting Viaduct 

I got the bus back to Glossop Station, I didn't trust myself not to be still there at midnight wanting to find where paths were going.