Search Results for “Staffordshire Staffs”

Search Results : Staffordshire Staffs

The Roaches, Doxey Pool and Hen Cloud, Staffs

Sep 242022

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

A Sunday morning over the Staffordshire Moorlands, the gritstone outcrops of the Roaches standing out along their ridge against the blue sky, and dozens of climbers already spidering up the inclines and sheer cliffs above.

The Roaches are a famous climbing playground, and no wonder. Their gritstone is harsh, abrasive stuff to which a shoe or a hand can safely adhere, and the view from the top over the rolling Staffordshire landscape is sensational. Today it was mostly youngsters climbing in bright reds and blues, their belts clinking with bundles of clips.

We followed the path among the rocks and up a rough stairway to the ridge. The Roaches rise abruptly from the surrounding countryside. They look formidable from below, and it’s a shock to find yourself so quickly up there, walking on the tops of their gnarled old heads. Part of their grim appeal is the blackness of their aspect, but flakes broken off reveal a cheerful red flush to the rock that lies below.

We stopped to admire the view over Tittesworth Reservoir, all the way southwest to where the lonely whaleback of the Wrekin topped the horizon forty miles off. Then we headed north into a cold wind.

Doxey Pool was dimpled with rings as pond skaters darted sideways across the surface. Down in the peaty depths the hag Jenny Greenteeth waits to lure young men to their doom. Where does such a story originate? Maybe from the ogreish profiles that imagination conjures up on the weathered gritstone tors that cradle the pool.

Beyond Doxey Pool we turned along a permissive path down a hillside shimmering with seedy grasses. A meadow pipit escorted us with admonitory cheeps. The last of the bilberries still hung among the leaves, and we plucked the shiny black fruit to savour the sweet/sharp juice that stained chins and finger ends.

The homeward path led through beautiful meadows and cow pastures, with the crusty tors of Ramshaw Rocks on the skyline and the hedgehog hump of Hen Cloud ahead. We scrambled up there for a final view round the compass, before descending in afternoon sunshine among climbers and walkers full of chatter about the great day they’d all had.

How hard is it? 4 miles; moderate; short sharp climbs, uneven steps.

Start: Parking laybys, Roaches Road, Upper Hulme, ST13 8UA (OS ref SK 007615)

Getting there: A53 (Leek–Buxton); turn off at sign (‘Upper Hulme, Ye Olde Rock Inn’); in 150m fork left; parking bays in 1 mile.

Walk (OS Explorer OL24): 200m north of Windygates Farm drive, right through gate (006619); half left towards hut. Through gate (006620); right; in 100m left up through rocks. In 550m at T-junction, left uphill (005625, wooden fence); up rough steps; left along ridge path. Pass Doxey Pool (004628); in 350m, right over wall by wooden fence (003631). Permissive Path to road (007633). Right in 150m, right (fingerpost). At Shawtop Farm gate (009631), left (footpath sign); through fields (arrows, Access Land symbols). In 250m at gate on right (011629), keep ahead along drive, past Hencow Farm (013627, gates, yellow arrows/YAs). On through fields. At blue-topped arrow post, right (013625) and on (kissing gate, footbridge). In 300m cross stream (014622); up, keeping fence on left. In 300m fence turns left downhill (012620); ahead here through 2 gates; left down wall to cross Well Farm drive (011619). Gates, YAs down to cross stream; up to arrow post (011618) Right to saddle (009619); left up Hen Cloud (009615); return; left to road.

Lunch/Accommodation: Three Horseshoes, Blackshaw Moor, ST13 8TW ()1538-300296, 3shoesinn.co.uk)

Info: Leek TIC, Wed-Sat (01538-395530)

Loggerheads and Hales, Staffordshire

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Oct 172020

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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A bright, windy morning after overnight rain in this finger of land where Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire eye each other across a muddle of county boundaries. ‘Loggerheads’ is an old country word for ‘idiots’ – something to ponder as we set out from the village into the ancient thickets of Burnt Wood.

Here a tuberculosis sanatorium once stood. The patients were often wheeled outside in their beds to breathe the fresh air of the forest that was thought to alleviate their symptoms.

It was a peaceful stroll under the old oaks with their tangled understorey of holly. Patches of heath, flushed purple with heather, gave way to a brackeny track bordered by silver birch and richly golden gorse.

A stony lane led south out of the trees, between pastures where rams had marked the rumps of dozens of fat ewes with orange and blue raddle. Over in Wales the abrupt, wave-like peaks of the Berwyn ridge rose on the western skyline, an eye-catching counterpoint to the gentle roll of the Staffordshire countryside.

At Park Springs Farm three guinea fowl took fright at our approach. With a volley of unearthly whirring screeches they ducked their heads and scuttled off like a gaggle of old ladies in bulky grey cloaks.

A deep-sunk lane buttressed with great slabs of sandstone led past The Nook farm. The barns bore diamond patterns in their gables, some anonymous bricklayer’s careful work in a previous generation. Red-bodied darters hovered and settled on the wooden paddock fence, and the last of this year’s swallows went zigzagging above the lane, fuelling up for the long migration flight to Africa.

In the wooded dell of Lloyd Drumble there was a trickle of water under the sycamores. Along the lane to Hales the hedges were full of rosehips the size and lustre of cherry tomatoes. Over a gate we caught a glimpse of the slope where a Romano-British villa once stood, with a view of trees and far hills that can’t have changed greatly in 1500 years.

From the little hamlet of Hales, Flash Lane led north past Blore Farm, its red brick ornamented with black corners. The path wound back to Loggerheads via the outskirts of Burnt Wood, where plump black sloes hung in the hedge and crab apples bobbed at the end of laden boughs.

Start: Loggerheads PH, Loggerheads, Market Drayton, Staffs TF9 4PD (OS ref SJ 738359)

Getting there: Bus 164 (Market Drayton – Hanley)
Road – Loggerheads is on A53 (Market Drayton – Stoke-on-Trent)

Walk (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 243): Left along A53; in 70m, left (Kestrel Drive). In 500m, left (Woodpecker Drive, 735355); on into wood. In 150m, over crossways. In 300m, left at junction (734349). In 700m, at 8-way junction (739351), take second track on right. In ¼ mile, ahead through bushes to stony track (742349). Right. In ¾ mile, leave trees over stile (739339); in 75m, left over stile; along hedge. At field bottom, through gate (738336); ahead to gate; left along track. In 300m at Knowleswood (737332), right up track. In 250m, left (734332); in 350m, right (734329) passing The Nook (732329) and Keeper’s Lodge (727334). In 1¼ miles in Hales (719338), right up Flash Lane. In ½ mile, keep right of Blore Farm buildings (721346, ‘Short Walk’). In 200m, left through hedge (723347, stile, ‘Newcastle Way’) for 1 mile to A53 (736359). Right to Loggerheads pub.

Lunch: Loggerheads PH (01630-296118, theloggerheadspub.co.uk) – the Loggerheads PH advises booking.

Accommodation: Four Alls Inn, Market Drayton TF9 2AG (01630-652995, thefouralls.com)

Info: Market Drayton TIC (01630-653114); satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Beaudesert Old Park and Cannock Chase, Staffs

Walks No Responses »

Nov 232019

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Just when the Cornovi tribe built the polyhedral stronghold of Castle Ring is a matter of conjecture. Certainly it was with primitive hand tools and massed labour, long before the Romans arrived in Britain. Walking the ramparts on this bright cold morning at the southern edge of Cannock Chase, we looked out over the sunlit Staffordshire plain to crumpled hills rising far in the northeast.

The Heart of England Way trails north from Castle Ring through the depths of Cannock Chase, ‘green lung’ and recreational woodland for the cheek-by-jowl old manufacturing towns of the Black Country. None of that was even a twinkle in an industrialist’s eye when the Bishops of Lichfield and Coventry held this area as a hunting forest for their great palace at Beaudesert, the ‘beautiful wilderness’.

The wilderness looked well regulated today. Cyclists pedalled, dog walkers sauntered. The rasp of saws and rattle of mechanical grabs sounded from Stonepit Green, where piles of logs just harvested gave off a tarry, resinous whiff. Soon we’d turned aside, deeper into the forest, where the long lake of Horsepasture Pools lay ruffled by the wind.

The sun struck down through the trees, a touch of wintry warmth for the cheeks, the strong low light silvering the trunks of beech and birch and turning the dangling seed cones on the larch boughs to rows of golden lanterns. Long-tailed tits and siskins skipped in company among the cones, twittering with excitement over their treetop feasting.

A rutted track led away from Horsepasture, over Startley Hill and on west along Marquis’s Drive. After the Reformation the Paget family, Marquesses of Anglesey, replaced the Bishops of Lichfield as lords and masters of the forest, a role they sustained for 400 years until emptying coffers and the demands of the taxman drove them away.

We passed the silty streams and rushy ponds in the hollow of Seven Springs, and turned up a rubbly track over Rainbow Hill. The pebbles underfoot, as hard and cold as quartz, had been rounded and smoothed by some primordial flood through millennia of tumbling, something to conjure as we crunched this ancient stony carpet back to Castle Ring.

Start: Castle Ring car park, off Holly Hill Road, Cannock Wood WS15 4RN (OS ref SK 045126)

Getting there: Castle Ring is signposted from Cannock Wood (M6 Toll Jct T6; A5190, Burntwood).

Walk (6¼ miles, easy, OS Explorer 244): Circuit of Castle Ring hillfort, then Heart of England Way/HEW north. In ½ mile descend over crossing (040133); in 200m, at HEW/Two Saints Way marker post, bear right/east (040135) on forest road. In ¾ mile, bear left past Trout Lodge gates (050139); cross Horsepasture Pools; on for ¾ mile to road at Wandon (040146). From junction opposite (‘Rugeley’), fork left downhill (public bridleway, HEW). Follow HEW/Marquis Drive for 1 mile. Just before A460 at Moor’s Gorse, left off HEW past metal barrier (025151), up track. In 100m, right at 3-way split; in 100m, at 4-way split, follow 2nd on left, uphill/south through trees. In 1 mile pass golf clubhouse (027136); left along roadway; in 50m, right down drive. Cross road (029136). Pass barrier; left on path beside road, then follow forest road southeast for 1 mile, keeping ahead at all junctions, to HEW at Castle Ring (042128); right to car park.

Lunch: Park Gate Inn, Castle Ring WS15 4RN (01543-682742); friendly pub with bar snacks

Accommodation: The Lodge, B&B, 603 Littleworth Rd, Cannock WS12 1QQ (01543-428582, thelodgecannockchase.com)

Info: forestryengland.co.uk/cannockchase; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Abbots Bromley & Bagot’s Park, Staffordshire

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Sep 012018

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Six men bearing enormous reindeer horns cavort together, advancing and retiring, enticing and threatening. Lumpy-bumpy melodeon music accompanies their ritual, crowds of onlookers cheer them through the village streets. This is the ancient Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, performed every Wakes Monday in this Staffordshire village.

We start today’s walk in the village church of St Nicholas, and here on the wall behind the organ hang the venerable sets of reindeer horns, each a thousand years old, mounted on curious little wooden heads. Not long after sunrise on Wakes Monday the priest-in-charge blesses the horns before the dancers set out with them, a nice blend of the Christian and pagan.

The bells of St Nicholas ring out over Abbots Bromley as we walk away from the brick cottages and half-timbered old houses of the village. The hazy bloom of a hot summer’s morning lies over the steeply rolling countryside.

On the ridge near Spring Bank Farm, young cattle are sheltering from the heat in their shed. From here we look back to Abbots Bromley among trees on its hillside, and to the misty grey outlines of the great cooling towers at Rugeley, their waists nipped in like monstrous flamenco dancers.

At Beacon Bank Farm we get into a lane of hazel hedges between shady oaks, from whose upper leaves tiny caterpillars come abseiling down on glistening threads. At Hart’s Farm the young heifers blow through their nostrils as they stand in straw, emitting their characteristic warm, biscuit smell.

The royal hunting forest of Needwood once covered all this countryside. Now its fragments lie widely scattered. We sit on a medieval earthen bank in Hart’s Coppice, our feet among oak leaves, listening to blackbird and warblers making mid-afternoon music in the cool of the woodland canopy. Uncountable insects add a harmonic background hum.

Around Dun’s Field farm the stiles are choked with brambles and blackthorn. We clear a way at the cost of a few scratches, and follow a track across the broad acres of Bagot’s Park between fields of wheat and oilseed rape.

A wistful glance as we pass the silver silos of the Freedom Brewery, and we haul our thirsty throats and hot faces homeward along the Staffordshire Way. The fields shimmer in the sunshine, hoverflies hum their monotone refrain, and all colours are leached out in the heat of the afternoon to the dull gold of the crops and the green of trees so dark they look tar black against the pale blue sky.

Start: St Nicholas’s Church, Abbots Bromley, Staffs WS15 3DD (OS ref SK 079246)

Getting there: Bus 402A, 403, Uttoxeter to Burton-on-Trent
Road – Abbots Bromley is on B5014, signposted (B5013) from A51 at Rugeley.

Walk (7 miles, easy, OS Explorer 244): From church to village green at Buttercross. Right along High Street; left (084244) up Radmore Lane. In ½ mile pass Radmore farm; in 100m, right over stile (091249); fork left (fingerpost) across field to far corner (stile). Same line across next field to cross footbridge (094249). In 50m, right (stile, yellow arrow/YA). Straight uphill, then half left to shed (097250). Through gate; half left across field to gate. Ahead to 2 gates by The Clump wood (100242). Left through left-hand gate; along hedge (stiles) for 350m to lane at Beacon Bank Farm (099255).

Right; in 300m pass gates of Four Oaks (101257); in 240m, fork left (103259) to Hart’s Farm (103261). Between house and shed; on through farmyard between sheds; through gate at far side; follow farm track for 200m to go through gate (105264, YA). Bear left up flank of Hart’s Coppice to enter wood (106265, stile, YA). Ahead across track; on through trees with ditch on left for 200m to leave wood (107266, stile, YA).

Path across field; cross footbridge (100269, YA); on down field edge. In 200m at angle of field, right (101271, stiles, YAs, footbridges) across brook. Up field to shed; cross stile (110273); across following stile (YA); left with hedge on left to cross 2 adjacent stiles in corner of field (109274) at Dun’s Field farmhouse. Bear right past cattle grid; left along field roadway (108276) for 1 mile to pass Freedom Brewery (093270). In another 250m, left (090269) along field edge in valley bottom on Staffordshire Way (marked by YAs with ‘knot’ logo).

In 600m bear right round field edge (094264); ahead over stile (SW) through trees; up hill. In 500m, left through hedge (089263, SW, fingerpost). Follow hedge on right. In 200m, right through hedge (090261, YA) across field. Left along hedge on your left (YA), on path becoming green lane to road (087255). Ahead to Abbots Bromley.

Conditions: Some bramble-choked stiles near Dun’s Field Farm; secateurs/stick are useful!

Lunch: Café on the Green, Abbots Bromley (01283 840275) – excellent home cooking

Accommodation: Marsh Farm B&B, Uttoxeter Road, Abbots Bromley WS15 3EJ (01283-840323)

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance: Monday 10 Sept 2018; abbotsbromley.com/horn_dance

enjoystaffordshire.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Norbury Junction & Aqualate Mere, Staffs

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Nov 252017

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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John O’Dreams lay slumbering under the willows. Hills on the Water stretched out flat above her own reflection, and the crooked chimney atop Tranquillity puffed a lazy trail of coal smoke across the quiet waters of the Shropshire Union Canal. Downbeat names for hibernating narrowboats and their crews of water gypsies, moored up for winter at Norbury Junction.

What a fuss and a furore the canals caused as they burrowed across the face of England two hundred years ago. When Thomas Telford masterminded the route of the Shropshire Union canal to link up the port of Liverpool with the industrial Black Country, Lord Anson refused to let the newfangled thing through his estate at Norbury Park lest it frighten the pheasants. So the navvies mounded a gigantic embankment to bypass the place, a mile long and sixty feet up in the air.

The Great Bank gave us a fine grandstand view over the Staffordshire woods and fields as we followed the canal down to Gnosall Heath. Here the Stafford & Shrewsbury railway line cuts east-west across the route of the canal. We turned west along its trackbed, nowadays a landscaped cycle path in a tunnel of trees. Cleverly engineered bridges crossed the old line, their rustic stone buttresses supporting arches of brick skewed with an ingenious barley-sugar twist to take the road slantwise across the railway.

We passed Wilbrighton Hall standing tall and handsome on its ridge, and turned north into the mires and marshes of the Coley Brook. Every footfall produced a squelch and squirt of water as we trod the sedgy fields to the brink of Aqualate Mere.

This mile-long natural lake, hollowed by the retreating glaciers 10,000 years ago, is only waist-deep. Its encircling reedbeds shelter huge numbers of birds. We sat at a hide window and watched a great crested grebe bobbing on the water, then diving below with a wriggle and snaky bend of the neck. Nearby a tufted duck paddled itself round in circles as it preened, nibbling and prodding its back feathers into proper shape.

Beyond the mere the homeward path zigzagged and side-stepped across fields of winter wheat, aiming for the line of the Great Bank above the treetops. Up there a narrowboat passed slowly across the skyline, its skipper leaning back at the tiller, oblivious of us below or of anything else but water, trees and the blue sky above.

Start: Junction Inn, Norbury Junction, nr Newport, Staffs ST20 0PN (OS ref SJ 793229)

Getting there: Norbury Junction is signed from A519 Newcastle-Newport road between Sutton and Woodseaves.

Walk (8½ miles, easy, OS Explorers 243, 242): Right along canal towpath for 2¼ miles. At Bridge 35A (817205), right along railway cyclepath. In 2½ miles, left down steps (785186, ‘Outwoods, Moreton’); right under bridge; cross A518 at Coley Mill (781194). Bridleway north past east end of Aqualate Mere for ¾ mile to road (782207). Right; in 300m on right bend, left (785207, ‘bridleway’) on green lane north to Radmore Lane (785214). Right; in 350m cross Wood Brook (788214); in another 150m, left (stile, fingerpost) across fields (stiles, yellow arrows/YA). At end of 2nd field, take right-hand of 2 waymarked exits (791218); follow hedge on left for 650m to Norbury Road (794224, stile). Left; right under canal; road to Norbury Junction.

Conditions: wet, muddy fields near Aqualate Mere

Lunch: Junction Inn (01785-284288, norburyjunction.com) or Norbury Wharf tearoom (01785-784292), both at Norbury Junction.

Accommodation: Premier Inn, Newport, Staffs TF10 9BY (0333-321-1352)

Info: Telford VIC (01952-291723)

visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Consall Nature Park & Churnet Valley, Staffs

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Apr 092016

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Consall Nature Park is a truly fantastic resource for nearby Stoke-on-Trent – a network of colour-coded paths in a proper wild tangle of steep woods and stream canyons.

On a cold spring morning we set out to explore. A duckboard path took us down over stodgy black bog to cross a stream in a dell shaggy with moss. Steps rose and steps fell over the shoulders of wooded promontories as we followed the white and purple trails through the Nature Park. A bench perched high on a west-facing ledge of Far Kingsley Banks gave a view across massed treetops of smoky green and milky purple, a subtle touch of spring’s finger on these awakening woods.

On past distorted oaks throwing swollen arms in all directions, down a long flight of knee-cracking steps, and out into the bottom of the Churnet Valley. We crossed the River Churnet tumbling over its sandstone ledges, then the track of the Churnet Valley Railway, and the silver strip of the Caldon Canal whose barges once shifted locally mined ironstone to Froghall.

We followed the canal as far as the gothic arch of Cherryeye Bridge, then climbed steeply up through forestry into upland fields walled with stone and open to the wind. Great puffing gouts of blue-brown coal smoke from the valley bottom showed where the steam engines of the Churnet Valley Railway were getting their spring blow-through.

A plunge down through Booth’s Wood, a zigzag of steps up to Booth’s Hall Farm in a sea of old tyres and hay bales. Down again to the railway and canal, and a towpath stroll to the Black Lion at Consall Forge. A quick stop for a drink in the company of a local humorist and his glossy labrador – the latter a complete fool for pork scratchings – and we were back in Consall Nature Park on the homeward trail.

Start: Consall Nature Park Visitor Centre car park, near Leek, Staffs ST9 0AF (OS ref SJ 994484)

Getting there: ‘Consall Hall Gardens’ signed off A52 (Stoke-on-Trent – Ashbourne) between Kingsley and Cellarhead.

Walk (5½ miles, moderate-strenuous, OS Explorers 258, 259; download trail map at staffordshire.gov.uk): From car park, pass ‘Follow the coloured posts’ notice. Path downhill; at Heron Pool, fork right downhill (Red Walk, White Walk). Opposite ‘Lower Lady Park Wood’ sign on right, go left down steps. Duckboard path across stream; up steps to post with yellow arrows/YA (996481). Left down to stream (don’t cross!); up again (many steps!) and follow White Walk. In 300m pass bench; in another 150m, fork right on Purple Walk (999483, ‘Far Kingsley Banks’ notice, purple post). In 250m (001483) descend long flight of steps. At bottom, cross stream; in 30m, by ‘Consall Nature Park’ notice (003484), Purple Walk forks right; but you fork left down steps to cross River Churnet, Churnet Valley Railway and Caldon Canal.

Turn right (004484) along canal towpath for ¾ mile to pass under Bridge 53/Cherryeye Bridge (014482). Right over stile (‘Moorlands Walk/MW’); cross bridge; follow MW directly up little slope; steeply on up to valley top and stile into field (017483, MW). Ahead to far wall; left along it. In 200m, wall turns right; keep ahead here into wood (017486, MW). Down to footbridge; up steep steps to field (015488). Follow MW to Booth’s Hall Farm. Aim right of barn (MW), then house; pass Orchard View; follow fence on left to field corner (011490). Left through kissing gate (MW); right along fence/hedge. Where it bends away right, keep ahead past telephone pole (YA) through gap with bank (008489) to Glenwood House.

Follow YAs to left, and on into field (006488). Follow right-hand hedge to stile (004488, MW) into wood. Down to road and canal (001487). Right under Bridge 50B; towpath past Consall station to Black Lion PH (000492). Go under railway bridge; left across canal bridge 50 and river bridge. Left along riverside track past Consall station; on past ‘Consall Nature Park’ sign to cross road (000486); follow white posts back to Visitor Centre.

Conditions: many short, steep ascents, descents and steps

Lunch: Black Lion, Consall Forge (01782-550294; blacklionpub.co.uk)

Accommodation: The Manor, Cheadle ST10 1NZ (01538-753450, themanorcheadle.co.uk)

Consall Nature Park: 01782-550939 or 302030; staffordshire.gov.uk. Visitor Centre open 2-4, weekends, BH.

Info: Leek TIC (01538-483741)

visitengland.com; satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk

Brocton Camps, Cannock Chase, Staffordshire

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Aug 022014

‘May 8 1916. Peeling Taters,’ wrote Bandsman Erskine Williams of 11th Division, British Expeditionary Force, on his postcard home from Brocton Camp.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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‘This takes place before breakfast. I generally do some. Observe cascade of peelings -‘ and there he is in a funny little self-penned sketch, producing dutiful curls of potato rind. ‘Am well in health bodily,’ he goes on, ‘if not mentally … weather still very cold & wet.’

Bandsman Williams was one of half a million fledgling soldiers of the First World War who endured the hardships, boredoms and barracks humour of Brocton Camp as they trained for active service on the Western Front. Up to 40,000 at a time, mostly Britons or new Zealanders, were crudely housed and stodgily fed in the vast camp on Cannock Chase, a few miles north of Birmingham, as they learned the arts of marching, musketry, signalling and scouting, gas warfare and the use of the bayonet. Erskine Williams and his delightful little cartoons survived the war, but tens of thousands of those who passed through Brocton did not.

From the well-signposted grave of Freda, canine mascot of the New Zealand Rifles, we walked south along sandy paths over the broad heath of the Chase, a patchwork of heather, moor grass, bilberry, cowberry and crowberry with dark green leathery leaves. Sunk in the ground as hummocks and ridges were the remnants of Brocton Camp’s enormous infrastructure – trenches and rifle ranges, huts and stores and the little railway that everyone knew as ‘Tackeroo’.

Young roe bucks with prick-sharp antlers went bounding away with a flash of their white rumps as we approached the Katyn Memorial. The monument commemorates the 25,000 Polish soldiers, policemen and ‘intelligentsia’ murdered by the Russian secret police in 1940 on Stalin’s orders, many of them unearthed three years later in mass graves in Katyn Forest. Further south we found two peaceful, silent war cemeteries, one for Allied servicemen, the other for Germans who died in Britain during the two World Wars, neatly laid rank upon rank and side by side.

These were powerful places to stand and surmise, with sunlight slanting across the graves and blackbirds fluttering in the cemetery hedges. Walking back north up the hidden cleft of Sherbrook Valley, with the stream chuckling quietly under its bridges and slopes of birch and pine closing off the valley from the outside world, the mud, blood and slaughter that waited for the young trainees of Brocton Camps seemed utterly inconceivable.
Start: Coppice Hill car park, near Brocton, Staffs, ST17 0SS approx. (OS ref SJ 979191)

Getting there: From A34 (Stafford-Cannock), minor road to Brocton; right at village green, left uphill past Quarry car park entrance; in another 400m, left along lane (‘Coppice Hill’) to car park at end.

Walk (6 miles, easy, OS Explorer 244): Back along lane; in 50m pass ‘Heart of England Way’/HEW fingerpost on left; in 30m, left past parking space and on (‘Freda’s Grave’/FG) along grass path. At T-junction, right (FG); in 150m, pass FG on right (979189). At road, left. In 600m, at ‘Glacial Boulder’ parking space on right (980182), left past boulder and trig pillar; right along broad stony HEW. In 200m fork right; in 250m, right at path crossing (982177, ‘Two Saints Way’/2SW). Just before road, left (980176, 2SW, HEW) on pebbly path, straight ahead for ⅔ mile to road at Springslade Lodge tearoom (979165).

Left along tarmac lane (‘Katyn Memorial’) to memorial (980165). Return towards road; just before, left past posts along rising track for ⅔ mile, passing through car park (983159) and on along clear track to tarmac lane (985156). Right to Commonwealth War Cemetery (983155); return and pass German War Cemetery (986157). Follow roadway, then stony track (yellow arrows/YAs) ignoring side tracks through gates, for ½ mile to reach HEW (990166). Dogleg left/right across it and on (white arrows/WA) north up Sherbrook Valley. In ¾ mile, cross track to Pepper Slade (988178) and keep on (WA, ‘Long Route’). In ⅔ mile pass bridge with 2 pipes on right (985186). Pass WA, then YA on left; in another 50m, opposite WA, bear left – not sharp left, but following rising track (unwaymarked) leading back to car park.

NB Directions: download excellent directions for extended version of this walk at walkingbritain.co.uk

Lunch: Picnic, or Springslade Lodge tearoom (01785-715091)

Accommodation: Moat House Hotel, Acton Trussell, (01785-712217; moathouse.co.uk)

Brocton Camp Website: staffspasttrack.org.uk/exhibit/chasecamps

‘Bullets and Bandsmen’ : biography of Erskine Williams by his daughter Daphne Jones, illustrated with EW’s sketches (Owl Press)

National Trust WW1 commemorative Silent Walks: nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1355842842744/

Info: Cannock Chase Visitor Centre, Marquis Drive, WS12 4PW (01543-876741); visitcannockchaseco.uk; www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk visitengland.com

Middle Mayfield and Cuckoo Cliff, Staffordshire

Walks 1 Response »

May 172014

They dress their wells in the Peak District – always have, probably always will. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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The old springs and sources of Derbyshire are famous for the intricate way they are ornamented by the local people with pictures of flowers and seeds in high summer. But here in Middle Mayfield across the county boundary in Staffordshire, they’re proud to carry on this ancient pagan tradition, too, garlanding the village wells in June come rain, come shine.

On a close, steamy morning, with heatwaves and thunderstorms threatened, we passed three or four wells on our way up Hollow Lane out of the village, the dark still water concealed like a treasure behind gridded gates or wooden doors. Spatters of blue and white seeds and stones showed where they had been glorified only a month before. Now the dimpling sources lay in secret among the borage and comfrey, knapweed and moon daisies along Hollow Lane.

From the ridge at Ashfield Farm we had a view lent mystery by the thick grey heat – the misty woods and hayfields of the River Dove’s deep valley behind us, and the long bald head of Blake Low rising ahead. Then we plunged down through Gold’s Wood to walk the bank of the shallow, glass-brown Ordley Brook. The local geology seemed to be having an identity crisis – the houses were of beautiful sun-paled pink sandstone, but the abundant scabious where the butterflies were feeding spoke of lime beneath the soil. The knobbly old shaft of the medieval Ousley Cross beside the road was peppered with conglomerate pebbles – another puzzle.

A stony lane between fields of skittish cattle brought us up to Stanton, from where Flather Lane rose northwards under shady ash and hazels to leave us on the brink of Cuckoohill Wood and its steep little gorge. Here Ellis Hill Brook chuckled under giant hogweed and the sky-blue flowers of nettle-leaved bellflower.

After skirting Leasow and Ellishill Farm we dropped into the cleft and went south beside the brook through thickets of nettles and brambles. A stiff climb to the ridge once more, and we followed the ill-waymarked but lovely Limestone Way path across newly mown hayfields on the crest of the land, with a wonderful breeze to cool our sun-baked faces.

Start: Rose & Crown PH, Middle Mayfield, Staffs DE6 2JT (OS ref SK 148447)

Getting there: Bus 409 (arrivabus.co.uk) Ashbourne-Uttoxeter
Road – Middle Mayfield is on B5032 (off A52, 2 miles west of Ashbourne)

Walk (7½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer 259): Opposite Rose & Crown, up Hall Lane. Just past Old Hall, left up Hollow Lane (147449, fingerpost). In 500 m leave trees by stile (142448); ahead with hedge on left. Cross stile; bear half right, aiming right of Ashfield Farm, to cross stile (139448, 2 yellow arrows/YA). In 30 m, right through squeeze stile/SS (YA). Diagonally left, over stile beside right-hand of 2 gates. Follow right-hand hedge to cross concrete roadway (137447); in 50 m, right through gateway (no waymark); half left to cross SS. Follow hedge on your left. Through next SS; on past conifer plantation. At end, over wooden stile (133447); right to bottom of slope, left along wood edge. In 250 m, right through stile (132447, YA); down path through wood, curving right in 150 m to descend and cross Ordley Brook by footbridge (131448). Left along far bank for 700 m to road (126445). Ahead for 50 m to see remains of Ousley Cross on right.

Retrace path along Ordley Brook. In 200 m cross side stream; in another 50 m, left (128447) through stile gap (YA, ‘Weaver Walk’/WW). Follow path through wood to stile out of trees (128448, WW). Forward to stone wall; left along it (YA, WW). Soon path becomes grassy lane. In a little over ½ mile, at a gate by Smithy Moor Farm (131457), don’t turn right (YA), but go through gate ahead (fingerpost) and on up farm track for ¼ mile to road on outskirts of Stanton (130460). Left; in 150 m, right up Flather Lane.

In ½ mile, after passing silage clamp on right, continue along wide grassy lane. Descend to cross stile (131472, YA); then steeply down to Cuckoohill Wood. Cross stony gap in bottom left corner of field (131473); bear left along stream bank for 50 m; cross footbridge and up steps to cross stile into field. Bear left and follow line of electricity poles across field to cross stile/kissing gate into field just south of Leasow (132477). Right along fence for 100 m; right over triple stile (YA); half left to cross double stile (133477). Half left to go through SS by holed stone. Aim for Ellishill Farm across field, and through SS.

NB Path is currently being diverted to pass left of house – please watch for signs! At time of writing, path passes close to right of house (134474) and continues for 50 m to go through wall gap (135473). Ahead along ridge with hedge on left and valley on right. In 100 m (135472), diagonally right down slope to bottom edge of field. 100 m from end of field, right over stile into wood (135469, YA). Follow path (can be very overgrown!) south for ½ mile on left (east) bank of brook. Just beyond stile out of wood, pass well and standing stone (137464) to Stanton Lane (138462).

Left up lane, past Harlow Farm drive. In another 150 m, at top of hill, right through gate (142464, arrow) on Limestone Way (labelled as such on map). Through SS above farm and on; at next gate, through stile on left of it (143461). On with hedge on right, through gateway (YA); half left across field to stile (144459, YA); on with hedge on left to double stile (YA). Across field to SS (YA); halfway across next field, right through hedge (143455, stile, YA) and left along green lane. Cross stile by metal gate; same at next one. In another 70 m, left (142452, YA, WW on your right) up hedge, over ridge and down through stile in left corner of field (143451, YA). Descend with hedge on left for ¼ mile to lane by Old Hall (148449). Right into Middle Mayfield.

Lunch/Accommodation: Rose & Crown, Middle Mayfield (01335-342498; roseandcrownmayfield.com). NB Closed Sunday evening, all Monday; but B&B operates 7 days.

Middle Mayfield Well Dressing 2014: Sat 14 June, 11 a.m.

Info: Ashbourne TIC (01335-343666); visitpeakdistrict.com

visitengland.com www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

Oakamoor and the Churnet Valley, Staffs

Walks 5 Responses »

Sep 242011

A cool day over Staffordshire, with blue chinks in a milky, almost static sky.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Down in the thickly wooded Churnet Valley, Oakamoor was full of vigorous white-maned ramblers greeting each other with the easy familiarity of those who’ve walked for decades in company: ‘Now then, Stan! How do, Bet! Got your legs on today, then!’ Strangely enough, we saw neither hide nor hair of any of them again. It was as though the woods and streams of the Churnet Valley had swallowed them all alive.

Oakamoor is a centre for walkers these days, a peaceful little town where the Churnet rushes down a stepped weir and under the bridge. It’s hard to picture the industrial past here, the copper and iron manufactories, the steam and furnaces, clangour and fumes. Now the once-blackened houses stand pink-faced among their trees. We climbed the lane out of the village, and were soon high over the cleft of Cotton Dell in quiet woods that might never have echoed to hammer or axe.

At Side Farm a kennel full of foxhounds greeted us the best way they knew how, with fierce howls and contradictorily wagging sterns. Tall foxgloves and flimsy wands of yellow-flowered wall lettuce fringed the lane, which yielded to a side path and sudden, tremendous view west over ten miles of Staffordshire hills and woods. We passed Rock Cottage, a handsome pink stone folly with a giant sandstone boulder for an end wall, and came across Whiston Golf course to find a pint and a sandwich in the snug little Sneyds Arms.

The flowery old green lane of Ross Road brought us down the valley slopes to find the Staffordshire Way shadowing the extravagant meanders of the River Churnet in the dale bottom. These riverside meadows are a wanderer’s dream in late summer: head-high meadowsweet, grasses and Himalayan balsam to walk through, every flower-head and grass stalk a holding pen for jewel-coated beetles, snails and spiders, and the chuckle of the river as a lazy guide.

East Wall Farm, handsome in red brick, lay at ease in the roadless valley. Before tackling the woodland paths homeward we leaned on a gate and savoured the scene: geese and ducks on the pond, bean sticks and marrow patch in the garden, smoke trickling from the chimney. A tenant of East Wall in Victorian times, returning through a crack in time, would find – give or take a tractor and a plastic tub or two – not too much changed in this view of the farm he knew.

Start & finish: Oakamoor car park, Oakamoor, Staffs (OS ref SK053447).

Getting there: Bus (www.firstgroup.com) Service 32A Uttoxeter-Stoke.
Road: A52 Stoke-on-Trent-Ashbourne; B5417 to Oakamoor. Cross bridge, 1st left (‘Ramblers Retreat’) to car park.

WALK (7 ½ miles, moderate grade, OS Explorer 259):
Recross bridge; left by Cricketer’s Arms; right by Lord Nelson PH, up road. In ¼ mile on left bend, ahead past gate (055454; ‘Orchard Farm, footpath’). Up steps to left of house; on up walled lane. At gate into wood, right (057457, yellow arrow/YA). In 150 m fork left (YA; ‘Moorland Walk’/MW). In 350 m pass Weaver Walk waymark, go through stone gateway (059460). Ignore left fork; keep ahead over crest and along hillside lane (MW) above Side Farm (059464). At cattle grid enter Access Land (055469); in 100 m look out for post on left with 2 YAs pointing ahead. Hairpin back left here up track through bracken; through squeeze stile at top (054470). Ahead by wall for 2 fields; left (YA) along walled path to road (052466). Right past Rock Cottage; left (fingerpost, YA) across field, through wall gap, over stile in wall opposite (049466). Keep ahead with trees on left. On through fields with wall on right; cross Whiston golf course to road (041471). Left to A52 at Sneyds Arms PH (037472).
Left up road for 200 m; left down Ross Road (036471) for ¾ mile, past Eavesford Farm, to join Churnet Way/CW (031460). Cross railway (030459) and River Churnet. Ignore right fork in meadow beyond. Keep ahead across stream; left along Staffordshire Way (SW/CW). In ¾ mile at East Wall Farm, aim right of buildings; cross stile (035448; SW/CW) and go uphill with fence on left. Follow farm drive; in 200 m, fork right (037447; CW/SW) through Hawksmoor Wood to B5417 (039442). Left for 150 m, right by bus shelter (CW/SW); through Sutton’s Wood to road in Stoney Dale (045440). Right (SW) for 200 m; at summit of road, left up lane (SW). In ½ mile pass huge sycamore; in another 50 m, left over cattle grid along drive (052438). In 10 m, left along walled lane, through gate into wood (SW). Keep ahead, steeply down Moss’s Banks. Cross 2 forest tracks in quick succession, and keep ahead on steep path down to lane (053441). Left to road (053442); right to car park.

NB: Online maps, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk

Lunch: Sneyds Arms, Whiston (01538-266171) – small, snug, friendly.

INFO: Stoke-on-Trent TIC (01782-236000); www.churnet.co.uk; www.enjoystaffordshire.com
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com
www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

Flash and the Dane Valley, Staffs-Derbys-Cheshire border

Walks 2 Responses »

Jul 022011

Where Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire rub up against one another, it’s beautiful walking country. Wild moors, steep little valleys, sparkling rivers, lonely sheep farms and villages – the western edge of the Peak District has them all.First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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We didn’t really know the area well, but we didn’t need to; a random jab of the thumb on the map alighted on the hilltop settlement of Flash, and we were in for an absolute treat of a walk.

In spite of its racy name, Flash is a modest place. In 1820 Sir George Crewe judged this moorland hamlet ‘dirty, bearing marks of Poverty, Sloth and Ignorance’. Nowadays the New Inn’s sign proudly proclaims it the ‘highest village pub in the British Isles, 1518 feet’. The views from here across the Staffordshire moors are immense, a curve of green meadows rising to sombre uplands of bracken and heather, their skyline broken by jagged, wind-sculpted sandstone tors.

This morning the sky raced blue and silver, trailing thick grey belts of rain. The wind shoved us impatiently away from Flash, scurrying us up and over Wolf Edge with its canted rock outcrop. A dip on a rubbly path through dark heather and we were skirting Knotbury Common where peewits creaked and tumbled like toy stunting planes. The road to high-perched Blackclough farm lay gleaming with water and humpy with rain-pearled sheep.

Blue sky now, glints of sun and a big boisterous wind. Huge grassy spoil heaps and an ancient industrial chimney marked the long-defunct colliery at Danebower. We dropped down the steep, winding valley of the infant River Dane, a lovely green dell with a flagstone path across rushy bogs, the hills tightly enclosing the river which sparkled and gushed over step-high falls it had shaped in its sandstone bed. By the twin bridges at Pannier’s Pool the Dane dashed in cascades through a miniature gorge, a perfect picnic spot.

We crossed the open moor, its walls as loosely assembled as Connemara stone walls, and came down to Gradbach bridge. A handsome cream-washed house with a circle of crocuses on the lawn; a Methodist chapel beyond, very plain and dignified; the stone-built bridge over the rushing river. Simple and perfect, this whole assembly.

Back through pony paddocks and sheep pasture where a Swaledale ram with tremendous curly horns followed us a good step of the way. Then a last stretch where the wind, now at our backs like a comrade rather than in our faces like a bully, pushed us all the way up the lane to Flash.

Start & finish: New Inn, Flash, Staffordshire SK17 0SW (OS ref SK 025671)
Getting there: At Rose & Crown, Allgreave (on A54 Buxton-Congleton), take side road (‘Quarnford’) to Flash.
Walk (8½ miles, moderate, OS Explorer OL24): With your back to the church, take lane that forks right past New Inn. In 150m, right (fingerpost, yellow arrow/YA) to pass houses; right (YA) up field, aiming for post. Continue over wall stiles (YAs). In ¼ miles, left (024676; YA) past stone outcrop and over Wolf Edge. Aim for fence; follow it down to road (020681). Left; in 100m, right up farm lane. Opposite Knotbury farm, right through gate (017682; fingerpost) on gravel track that bears left over Knotbury Common, down to road (015689). Left over cattle grid; up road past Blackclough farm. Follow track north beside wall for ½ mile to walk through Reeve-Edge and Danebower quarries. Descend to cross stream by stepping stones (014699; YA). Up bank and turn left (fingerpost, ‘Dane Valley Way’/DVW). Follow track nearly to road, then slant left downhill by chimney (010700). Path by River Dane (stiles, YAs, DVW) for ¾ mile to the two bridges at Pannier’s Pool (009685).

Here DVW crosses bridge; but you keep ahead on right bank of river on permissive path under Three Shires Head. In ⅓ mile ignore YA pointing left; continue uphill on main track to road at Cut-thorn (002681). Forward past house; left over stile (‘Access Land’). Follow wall, then path over moor. In ¼ mile, just short of gate in wall ahead, fork left to cross stile (998683). Follow left-hand of two YAs by fence, following track as it curves left across Robin’s Clough stream and runs south over moor. In ¾ mile follow track past house and down to road at Hole-edge (001671). Right past Bennettshitch house. In 100m, left off road (fingerpost), steeply down to road by Methodist chapel (001664).

Left across River Dane; round left bend; immediately left (fingerpost) past Dane View House. Through gate (fingerpost) and follow path with wall on left for ¾ mile through 6 walls. Just before corner of 7th wall, by a ‘Peak & Northern Footpath Society’ notice on pole (009671), turn right downhill. In 200m, left at another PNFS notice (‘Flash’); aim across fields to pass Wicken Walls farm (014672). Ahead with wall on left; down across stile; steeply down rocks to river (016672). Cross footbridge (‘Flash’); steeply up bank, over stile; bear right up path which curves to left with wall on right (YAs). Follow path to drive of Axe Edge Green farm (020672). Right for 100m; left up to road (021671); left to Flash.

NB – Detailed directions (recommended!), online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk. Click on Facebook “Like” link to share this walk with Facebook friends.

Lunch: New Inn, Flash (01298-22941) – open daily evenings, Fri-Sun lunchtimes and evenings (no food, BYO sandwiches); or picnic by Pannier’s Pool.
More info: Leek TIC (01528-483741; www.visitpeakdistrict.co.uk)
http://tourism.swale.gov.uk/isleofsheppey.htm
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk

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