A sunny walk with centaurs and bluebells around Cannon Hall, Cawthorne, near Barnsley, 10th May 2008
Eating some excellent chocolate and nut flap jack, we set off from Cannon Hall car park at about midday, having bought a car park ticket from a friendly car park attendant who had white stripes in his hair like one of the Addams family. We marched down past where the maize maze is usually grown and on to Jowett House farm, which is dominated by a tall building constructed like a layer cake with sandstone at the bottom and brick on the top story. Hearing barking we quickly saw our greeters were two dogs, an elderly spaniel with a hoarse voice and an Alsatian jumping about at the end of his chain. He had a big, comfy, slightly chewed armchair installed in the yard to sit on, under a lean -to roof. He was going to be disturbed again soon by three riders who passed us in the lane; we had overtaken them earlier as we drove to Cannon Hall.
The footpath continued over the fields which were quite clayey and muddy and we had to climb over several stone stiles till we reached a newly sown field. We didn’t want to be the first to tramp over it; Lesley said it would be like dropping cake crumbs on a newly hoovered carpet. So we stumbled around the perimeter, looking for the exit and to pick up the footpath. It led into another farmyard that was a jumble of redundant machinery around which a jack russell came hobbling, starting off the barking that was picked up by two other dogs that were out of sight, but which sounded like bloodhounds on the trail of an escaped convict in the deep south. We decided to detour and tramped back through the manicured field again; slipping, ungracefully, into a deep ditch in order to walk across a field and climb over some park railings into the road, which where we were originally aiming for any way.
Very soon we crossed the road, setting off into a wood which at first dipped down into a valley with a river running through it that horses had clearly crossed. We were able to use a little bridge and ahead of us as we climbed we could see some bikes heaped up and hear voices. Two adults were looking at a young boy who was soaking wet and they explained he’d just fallen off his bike into the river. He looked miserable and they looked amused. We kept on climbing up the hill, above the trees which had with bluebells drifting between them that smelt very subtly, you caught an eddy of scent on the breeze and then it evaporated. Moss covered the wall tops and sat between tree roots in bright emerald cushions.
Eventually reaching the top of the hill we came out amongst fields that had just been sown again, in fact the tractor responsible was parked in the corner of one. We realised it had covered the path and we couldn’t see where to go exactly, so we opted to walk along the road again. This gave us a great view of lapwings flying, showing off their rounded wings flamboyantly. Their chicks were running about on the crumbly brown soil. Suddenly a tractor appeared with a car overtaking it so we had to stand on the verge, hoping we wouldn’t have to get into a ditch for a second time in half an hour. Then a van bore down on us from the opposite direction, full of whooping builders, and sped off in a cloud of dust. I was glad to turn off this hazardous road and walk along another beside the ploughed field. The tractor driver arrived with a young lad and they piled into the cab and drove off, leaving the field to the lapwings.
The sun was bright and warm out of the wood and we walked down the road which dipped into a little valley with a river running through it that had been dammed into little ponds, perhaps to feed a mill we had seen earlier. Garlic was growing, its flowers like stars, smelling delicious in a totally different way to the delicate bluebell smell of earlier. We were also pleased to see the signs for the Penistone boundary walk that we’d nearly finished last year and realised we were linking up with familiar ground. Walking out of the valley the road cut through another farm and then we crossed over the Huddersfield to Sheffield railway line, we looked over the bridge to quite a deep cutting beneath. Later on we saw the train running through the fields towards Penistone and I remembered what a pretty route it was from the train.
Very soon we had come out onto the road near Ingbirchworth, but almost immediately left the road to set off through the fields again, looking down across them to the railway line and over to the church spire of Upper Denby. It was lovely to walk through the fields with easy waymarks and no stiles. We’d come in an extravagant circle to avoid passing through Gunthwaite Hall, because we had been so unnerved by meeting dogs in the other two farms and were worried that we’d be threatened by more of the same. But we hadn’t avoided dogs so easily! We met two women chatting by a stream as their dogs paddled about in it. We left them behind and plodded up a path only to get another fright as one of the dogs ran up silently behind us and made a growling, grunting noise before galloping ahead. Its owner wasn’t too worried by our reactions. The stream we were walking beside cooled the air under the trees and encouraged us up the hill and out into Upper Denby.
Embarrassment about being sweaty and muddy was overruled by anonymity, so we stopped at the George down the road for a drink. Propped up on a trailer outside was a lifesize dummy of a waitress holding a tray. Inside a couple was playing pool. I asked a drinker leaning against the bar in a similar pose to the waitress outside what she was. “It’s his ex-wife,” was the best answer I got. We sat outside next to a bouncy castle with no-one on it and admired the smokers’ shed, which had a fake tree inside it as a decoration. Maybe it was to make the smokers feel that someone cared about them. A bit like dead trees in a monkey house.
Refreshed by the cold drink, we carried on down to Lower Denby, under the railway line this time and came out at the Dunkirk Inn. Opposite the silagers had given a field a short back and sides and we saw more as we walked up the hill along the road to Deffer Wood. The tractor cutting the silage and the trailer collecting it drove side by side like aircraft refuelling mid air. Everything else was having a rest apart from the birds in the hedgerows. Yellowhammers and chaffinches were darting around amongst the hawthorn and gorse bushes and incongruously we saw some holly with berries still on it. A red bull was lying like a Brittain’s model in deep grass, meditating, whilst his herd of cows grazed well away from him.
Deffer Wood was a shady relief from the sun, although it did feel very slightly menacing, like a wood in a fairy story that might hide something nasty in the shadows. Deciduous trees were growing near the perimeter and bluebells had spread under them; in contrast the conifers on the other side of the path were in straight rows without undergrowth. The path sloped down and we met two young women on piebald horses with feathered legs. The women were using western saddles and wore luminous tabards with ‘Lazing Saddles’ written on them. They were checking a little map and asked us if we had come through an entrance up the hill. They explained they were setting up a western riding business nearby and were checking out a ride for the next day. One horse was wearing a filter over his nostrils because, as his rider explained, he was allergic to pollen. We told them which way we’d come and they galloped off up the hill, looking like a couple of gun slingers going to head someone off at the gulch. Or maybe centaurs, as it was in the wood, only I don’t know what lady centaurs are called.
We thought it would be easy finding our way through the wood, but there were more paths than there were marked on the map, so we missed the path we were going to take and came out at the top end of Cannon Hall, after asking the way of a woman whose companion was just saying on his phone “We’re just in a wood.” Perhaps they too would be ever so slightly disorientated by Deffer Wood and get a little lost. As we walked down the road towards the open farm we saw the western riders again, speedily clopping up the road. That’s often the way with walks, you meet the same people at least twice. After exchanging grumbles about fast drivers, they trotted off and we hurried on too, for a rendezvous with an ice cream in the car park.
The footpath continued over the fields which were quite clayey and muddy and we had to climb over several stone stiles till we reached a newly sown field. We didn’t want to be the first to tramp over it; Lesley said it would be like dropping cake crumbs on a newly hoovered carpet. So we stumbled around the perimeter, looking for the exit and to pick up the footpath. It led into another farmyard that was a jumble of redundant machinery around which a jack russell came hobbling, starting off the barking that was picked up by two other dogs that were out of sight, but which sounded like bloodhounds on the trail of an escaped convict in the deep south. We decided to detour and tramped back through the manicured field again; slipping, ungracefully, into a deep ditch in order to walk across a field and climb over some park railings into the road, which where we were originally aiming for any way.
Very soon we crossed the road, setting off into a wood which at first dipped down into a valley with a river running through it that horses had clearly crossed. We were able to use a little bridge and ahead of us as we climbed we could see some bikes heaped up and hear voices. Two adults were looking at a young boy who was soaking wet and they explained he’d just fallen off his bike into the river. He looked miserable and they looked amused. We kept on climbing up the hill, above the trees which had with bluebells drifting between them that smelt very subtly, you caught an eddy of scent on the breeze and then it evaporated. Moss covered the wall tops and sat between tree roots in bright emerald cushions.
Eventually reaching the top of the hill we came out amongst fields that had just been sown again, in fact the tractor responsible was parked in the corner of one. We realised it had covered the path and we couldn’t see where to go exactly, so we opted to walk along the road again. This gave us a great view of lapwings flying, showing off their rounded wings flamboyantly. Their chicks were running about on the crumbly brown soil. Suddenly a tractor appeared with a car overtaking it so we had to stand on the verge, hoping we wouldn’t have to get into a ditch for a second time in half an hour. Then a van bore down on us from the opposite direction, full of whooping builders, and sped off in a cloud of dust. I was glad to turn off this hazardous road and walk along another beside the ploughed field. The tractor driver arrived with a young lad and they piled into the cab and drove off, leaving the field to the lapwings.
The sun was bright and warm out of the wood and we walked down the road which dipped into a little valley with a river running through it that had been dammed into little ponds, perhaps to feed a mill we had seen earlier. Garlic was growing, its flowers like stars, smelling delicious in a totally different way to the delicate bluebell smell of earlier. We were also pleased to see the signs for the Penistone boundary walk that we’d nearly finished last year and realised we were linking up with familiar ground. Walking out of the valley the road cut through another farm and then we crossed over the Huddersfield to Sheffield railway line, we looked over the bridge to quite a deep cutting beneath. Later on we saw the train running through the fields towards Penistone and I remembered what a pretty route it was from the train.
Very soon we had come out onto the road near Ingbirchworth, but almost immediately left the road to set off through the fields again, looking down across them to the railway line and over to the church spire of Upper Denby. It was lovely to walk through the fields with easy waymarks and no stiles. We’d come in an extravagant circle to avoid passing through Gunthwaite Hall, because we had been so unnerved by meeting dogs in the other two farms and were worried that we’d be threatened by more of the same. But we hadn’t avoided dogs so easily! We met two women chatting by a stream as their dogs paddled about in it. We left them behind and plodded up a path only to get another fright as one of the dogs ran up silently behind us and made a growling, grunting noise before galloping ahead. Its owner wasn’t too worried by our reactions. The stream we were walking beside cooled the air under the trees and encouraged us up the hill and out into Upper Denby.
Embarrassment about being sweaty and muddy was overruled by anonymity, so we stopped at the George down the road for a drink. Propped up on a trailer outside was a lifesize dummy of a waitress holding a tray. Inside a couple was playing pool. I asked a drinker leaning against the bar in a similar pose to the waitress outside what she was. “It’s his ex-wife,” was the best answer I got. We sat outside next to a bouncy castle with no-one on it and admired the smokers’ shed, which had a fake tree inside it as a decoration. Maybe it was to make the smokers feel that someone cared about them. A bit like dead trees in a monkey house.
Refreshed by the cold drink, we carried on down to Lower Denby, under the railway line this time and came out at the Dunkirk Inn. Opposite the silagers had given a field a short back and sides and we saw more as we walked up the hill along the road to Deffer Wood. The tractor cutting the silage and the trailer collecting it drove side by side like aircraft refuelling mid air. Everything else was having a rest apart from the birds in the hedgerows. Yellowhammers and chaffinches were darting around amongst the hawthorn and gorse bushes and incongruously we saw some holly with berries still on it. A red bull was lying like a Brittain’s model in deep grass, meditating, whilst his herd of cows grazed well away from him.
Deffer Wood was a shady relief from the sun, although it did feel very slightly menacing, like a wood in a fairy story that might hide something nasty in the shadows. Deciduous trees were growing near the perimeter and bluebells had spread under them; in contrast the conifers on the other side of the path were in straight rows without undergrowth. The path sloped down and we met two young women on piebald horses with feathered legs. The women were using western saddles and wore luminous tabards with ‘Lazing Saddles’ written on them. They were checking a little map and asked us if we had come through an entrance up the hill. They explained they were setting up a western riding business nearby and were checking out a ride for the next day. One horse was wearing a filter over his nostrils because, as his rider explained, he was allergic to pollen. We told them which way we’d come and they galloped off up the hill, looking like a couple of gun slingers going to head someone off at the gulch. Or maybe centaurs, as it was in the wood, only I don’t know what lady centaurs are called.
We thought it would be easy finding our way through the wood, but there were more paths than there were marked on the map, so we missed the path we were going to take and came out at the top end of Cannon Hall, after asking the way of a woman whose companion was just saying on his phone “We’re just in a wood.” Perhaps they too would be ever so slightly disorientated by Deffer Wood and get a little lost. As we walked down the road towards the open farm we saw the western riders again, speedily clopping up the road. That’s often the way with walks, you meet the same people at least twice. After exchanging grumbles about fast drivers, they trotted off and we hurried on too, for a rendezvous with an ice cream in the car park.
posted by David Behrens at 11:25
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