Wet grass and nettles...not a few of my favourite things

Weird how you can remember which way to go, even if you’ve only been there once before, isn’t it? The Penistone Boundary walk is about 17 miles long and I was amazed how well we remembered the route after doing it once before about 18 months ago. We tackled this walk on Friday 8th August, which was apparently a very auspicious day for the Chinese, as it is 2008 as well. The little yellow Boundary Walk logo (is it a ram, is it an owl?) which is tacked onto prominent posts and stiles kept us on track, but we also relied on paths worn in grass and completely spontaneous recollections like ‘isn’t this near where we hoped there would be a tea room?’ and ‘we saw the turkey here’ and ‘we walked under some pylons down this path’. Perhaps it was this skill that enabled our ancient ancestors to migrate in search of the best mammoth herds.
Friday was a warm day, with bright sun, then dark clouds, then blue skies keeping us guessing about waterproof coat status. Lesley and I are of course getting ready for The Hack and this was a good practice. Cee came with us again, having bought lovely new boots the day before and wielding her lovely new digital slr camera. She was official photographer for the day. My husband dropped us off at Scout Dyke reservoir at about 9.15am and as soon as we started to push through the tall vegetation the theme of the day presented itself, wet grass and nettles. I immediately regretted forgetting my walking gaiters as the water ran down my trousers and seeped into my boots. The information booklet for this walk (go to www.visitpenistone.co.uk/see_and_do_sport/see_do_boundary_walks.html) says that this part of the walk can be wet. Yeah. You don’t say.
We enjoyed walking through fields towards the distinctive wind turbines that are visible for so much of this walk, greeting horses and cows as we passed them in fields. Although we walked past several farms and through at least one yard it seemed rather too early to see people out and about just yet and the first person we were able to chat to was a bird watcher keeping an eye out near Royd Moor Reservoir. We had watched squadrons of geese heading for the res as we walked towards it and wondered where they were coming from. The twitcher thought that they were from Cannon Hall and Bretton Lakes and that they were coming to Royd Moor to rest and feed in relative peace; we’d seen them lined up on the muddy edge of the water.
After taking the long straight road past a farm with a couple of Alsatians in a wire pen going bonkers, we came to a new stone pinfold type affair for walkers and cyclists to rest in. It’s got a stainless steel ‘table’ with engraved points of the compass and interesting facts on it, which helped us understand the fabulous panorama you can enjoy from there. After a sandwich for Cee and Lesley and a Brunch Bar for me we were en route again through more horribly wet grass, walking on the other side of the ridge that the wind turbines line up along. We were making for a farm with some lovely restored holiday cottages in it and walked through the yard, saying hello to a friendly chap in a barn who was obviously used to people traipsing over his property. Very soon we met another farmer on a quadbike, balancing a blue drum of something on his knee whilst bumping along. He stopped to remind us of the way, probably because he didn’t want us to end up wandering through his cattle in the barn which is beside the footpath. The cows watched us stumbling over their field with interest, although we were faster than usual because Lesley isn’t keen on being in a field with cows at all and always gets a bit of a move on when they’re around.
It was about now I decided to change my socks because my feet were really squelching and I didn’t want them to get sore and soggy. So I felt a lot more comfy as we crossed the road at Catshaw, and we stopped to have a look at a roadside monument, an ancient old stump called Catshaw Cross. It looked rather like a worn tooth, all too easy to miss if you are speeding past in a car like so many people were doing. Penistone must have been a very feline area, we walked past a place called Cat Hill later on. The route then took us past a bungalow which was being renovated by a friendly guy who was happy to acknowledge ownership of a military vehicle in his garage. We thought it would be useful when the revolution comes and wondered if he was going to be in the vanguard with the owner of the tank that can be seen on a hill overlooking Jackson Bridge. We were walking down hill by now towards the infant river Don. Cee’s tidy nature was offended by a bucolic mixture of cows, brown and black, and sheep, greyish, all in the same field. It reminded me of toy farms my brothers used to assemble on the living room floor when we were kids, so I didn’t mind. I would even have been happy to see the odd zebra or rhino.
Soon we were slashing through more nettles , walking through more fields of sheep and at one point traipsing through someone’s garden on the way to Hartcliff Hill, or rather the road than winds round it. The garden’s owner was lying under a Morris Minor, wearing overalls and crocs. He returned to the vertical to let us through the gate, whilst holding back his dogs, who were enjoying a good bark at us. Hartcliff hill has some sort of a tower on top, but we bypassed it in favour of a few words with a gent and his companions who were parked in a little lay-by enjoying the view over Langsett. The man and a lad were picking bilberries and asked us where we were going. When we explained that our immediate aim was Cubley Hall he told us it had been a home for orphaned girls just after the war. Leaving them we walked on down the long straight road, trying to ignore a horrid smell of dustbins that was coming from some hidden source. We were distracted by the sight of weasel or a stoat rushing over the road ahead; it stopped momentarily to have a good look at us.
Cubley Hall appeared like an oasis after a few more miles. Fantastic! A drink and a sit down! Just like last year a wedding was in full swing, with happy guests looking elegant in frocks and suits and a tiny little boy sporting a scaled down tux. They were out in the garden preparing for the wedding celebrations and didn’t seem to mind us on their periphery; there’s nothing like a wedding to have a good stare at. Cubley Hall does super-good sandwiches, with bowls of chips and salad as standard. Just what we needed to power us on our way and they did, we carried on with renewed vigour eastwards towards the River Don again. There was a very pretty stretch alongside a stream with fields of corn on one side, which contrasted with a gloomy railbridge that we passed under towards Spring Vale.
Spring Vale is on the outskirts of Penistone and after walking past a council recycling site we crossed the river on a packhorse bridge. Last year the bridge was closed off because it needed repairing, this time it looked fine and coped with us tramping over it. I ran over double quick just in case. The information board explained that the parapet was at the right height to allow pack ponies to walk over without damaging their panniers. The path then climbs up a steep hillside towards High Lea Farm and I felt sorry for any pack ponies that might have followed that route. However, there is some compensation in the great views of Penistone, which included the cricket pitch, the viaduct and a mysterious domed building. Can anyone tell me what it is?
After saying goodbye to a field of curious calves we crossed the A629 and climbed up through more fields, admiring a massive Claas combine harvester parked up on the path as we went. Whilst we decided where next to go, a happy spaniel came bounding through a gate on the other side of the field and then disappeared. We went through the gate, but no sign of the dog. There was lots of Himalayan Balsam growing beside the path here and we amused ourselves by pinching the seed capsules till they burst, which I suppose is what gives the plant its nickname of touch- me- not. After walking under the line of pylons we had seen since we walked towards Cubley we came near to Daisy Lea farm, which is at the end of a track next to a wood. Cee also spotted a field of beetroot, which seemed rather strange to see in such quantity, but not unlikely. It’s got to grow somewhere and maybe this was the beetroot triangle, like the rhubarb triangle near Wakefield. We could hear dogs barking frantically and saw several ducks rushing across the farmyard, but luckily the path took us through a wood and we scuttled past. Avoiding dogs has been a consistent feature of our routes so far and so far every single dog we’ve met on a path has been well controlled. Thank you dog owners.
The route took us out onto the main Penistone to Silkstone road, which was where we finished last year, but this time we were determined to finish, even though this was unexplored territory for us. The path leads up beside a gate decorated with butterflies and magpies to Pye Flatts and then on through fields with lots of bleating sheep in them. We stopped to ask a man and his dog which way to go because the invaluable Boundary Walk logo was lost in the hedgerow somewhere and he gave us the unwelcome news that Scout Dyke reservoir was at least two hours walk away, laughing as he said this. However, he did point us in the right direction and after a while we found ourselves in the familiar area of Gunthwaite, which is cool and shady with a river running beside the road. We met a man walking beside his daughter on her pony, who told us ‘I’m going to get one of these’; as though the phenomena of horse transport was novel in Gunthwaite.
To be honest, as we had walked across fields at Gunthwaite we had looked across at the A629 and seen the little cars tootling along and thought it seemed miles away. In fact we had stopped to eat some buns to boost our energy levels and to phone my husband to break it to him we’d be a while yet, which is something he’s begun to expect. But we soldiered on and after crossing the Sheffield to Huddersfield railway line, having watched a train passing and resisted the urge to wave like the Railway Children, we were nearly at the Outdoor Activity Centre opposite the reservoir. But it wasn’t quite over, because as we walked up the little lane we could hear gruff barking coming from a bungalow garden. I braced myself to walk unflinchingly past a ravening hound, but saw instead a tiny Chihuahua jumping up against the gate. We crossed the road to sit beside the reservoir at a picnic bench, where the midges picnicked on us whilst we waited for our lift.

Andrew Marvell might have liked this walk

Yikes! The NSPCC HACK! The 30th August! 25 miles! With these words ringing through our minds we set off for a bit of a toddle on the hottest day so far this year. Lesley’s daughter, Cee, is also thinking of putting herself through this test of endurance, or madness, so she came too. The last time she walked with us I felt like an ogre walking beside a princess, because she wore strappy gold sandals, whilst I wore walking boots. She did wonder about wearing flipflops this time, but plumped for trainers. Was this to be a mistake?

Starting from Holmfirth, we made for Scholes, greeting ponies, horses and builders on the way. From Scholes we trundled on to Jackson Bridge, up to Hepworth where we were able to strike off the road and walk alongside the little river. Someone owns lots of happy chickens along there, a variety of shapes and forms, who were all happily scratting in their runs. The path branched quite soon to take us up a steep muddy track alongside a field that was flooded in bright sunshine whilst we were hidden in the dark damp shadow. The old houses of Jackson Bridge and Hepworth looked charming in the sunshine with gardens and yards full of interesting flowers and objects. We saw lots of cats idling in the heat during this walk. One especially beautiful spotty tabby was basking on a windowsill in Barnside.

Soon we had crossed the road at Meal Hill and began to climb the hill which I think is called Hullock. It certainly looks like one. Wild flowers were growing on the walls and hedge backs and as we sweated up the steepest point we were delighted to find bilberries ready in masses beside the path. We had already stopped a few times to look at the view, which takes in the whole of the HACK route that can be seen from this side of the Pennines, but the bilberries demanded a proper stop to pick, eat and hoard. They’re only tiny, but they are tasty and with such purple juice that our hands were soon stained. A mountain-biker was approaching with great caution from up above us, avoiding the scoured clefts in the dirt path whilst watching for his young son following on behind him. They accepted a few berries from me before continuing on the bumpy path down the hill.

This is a digression, but the bilberries reminded me of a poem by Andrew Marvell called ‘Bermudas’. He imagined the lush vegetation of these exotic islands that he’d never been to: ‘He hangs in shades the orange bright, / Like golden lamps in a green night. .’. These weren’t oranges and it was Yorkshire, not the Bermudas, but the image seemed appropriate. The tiny berries were a deep sapphire blue hidden in their green foliage. I like the way a fanciful idea from a poet who was writing 350 years ago has the power to bubble up without being requested. Thanks, Andrew.

Fuelled by bilberries we reached the top of the mini-mountain that is Hullock and set out along the straight road of Low Common. It’s very quiet and peaceful up there, a great place for horse owners and there were lots of horses for Cee and Lesley to admire. Shuffling across the road at one point was a bright green caterpillar. We were a bit worried about him as a car appeared in the distance, but he must have been frightened by our footsteps because he put on a mighty burst of speed and wriggled to the safety of the verge. It was also a good day for happy looking cows and their calves in the fields; we admired one herd with a muscular bull in their midst, who kept flipping up his nose ring stylishly as he grazed, showing off his piercing with pride. The hedgerows up here are filled with pink wild roses that smell delightful and give a frilly edging to the flat fields. It was a contrast to the steep valley we had just come from.

After a while we emerged onto the busy Sheffield road at High Flatts, greeted by twin boxer dogs who gazed hopefully at us through a garden fence. It was really hot by now, so perhaps it was a higher being who had directed our footsteps, because we realised we were near Delph House Farm, purveyors of ICE CREAM to red-faced walkers on sunny days. We were intending to call off at the nearest pub for refreshment, but ice cream was an irresistible lure and we called in to get some. Delph House Farm is obviously a working farm with Friesian Holsteins sat about in surrounding fields, calmly making the milk which goes into the yummy ice cream. I had coffee flavour, Lesley chose a scoop of lemon curd and a scoop of chocolate and Cee went for a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of banoffie. As an ice cream connoisseur, I have to say this is scrumptious stuff. Nevertheless, I remain faithful to the Harbour Bar on Scarborough seafront for a full on retro ice cream experience. I’d like to know what ice cream can match the Alonzis’ product and I invite fellow enthusiasts to inform me via this blog.

Vowing to return, we made for the Fountain pub, just down the road in Ingbirchworth. We visited this village a couple of months ago on the way to Cannon Hall and felt a sense of satisfaction that we were joining up again with familiar routes. The Fountain offered good lunchtime food and the nice lady behind the bar filled up my water bottle, squeezing in some ice cubes for good measure.

Another cheerful lady and her mum set us on the right track round Ingbirchworth reservoir, explaining that we could join up with the road about half way round. We swatted our way through clouds of midges, watching with some misgivings the progress of a tractor spreading muck in the fields ahead of us. Amazingly, we hardly smelt it as we joined the long straight road to Victoria. The aerobatics of a model aircraft looping the loop and dive-bombing over a field of unconcerned sheep entertained us and we could see that the man flying it was clearly part of a club, complete with a club-house (a shed) and a neatly mown landing strip and a couple of spectators and a dog admiring his skills. Repressing the urge to call in and ask for a drink we walked on. We spotted a poignant feature of many roads, the single lost shoe (in this case a baby’s) stuck conspicuously on a gate. Very Tracy Emin, we thought, and wondered why so many shoes end up like this and how their owners get home without realising they’ve lost something.

To our right the grim vision of Hepworth Pipe Works crouched as we marched down the road through Maythorn. A newly built stone enclosure on right invited a quick detour and we think we found the lower half of the contentious Maythorne cross; it has been compared to the Elgin Marbles, as its top half has ended up in New Mill about 5 miles away and the bottom part with a new top is anonymously standing here on the Maythorn road. It would be interesting for walkers to have some information in situ about this 1,000 year old monument, but don’t go to see it expecting muscular centaurs and splendid warriors. After making friends with a Dalmatian running about behind a fence we arrived on the A616 at Victoria, turning towards Barnside and Hepworth. This road gives the walker a truly stunning panorama of Holmfirth and the surrounding Pennines. It was still hot and the deep stone trough beside the busy road could have almost been a temptation to wallow in. The road is scoured by lorries and cars zooming down to New Mill so it was a relief to turn off it and walk through Barnside. This is another cute hamlet of which there are so many round here, with lovely multi-level gardens and ancient houses piled up beside the road. Passing through Hepworth, Cee directed us onto a perfect shortcut by the church.

This is a great path to use because you get a feeling of walking through the past. Part of it is steep and cobbled and it takes you over the obligatory rickety rackety bridge and then out alongthe edge of fields overlooking Hullock on the right. We spotted a tiny baby sock, another lost piece of footwear. Cee’s trainers were hurting her by now and I was a bit concerned that they too might end up abandoned by the wayside. Our attention was drawn by a big marquee in a field, obviously ready for a wedding the next day. It was a fantastic setting for a shindig. But we weren’t invited, so we carried on through Scholes and back to Holmfirth, exchanging a few words with the horses and the builders we said hi to earlier on.

I can’t think of any poetry about lost shoes and socks, but maybe someone who reads this will suggest something that fits.

A Walk On The Wildside 7th June 2008

The Mountain Rescue team were out collecting in the centre of Holmfirth on Saturday and Lesley and I both thought a contribution would be money well spent. After hastily buying a map at Holmfirth Tourist Information office we were dropped off in the easterly Digley reservoir car park by my husband. Our backpacks stuffed with bananas and the latest bogof oaty granola bar bargain from the marvellous Wooldale Coop, we began the walk over to Marsden, taking in a little bit of the Pennine Way.

Digley reservoir is dominated by the hulk of Holme Moss and it always has a lonely air about it, even though it’s a popular walk for families, bilberry pickers and dog walkers. I can just imagine it as a suitable lair for Grendel’s mother. Very soon that grim image was dispelled by a friendly bloke who started chatting as I stopped to take some photos of the stone walls that line the path. He explained that there had been a big house up there which accounted for the grand stone gateposts and the rhododendrons, but that it had been demolished when the reservoir had been constructed. He was walking round to Holme Village and told us how his whole family were there too, having all returned from various parts of the UK. A strong advertisement for the attraction of that tenacious village, clinging on to the foot of Holme Moss. After he had explained the route we should take, he left us and we carried on up the stony track with the fields, dotted with sheep and cattle, on either side of it.

The land around there shows evidence of back-breaking toil for whoever worked it in the past and you can see fields across at Holme, as well as the fields on this side of the valley that have been carefully surrounded by stone walls, even though they can’t be very productive. The walls often have pop-holes built into them like stone age cat flaps, I’m not sure why (if anyone could tell me it would solve a mystery). The gates are also ancient skewhiff affairs that appear to have been tadged up from something else, old bedsteads may be? It’s great territory for ferns, foxgloves, bilberries, lapwings, curlews, kestrels and grouse. We also heard a cuckoo, the first for me this year. However, the curlews beat the cuckoo for sheer volume and we began to wonder if we were disturbing their nest sites even though we were on the path, as we were circled by a curlew calling loudly, its curved beak clearly visible.

As we climbed the incline, we watched walkers toiling up from Blackpool Bridge on the path that returns over to Holme. The moor is covered with cotton grass which gives a greyish caste to the vegetation. I hoped it looked like frost but Lesley, more accurately, said its fluffy texture made the moorland look slightly mouldy. We passed a couple of empty, lonely farms. One of them, Goodbent Lodge, is extravagantly shored up. Cows with their calves and one big red bull were clustered in the fields around it, the calves watching us through the fence as we passed.

Very soon we were climbing the stile onto the Isle of Skye Road at Issue Edge, where a tea van is parked. A group of walkers were grouped around it, supping cups of tea and chowing down on scrumptious looking egg and sausage teacakes with silent relish. They told us they had come from Slaithwaite and were stoking up in anticipation of the return leg. For the first time that day, but not the last, I was tempted by some yummy looking nosh, but neither of us felt we could walk well on a big greasy sarnie, so we had a chat with a few of the walkers who Lesley knew and then set off, over the road and onto the Pennine Way.

Fabulous views of the hills, which looked huge and lonely, encouraged us on and we were delighted to be walking down hill whilst plenty of walkers and bikers were slogging uphill in the opposite direction. We passed a group of teenage lads festooned with kit, several of whom were looking fairly tired. They were nearly at the top, but would then be able to see Black Hill in front of them, their next big scary challenge. As we passed lots of scruffy sheep we were overtaken by a cheerful garrulous man who introduced himself as ‘Overend Watts, the man who hates walking’. He explained that he was a month out of Lands End, making for John O’Groats, and that he wasn’t thinking too much about the journey, just doing it. He also said that he had got lost 100 metres from Lands End and this seemed to be born out when we saw him again, a mile or so down the track, in animated disagreement with another long distance hiker about the route the Pennine Way should follow. I gave him a banana to boost his energy levels, but I don’t think he needed it. Good luck, Overend!

A couple of months after posting this I decided to google Overend to see if I could find anything about the outcome of his marathon walk. it seems incongruous but it seems that Overend Watts was the bass player with the 1970s band Mott the Hoople. If it is the same man I'm glad he replaced his sparkly platform heeled boots for something more suitable for rough terrain. I don't know if he's made it to John O'Groats.

The route down into Marsden follows a chain of reservoirs and is on the side of a steep valley. We passed a farm with some fallow deer grazing peacefully in a paddock and were passed ourselves by a tractor towing a trailer that smelt inexplicably of kippers and making a deafening rattling racket as it bumped over the potholes. We also met a mother and daughter with the cutest cocker spaniel puppy, that was scared by the noise our walking poles made as we walked up to it.

Marsden crouches right at the bottom of an amphitheatre of hills and its mill chimneys still poke up from the sloping terraces of houses that back right up to the mills. Marsden must have been a noisy place when they were all working. We made for the centre of the village and were tempted by the ice cream parlour and a cake shop, but made instead for the Riverhead pub, which was cool and shady, although lots of its clientele were outside in the sun. The Riverhead is a micro-brewery and has some tempting beers on sale. If we had more money and time I think we would have liked to try the liquorice stout and the cherry beer as well as the weiss bier we had a half of. Perfect stuff for powering us off along the canal-side to Linthwaite.

The canal towpath between Marsden and Linthwaite is really beautiful. A series of locks guard the canal like drawbridges. I would have liked to see one in action, but we only saw narrow boats moored up. The river runs on one side of the canal, at first in a deep little valley and then it flattens out. The railway is on the other side, serving as a third route between Huddersfield and Manchester. There are plenty of attractive houses bordering the canal, some with lawns running down to it, some obviously very old, forming part of the history of the waterway. Lots of people use the canal as a leisure route for cycling or dog walking and we were victims of a random dog coat-shaking attack as a jolly spaniel splashed out of the water and immediately spun himself dry. Despite the attractive scenery and the happy people, I couldn’t forget the recent story in our local paper about a murder that had happened recently on the canal side. The dark brown canal water looks gloomy even on a sunny day.

It took us a bit longer than we had anticipated to reach Linthwaite and the Titanic Mills where we had arranged to be picked up by my husband. Despite being tempted by the floating tearooms in Slaithwaite we soldiered on and eventually saw the ruin of Westwood Mill, quickly realising that we were close to the Titanic. This mighty building is now reincarnated as a spa, hotel and apartments, proving that not everything with that fateful name sinks without a trace. We had come further than we originally planned and went home promising to return to the tea van, the Riverhead, the ice cream shop and the floating tea room, but may be not all on the same day.

Metamorphoses at the Sculpture Park

I love the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and probably spend far too much money there; parking, eating in the cafe, buying postcards in the gift shop. It was at its best on Saturday. Bright and blustery at 10.30 in the morning and the car parks were already filling up with sculpture vultures.

My husband was my walking partner and we decided to go round via the visitor centre, starting with the terrace that looks out over the rolling parkland and up to the Longside Gallery. Lots of lovely smells from the wisteria and lilac that festoon the terrace made it a delightful few yards and we saw a rabbit nibbling the grass near the pond, obviously waiting there to introduce the animal theme for the next couple of hours. Walking down the hillside to the stable block car park the trees impress, especially one lime, that judging by the circumference of its knotted, gnarled trunk, must have been there for a couple of hundred years.

Beside the camellia house the first of the sculptures we had come to see was huge and surprising, a giant seated female nude, with a hare’s head. Literally half human, half hare, it was split down the middle and looked over towards more figures under the trees of hare/humans, dogs and horses in groups, all by the sculptor Sophie Ryder. It was like walking into a scene from ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The spreading, layered trees in this part of the park contributed to the mysterious, magical quality of the sculptures that is lacking from some of the more geometric and abstract installations. Close up, you can see that the metal that the figures are cast in has the impressions of plugs and cogs, which adds to their texture in a completely non-pastoral way.

The brown and black geese graze down on the lawns near the lakes amongst the daisies and speedwells. Walk past them and you can hear the plucking noise they make as they tear the grass. They’re not too bothered about people. I found a sketch book left in the roots of one of the trees, with the name of the young artist and the words ‘David Hockney’ inside it, as well as a nice new black and yellow striped pencil underneath it. No one was around to claim it and I think a child on a study visit must have left it there, so I put it back. I kept the pencil though, I can’t resist a shiny new pencil and it’s not the first time I’ve found one in the sculpture park.

We crossed the upper lake on the Cascade Bridge, looking for the herons on the island in the lower lake, but the trees on the island had too much foliage so their nests were hidden. I noticed lots of Lady’s Bedstraw in the grass beside the path, which is a delicate green and yellow creeping plant that’s supposed to smell nice when it’s dried. We began to walk up the hill, with a field of green barley on our left rippling in the wind that was swirling down from the direction of Oxley Bank. The cattle in the field were resting in the sunshine, ignoring the people who traipsed past them. One of the sculptor Sophie Ryder’s wire drawings was suspended from a frame over the path. It was in the form of a huge eye and swung in the gusts. The cattle ignored that too. We overtook an older man with a stick who was battling up the hill with his grandson beside him.
The wire sculptures in the Longside Gallery are made of wire and there are also chalk and charcoal drawings on the same theme: metamorphosed hare women. Wire would seem to be a difficult medium to use to create sculptures; it’s like three dimensional scribbling. Sophie Ryder uses it so accurately to create details, like the folds in a hare’s ear. She has also created some wall hangings, rather like felt only in hard wire, of a dog’s feet. They are much bigger than life size and emphasise the claws and pads of the creature. My favourite was a huge hare that was sliced into pieces, so the viewer can squeeze inside to see other little hares in apses inside, rather like a Russian doll.

Continuing on the circular route we set off for Round Wood past some hawthorne bushes so laden with blossom they looked like clumps of snow were weighting their branches. The wood conceals an Andy Goldsworthy dry stone circle within it. It’s very mysterious, because you can’t see inside it and today it was glowing pink in the sunlight filtering through the trees. Walking up onto Oxley Bank the full blast of the wind hit us, shooting straight over from the M1. There is a row of big beech trees there and the wind was making them roar like the traffic on the motorway, in fact I couldn’t tell how much was the gusts and how much was the cars zooming away in the distance. The smooth silvery trunks of the trees seem to have invited people to carve their names on them and several were dated in the 60s. It made me think of tattoos on old people, distorted and faded statements from the past. More Andy Goldsworthy enclosures have been built into the boundary walls up here and you can see into these; they have tree trunks embedded in them.

Descending through the wood we met several groups of people coming round the other way. A couple, with the man carrying a baby in a papoose, ducked under the flailing branches. My theory about meeting people twice on a satisfying walk was proved again as they were to be amongst the people we saw again at the end of the walk as they marched up the hill towards the visitor centre. The bluebells were nearly finished here and there was no trace of scent from them. We soon came to the bottom and had a quick look at the gloomy little well built into a small quarry before crossing the dam at the end of the Lower Lake. A man was standing amongst the rushes at the edge, fishing.

Coming back out into the Country Park we saw families of geese with goslings grazing beside the little sluice that runs beside the lake and then toiled up the hill past the Skyspace. A cup of coffee and a piece of flapjack from the cafe seemed inevitable. Sitting on the balcony watching the people coming up the hill was a calorific way to end a good walk.

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.