Gritstone
Trail – day 1, 7 April 2012
KIDSGROVE TO MOW COP
The Gritstone
trail is the evil twin, the malign looking glass reflection of the better-known
sandstone trail. While walking the sandstone trail the route tells a tale of a
contented people grown rich off their salty abundance of their rolling plains;
the Gritstone trail on the other hand reveals the lives of hardier folk. A gnarled, weather beaten community who made
their living gnawing the grit from the cliff face. They embraced the austerity
of primitive methodism because they believed that regular methodism had gone
soft. And cudgled Britain’s last wild boar to death because they needed to have
sausages when hocktide came around.
Gritstone
being formed in the Carboniferous period (354–290 million years ago) rather
than the later Triassic period (248–205 MYA), like that n00b sandstone is
harder than its ruddy cousin. It is appropriate then that on the Cheshire
hiking fan forum, even if they are roughly the same length, the Gritstone trail
is viewed as significantly harder than the sandstone. And the official
Gritstone website recommends it be done in three days from North to South.
However, C4Lf
being the contrary lot that they are decided to attempt it in two days from
South to North. South to North has the following advantages.
- If you’re staying at the Underbank Camping Barn
(more on that later), near Wildboarclough, it’s about 22 miles on the
first day and then 19 miles on the second day.
- Rather than the banality of a lengthy canal walk
finish, you have the climb up the mighty hump of the Spond to look forward
to – the highest point on the Gritstone and then the descent back into the
glaring light of the real world at Lyme Park.
The day
starts out at Crewe Station to catch the 7.38 to Kidsgrove. My dad has given
Antonia and me a lift to the station, while Andrea – in her role as Gritstone
support team – is giving Hardman, Ben and Smitdawg a lift from the Forresters
carpark. Remarkably, despite a boozy Old Dog fueled night with Ste, Weave and
Bobby D at the Thouse on Friday where much ‘diving for oysters’ took place (it’s
the latest trend in 2012 apparently), we make it to Crewe on time to buy
tickets.
But what’s this I see, when I turn around from
the ticket machine. Andrea’s car has drawn up and parked in the taxi rank at
the station but there seems to be a stranger with them, a mysterious fifth man,
an odd bearded figure with bloody scabs on his knuckles. Could it be that Adam
Dickinson character who ticked ‘maybe’ on the facebook page? Is it Andrea’s
brother back from Dubai? No it turns out to be some guy from Crewe who locked
himself out of his flat at 7.00 Am this mroning. He’s quite keen on joining us
on the hike though, showing us a small book of thoughts, musings and pub
ratings. It’s the Fran of Crewe, my scab-knuckled doppleganger. He asks me to
take a look at his lyrics and I’m suspicious that he’s aware that I’d be
interested in this sort of thing, what has he heard? I hastily note some down for posterity, ‘Looking
for a woman, from Timbuktu to Crewe.’ I’m tempted to to spice things up by
telling him he can come along with us. However, there’s something not quite
right about that strange glint in his eyes and I mutter about the B&B being
booked and that we need to run to catch the train. With that we head into the
station, turning only to glance back to see Andrea pulling away from the curb,
a dark siloheutte hunched on her back seat. She’s probably giving him a lift
back to his house or something and off we go.
Kidsgrove to
Mow Cop
Ahhhhh the
joy of relentless canalside walking, the water is a strange orangy-brown colour,
presumably iron from the mining from the hills around these parts . As we’re
walking along the canal I tell C4Lf the tale of the Blackdog of Kidsgrove, that
was owned by the Audley family and used to roam their grounds at night to guard
against deer poachers. Then one day the poachers dug a pit and the dog fell in
and was left to slowly starve to death. However, the dog would be seen or heard
again over the years. Each time before a mining accident occurred. Or as
Hardman chooses to hear, ‘a minor accident’. As we walk along the canal we
notice that the benches are all made of stone. Then we encounter a local East
Cheshirite and his black dog ‘Rrrraalllphs Wrrroood’, it barks at Smit,
‘Rrrrrrrallllpphs Wrrrroooodd.’
About 200
metres later, after passing a particularly stinky sewage works, Ben, C4Lf’s
navigator in Chief, realises we’ve managed to miss the turning off the canal.
So much for Ben’s claims that this was an easy walk that Wainwright would shit
on, which required no map reading whatsoever. We turn back, despite Smit’s
pleas to never walk back along a path we’ve walked along before and for us to
take a footpath through Ralph’s Wood as the dog advise him. A minor accident
indeed. He’s like a shark he is that Smit, he can’t go backwards. However,
after invalidating the Sandstone trail of 2010 by missing the first footpath in
Whitchurch I’m anxious not to invalidate this one as well and so we go
backwards to the turning, passing the sewage works as we go, although Smit
insists on moonwalking back so he’s at least facing the right way.
As we walk
along the canal we notice continous signs for nearby pubs the red bull, the bleeding
wolf, the rising sun. We’ve already encountered three pubs and we’ve done about
two miles. The gritstone website’s claims there are no pubs on the trail. Fuck
you Gritstone website with your primitive methodist propaganda. Various members
of the party speculate about how good our final two miles would have been
hitting all three pubs along the way, if only Fran had gone the official route
of North to South. However, I’ve learnt my lessons from the Sandstone trail and
no that South to North will always be a better route. We encounter a variety of
dogs of varying colours but none bark at us. A good sign.
Eventually we
turn off from the canal and begin the ascent up to Mow Cop, through the village
of the same name. As we pass along the houses, we notice that someone has put
up A4 laments saying ‘no dog fouling’, complete with a photograph of a steaming
pile of dog feces. Surely, the aesthetic of your dog-poo free lane is slightly
impinged by colour photographs of canine excrement on every lamp post. Someone
however, in the highest form of wit, had decided to ignore the warnings and
there was a large pile of dog muck on the pavement – if it was a dog! As
Chester FC fans have repeatedly told me – ‘East Cheshire is full of shit, shit
and more shit’. I’d previously thought it was mere joshing by those surly
Wrexham-hating wags but I was beginning to wonder if there was actually a sweetcorn-shaped
nugget of truth behind the myth.
Carefully watching
where we trod, we carried on past the Primitive Methodist Church and up the
amusingly puntasticly named ‘high street’ to the summit of Mow Cop, at 337
metres over 100 metres higher than Rawhead (227 m) the highest point on the
Sandstone trail. Oddly Ben remembers this as his favourite peak of the journey
because of the Old Man of Mow. At the time I distinctly remember him suggesting
we miss the peak because it wasn’t precisely on the route. He’s a stickler for
route following is that Ben and bagging peaks seemingly means nothing to him.
Although he was literally getting his bearings as navigator in chief early on,
on the first day and we take a somewhat meandering route to the top of Mow Cop.
Mow Cop is
interesting for a number of reasons, firstly is the castle itself. Although
looking like an ancient ruin, from the days of the mighty Cheshire king Richard
II, the castle is in fact a folly (we encounter numerous follys along the trail
and this whole walk could be called Fran’s folly, although perhaps more
precisely the accomodation at Wildboarclough fits that name), created by Randle
Wilbraham I of Rode Hall in Cheshire in 1754. However, in 1850 evil
Staffordshire landowner, the appropriately named Ralph Sneyd claimed the castle
was built on his land. So began a lengthy legal battle with the court rulling
in favour of Wilbraham. Another victory for Cheshire over the Clayheads WHOOP
WHOOP! From the top of the castle you can see both the fertile Cheshire plain
to the West and the eyesore of the rolling valleys and pit towns of
Staffordshire and Derbyshire to the East. We turn our heads west and survey the
misty scenary. The dreek weather than Hardman has brought down with him from
Edinburgh has cleared and the sky has returned to an optimistic light grey.
Mow Cop is also
of interest from my point of view, as for much of my adolescant life I was of
the opinion the tumulus on High Billinge (yes the hill behind my house Hardman,
what of it?) was the highest point in Cheshire. This belief was largely
fostered by my dad telling me this, but at least he didn’t tell me he’d ever
seen or robot there or that it was full of knife mines. Then in a moment that
was the equivalent of Gallileo informing the Catholic Church that the earth
resolves around the sun, I was told by Roger Barnes (he of the Rose Farm
Utkinton village shop car wash fame), that in fact Mow Cop was the highest
point in Cheshire. SHIT major paradigm shift, my whole world came crashing down
around me. What was this Mow Cop of which Roger Barnes spoke? Was Utkinton
really not the centre of the Shireverse? Of course it turned out that Mow Cop
wasn’t actually the highest point in Cheshire, which is of course the
enigmatically named Shining Tor (559 metres).
Mow Cop isn’t even the highest point on the Gritstone trail, that’s the
Spond at 410 metres. So IN YOUR FACE Roger Barnes and because you were wrong
about Mow Cop being the highest point in Cheshire I still retain some hope that
High Billinge is the true highest point. Although I refuse to check the
ordinance survey map to confirm this.
Mow Cop is
also of some significance to the Weaver family, as it’s the home of Primitive Methodism.
It was here on the 31 May 1807 that Hugh Bourne and his loyal followers,
organised a camp meeting and prayed for 14 hours straight. Every year to
celebrate this momentous occasion El Presidente, Big Mamma Weave and Big Poppa
Weave climb up to Mow Cop to eat Belly Pork, non-stop for fourteen hours. Further
cementing the Weaver link it turns out that Bourne was a pupil of the Old man
of the forest, James Crawfoot, leader of the Magic Methodists of Delamere Forest.
According to the official history of the methodist church: ‘It was reported that Crawfoot s disciples talked
much of " exercising faith in silence," and went into visions and
trances and practiced exorcisms. Primitive
methodism was named after Crawfoot’s statement, ‘if you have deviated from the
old uses I have not. I still remain a primitive methodist.’
A local inn keeper and follower
of Crawfoot, Zechariah Baddeley was supposedly feared by Delamere forest locals
because he had magical, almost godlike powers. But his powers were nothing
compared to Crawfoot, or so says Wikipedia. Could that inn have been the
Thouse? Is Weaver the great great great grandson of Zechariah Baddeley? Only future
research will tell?
After hanging around and taking some
photos on Mow Cop. We head off – taking in the Old Man of Mow on the way. Although
some people claim that the Old Man of Mow is the result of mining activity
around an old stone cairn, I can safely say that the Old Man of Mow is
basically one of those stone giants that featured in CBBC’s 1994 drama Earth Fast,
starring Paul Nichols. ‘David, David, the stones, Nelly Jack John etc.’ In fact
there’s also a famous boggart in the area, the Kidsgrove Boggart so I don’t
understand why seminal BBC drama Earthfast wasn’t set here. Luckily Cheshire’s
only author Alan Garner set Red Shift in Mow Cop so it’s dramatic potential has
at least been exploited once. Passing the massive noble figure of the Old Man
we head on, one peak down six to go.
‘Nelly Jack John wait where
arthou going?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd1vKZeTeJg
