Gritstone Trail part 4

(Wild Boar Inn - Rose and Crown)

The Wild Boar Inn, Wincle review

Much to my disappointment the Wild Boar Inn in Wincle does not contain any of the 8.5% elixir of inebriation that is Old Tom. Those puritan Methodists have determined that the strongest pint I can get in this neck of the woods is a Unicorn. It does however contain the impressive pelt of a huge wild boar. Is this the last Wild Boar in Britain that was reputedly killed in nearby Wildboarclough (Hardman: Wildean Brian Chuff’s Mild Muff), probably not? In fact, Wikipedia stringently denies that this was where the last wild boar in Britain was killed but I’ll believe what I want to believe.

The pub was pretty quiet when we arrived at around 5.00, outside a sign provocatively advertises ‘Adult only camping’. Sexy times indeed. Inside there’s one couple in the corner and then a lone man at the bar nursing his pint and watching Shrek on the TV intently from his bar stool. There’s a stark, simple beauty to the pub reminiscent of Sean Bean’s face in a gritty police drama set in the 1970s. I keep expecting the Shrek enthusiast at the bar to turn to us and say ‘this is the Peak district and we do what we want.’ The pub wins the best decor category of pubs on our walk with 4.3 and turns out be Smit’s favourite pub. SMIT: ‘controversial, I'm going for the second last one on day1, everything a pub should be and not in gentrified Disney neither.’ I like Smit’s satirical name for Disley there, Rory Bremner would be proud. It does however, suffer from the somewhat funerial atmosphere that seems to be very much on trend with Gritstone Trail pubs. Perhaps it perks up later when the folk night begins.

The Wild Boar Inn, Wincle review

Decor	4.30
Atmos	2.80
Booze	2.60
Clientelle	3.00
Barstaff	3.50
Total	3.24

With Andrea soon to arrive with our vast array of camping implements and most importantly my two cartons of cider, we press on with the final mile and a half to Wild Boar Clough (Hardman: Wide boy Brian’s up the duff) and the no doubt luxurious camping barn that I’ve booked for our accommodation. We head over the top of a hill and descend into a valley. Smit remarks about how he’s liking how the landscape is taking on more of a peak district vibe, with its dry stone walls and gnarled trees bent by the wind. A car drives past us, which turns out to be Andrea heading to the barn. She stops briefly but there’s no room in the car for us to cadge a lift and even if there was we wouldn’t take it as it would invalidate the walk in the eyes of our glorious leader – El Presidente who’s a stickler for such things. We descend into a valley and pass a small converted Methodist church with cows in the adjacent field perplexed by their own reflections in the stain glass windows and then up past the pub where we plan to dine that evening. It’s the Rose and Crown and much to my pleasure has a folk and Irish night on tonight. More importantly it’s doing food until nine and there’s some guest ales on, which will make a change after the uninspiring Robinson’s we’ve had so far.

There’s no time to dawdle as we head down to the Camping Barn to dump our rucksacks. At this late stage of day one the track seems to go on forever but I’m pleasantly surprised when I see a large converted farmhouse in front of me with a glass veranda and satellite dishes. ‘A bargain at 75 quid’, I say to myself and mentally pat myself on the back, ‘the website really doesn’t do it justice’. Andrea however, brings me down to earth. ‘The doors round there’, she says pointing to a much smaller and admittedly more barnlike building in front of the palatial farm house ‘lucky we’re used to sleeping rough at the Gwrdu’. I walk inside the stone barn, which is basic but suitably authentic for taking in the hardiness of East Cheshire Peak District life. I take a brief glance at the electricity metre but head up the wood stairs to bagsy the best bed. Imagine my surprise then when I get to the first floor and find that it’s just that... a floor. There are no bunks at all, just a tiny one foot ledge, which even Smit in his skinniest days couldn’t use for a bed.

A couple of things come to mind. One assuming that ‘no bunks’ on the website meant that there were no BUNK beds and every bed was a single story was not a mistake. And two – this, the lack of beds, is the difference between a camping barn and a youth hostel and this is why you can book a camping barn for £7.50 a person. Still I think to myself this will be a valuable insight for the members of  C4Lf into the life of a ‘primitive Methodist Gritstone miner’ and how cold can it possibly get, it’s Easter for God’s sake? I cheerfully head downstairs and announce to the assembled C4Lfarians that there aren’t  any beds.  Ben initially laughs at this but then like the doubting Thomas he is, he is forced to behold the truth with his own eyes. BEN: ‘The worst moment would have to be the moment that I realised fran was telling the truth and there really weren't any beds in the stone tent.’ Tone reads the literature provided which lists the rules of the barn, intriguingly the text begins: ‘the camping barn is basically a stone tent.’ This strikes me as a novel idea as I’ve never heard of a stone tent before, I will find out why later.

We head up to the Rose and Crown pub to get some food, listen to folk and to drink enough of a beer jacket to allow us to get to sleep on the hard wooden floor.

The Rose and Crown, Allgreave, review

Now how to describe the Rose and Crown, to paraphrase a Tale of Two Cities ‘it was the best of pubs, it was the worst of pubs’. Unlike the other pubs which had been decidedly chilly to us. The rose and crown certainly gave us a warm welcome, particularly the landlady, or as we shall know her ‘the rose’. The pub had already filled up for the folk night so we took a seat in the backroom. The beer looked initially promising with a special beer on brewed by Guy Garvey of Elbow. However, much like the music of Elbow it turn out to be lacking in strength and somewhat bland (Sorry El Presidente I know you’re a big Garvey fan). Tone with her ‘no ales below 5% rule (‘even on a session?’ ‘Especially on a session!’) was particularly disparaging.

Then there was the landlord, or as he shall be known, ‘the Crown’. He was initially full of charming banter, or as it’s known in the trade ‘wicked bants’. He even allowed Smit to charge up his iphone, using his electric socket. A request that is met with frowns, suspicion and ambiguity in the pubs of neighbouring Staffordshire. However, as the evening went on he became somewhat of a divisive figure  asking us to check the Blue Jays score on our iphone so he could casually drop into the conversation that he’d lived in Canada and somewhat (pedantically in my eyes) lecturing us on the difference between porter and stout. Hardman, Smit, Tone and Andrea all found his raconteuring charming, giving the barstaff scores of 4s and 5s. Ben and I however, felt it was all a bit too much like he was playing the big man and so gave him 2 and 2.5 respectively. However, it’s perhaps just a reflection of Ben and my insecurity in the presence of this mighty Alpha Male, the last Wild Boar of Wildboarclough reigning supreme in his Peak District valley. Hardman and Smit are clearly Beta males and so naturally gave him a high score due to their subservient toadying, rolling on their backs, exposing their genitals and whimpering to their master. While Tone and Andrea probably rated him highly because of his raw sexually magnetism, tossing 4s and 5s in his direction as women of a certain age might throw their knickers at Tom Jones . Anyway, some credit has to be given to the hospitality of the Rose who came round and offered us free sandwiches during the interval of the folk. Perhaps rightfully winning the Rose and Crown the title of best ‘Bar staff’ of all the pubs on the trail.

As to the folk itself it won the Rose and Crown best atmosphere with a really high score of 4.42. And yet... and yet there was something slightly disquieting about the experience. Practically, everyone who’d come to the folk night were playing in it and you could imagine the same line-up had been playing here for the last thirty years. Secondly the general atmosphere was somewhat maudlin, lacking in pub folk favourites; there was no ‘whiskey in the jar o’, no ‘Dylan’, no ‘duelling banjos’. There was quite a lot of harp solos and plenty of accordion in the minor key. Unlike other pub folk night I’ve been to and sang along, this night felt like more of a closed affair. As if they were mourning a local Gritmining tragedy and this was no place for outsiders. Still interesting from a sociological perspective and a good insight into what you do for kicks on Saturday night in East Cheshire’s peak district.

The Rose and Crown, Allgreave review

Decor	3.83
Atmos	4.42
Booze	3.33
Clientelle	3.50
Barstaff	3.58
Total	3.73

The atmosphere might also have felt slightly muted as we steeled ourselves mentally for an under-prepared night in a freezing stone tent, while various mutinous members of C4Lf played the role of a belligerent Oliver Hardy muttering ‘this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into’ to Fran’s increasingly befuddled Stan Laurel. Do all the C4Lf members survive the night? Which C4Lf member soundly snores through the experience despite their grumbling beforehand? And what is the unholy terror known only as the Meep! Which visits the unlockable Camping Barn in the middle of night? Find out in the next instalment of C4LFs: Gritstone Tale. MEEP!

Gritstone Trail part 3 (Bosley Cloud to Croker Hill)

Gritstone Trail part 3

(Bosley Cloud to Croker Hill)

Day 1, 7 April 2012

Bosley Cloud

Our ascent up to the Cloud is immediately interrupted by the arrival of two walkers. One an elderly well-spoken chap and the other his manservant/sherpa who answers to the name of Denali. Denali is dressed in some kind of crazy weighted garb that resembles, I imagine, Walka’s cyber suit. They’ve just got lost but apparently Denali is in training to climbing the highest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley and so is training up by climbing the Cloud. Given McKinley is 6194 metres high and the Cloud is 343 metres, you might not think this is the best preparation but apparently his cyber suit makes things more difficult.

We head in the opposite direction, retrospectively a foolish idea as they said they were climbing the Cloud, why did we do this? And after passing an attractive stream and walking someway up a hill Ben declares that we’re going in the wrong direction. Cue much looking at the map and trying to get GPS on Smit’s phone, I have a sandwich before we troop back down the road. You’d think our second peak of the walk wouldn’t be that hard to find. As we walk down the road we pass the village library, which is located in a phone box, and I pop in to write a quick message from C4Lf in the visitor’s book. We then are back following the footsteps of Denali and his keeper. Despite Ben’s best efforts to take us up some steps through someone’s Garden we find the actual route and power-up the vertical incline through Gosberry wood. The rhododendrons and soil erosion reminds me of little Switzerland in good old West Cheshire (not mid as Hardman would have you believe). We continue up through a straight track up some woods filled with unripened bilberries and out onto the thick heather-clad plateau at the top of the Cloud. It seems slightly incomprehensible to be seeing something that could pass as a moor in Cheshire but here it is. This looks like Yorkshire.

We head up to the trig point and settle down for some food. I search around for my cider but it looks like I’ve left it behind in Andrea’s car…idiot. It’s fairly windy up here, ravens soar around the rock face, and we have a good view across the Cheshire plain and can make out Beeston Castle, Liverpool Cathedral and High Billinge (although Hardman is a bit sceptical about this last one). There’s a couple of legends about the Cloud, one is that a giant standing with one foot on the cloud and one foot on Shuttlingsloe (Hardman – ‘Slutmingeho’) was scared by a small animal (which small animal is not specified but probably some kind of mouse [not a field mouse though because they don’t exist]) and dropped his boot on the mountain. No one can really see how the top of the Cloud looks like any type of footware. Maybe you need to get some distance. 

The other legend associated with Bosley Cloud is of a wee (for he is Scotch) drummer boy for it is he who travelled with Bonnie Prince Charlie down through Cheshire during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Alerted to his presence by his drumming an English sniper/tank commander gunned him down, ‘Nelly Jack John DEAD?!?’ The rocky outcrop where the drummer fell is now known as drummer’s knob. A musical interpreation of this story can be found here.

http://soundcloud.com/david-lloyd-mostyn/05-cheshire-phantasies-cloud

Finally, according to Macclesfield author, Doug Pickford’s ‘Earth Mysteries of the three shires’, the Cloud was a central site for the Cornovii or ‘people of the cat’ of Cheshire at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain in AD 43. They worshipped the cat god Catha and their religion was centred around the Cat Stone on the Cloud, a stone with the face of a grinning cat on it (although we didn’t see this).

It is said locally that sacrificial victims were thrown down this sheer rock face to be dashed to pieces on an altar somewhere below at the spring equinox (Easter time). Interestingly the information board still showed that local people up to the 1960s still made the long march, bonneted-up, from Timbersbrook on Good Friday. It’s Easter Saturday today however, and there’s no sacrificial bodies in sight. 

All of these factors contributed to the Cloud being named the top peak by Smit (‘top viewage and a somewhat pretentious name’) and Tone. While Ben grew all misty-eyed from ‘the views back across to good old west Cheshire, oh how I missed it while we were away’. We then began the descent down into Raven’s Clough (Hardman ‘Raven’s chuff’). This involved much slipping around on the muddy descent, this coupled with its ‘innocuous’ nature made it the shittest part of the walk for Smit. And it’s true the fear of an out of control Ben, limbs flailing wildly, tumbling down upon you was quite terrifying.

We walked along a deep rhododendron-filled chasm and then end up in a field which has been heavily scattered with manure. Once again the old Chester City folk song, ‘East Cheshire full of shit, shit and more shit, rings true.’ We’ve made such good time that we decide can afford to stop for a beverage and take the Staffordshire way to the village of Rushton Spencer. We pass the Rushton Inn but the sign has blown over and it basically just looks like someone’s house, so we carry on following the old railway track to the puntastically-named Knott Inn. 

Pub Review: The Knott Inn, Rushton Spencer

From the outside it looks great, a huge stone building that presumably formed part of the old station. However, when we get to the door we read the sign, ‘walkers, please leave muddy boots outside.’ We deshoe, enter and are excited by the prospect of a pint of Timothy Taylors. However, it’s off hmmm. The whole place is filled with yellow Easter Chintz, described by Tone as ‘terrifyingly bland’, with the lighthouse family being pumped in by loud speakers- what is this place? Suddenly I realise that the Knott outside is not only a hilarious pun but also the symbol of Staffordshire, we must have crossed over the border coming down off the Cloud. Smit is still mapping our progress on his iphone and is concerned that he’s running low in battery. 

He asks the Landlady if there are any plug sockets?’ 

She replies, ‘what do you want it for?’ As if Smit might be thinking of powering up his dildo in her family pub. 

Smit replies, ‘To charge up my phone.’

And she replies, ‘Well, there’s one over there but my lamp’s plugged into it.’

We spend the next, slightly awkward 15 minutes debating the ambiguity of her response. Smit is convinced that she’d given permission to unplug her lamp and charge his phone but is reluctant to do so until one of us confirm this is the case. Tone, Hardman and myself here are fairly certain that, despite the fact the room is full of lamps, the unplugging of a single one would bring the landlady’s wrath upon our heads. As a result we don’t stay for long to sample the intriguing pie of the day. As we do our boots up a local’s dog chained up outside, whines and barks at us. Eager for attention it still flinches at our touch.  We bid a hasty goodbye to what will be our worst pub on the walk. In Hardman’s words, ‘worst pub goes to Smit's charger-lamp dissing. I would've thought a rural pub would be appreciative of Conservative clientele.’ 

The Knott Inn scores

Decor	2.10
Atmos	1.30
Booze	2.60
Clientele	1.80
Barstaff	2.40
Total	2.04

Ben’s navigating abilities have been slightly off so far today, so it’s slightly worrying that we are now in Ben’s hands totally as we attempt to rejoin the Gritstone at the river Dane. Although initially we head into someone’s garden, as is Ben’s wont, Ben eventually guides us quite remarkably to the bridge over the river, just as he promised. Well done Ben all is forgiven.  We’re heading towards the final push up and over to Wincle  Minn (Hardman ‘Wincleminge’). We climb up the hill side through woodland and a strange swimming pool and eventually come out of the woods onto a windy hillside, populated by sheep and lonely farms. This is the first time that we actually encounter snow on the walk. 

We carry on along the ridge until it dips down towards the road. We can see the A54 down below us, which will lead us onwards to the camping barn. However, eager to bag as many peaks as possible and keen to get one more done today to make things easier for tomorrow, I suggest we try and bag  Croker Hill (‘Choke her (with my cock) Hill’ Hardman) today. Everyone is in good spirits and so agrees to go for it. We wander up through a field past a rambunctious ram that mock charges us along the wall. We get to the top of Croker, which is lacking a Trigg Point and slightly spoilt by its radio tower.

On the way back down a collie from the nearby farm runs down and follow us until we get to the road. Thankfully it doesn’t bark, ‘Ralph’s wood’ at us as that would mean we’d have to return to  the beginning of the trail. The dog wanders on alongside us for a while until I tell it in an authoritative voice to head back home, remarkably it does so. Although I nearly get run over by traffic in the process.

As we walk along the A54 it’s time for another pub break before we make it to the camping barn at Blaze Farm.  In the distance I spy the Wild Boar, I’m quite excited by the name choice as it’s presumably inspired by the killing of the last wild boar in England in nearby Wildboarclough (Hardman ‘Wild Brian Clough’s Chuff’). It’s also a Robinson’s pub so I hold out some hope that they might have Old Tom on tap.