Gritstone trail part two
7.04.2012
We begin the walk from Mow Cop walking along the Congleton
Edge. From here we can see various hills in the distance that presumably we’ll
be climbing today. One with snow on I reckon is the legendary Shuttlinsloe (Or ‘Slutmingeho’
if you’re Hardman), the Cheshire Matterhorn, where we’ll be camping at the base
of tonight.
Looking a little
closer we can see Congleton aka beartown. Congleton got this nickname because
at some point in the 1600s before the annual Wakes (holidays) Congleton’s bear
died. With bear dancing one of the premier attractions of any period of
fesitivities, what were the people of Congleton to do? Luckily they were able
to raid the local Alderman’s fund for a new bible (their old bible, being tatty
and rancid) to pay for a new bear. This gave rise to the popular rhyme, ‘Congleton
rare, Congleton rare, sold their bible to buy a bear.’ The people of Congleton
now deny this saying that from the money raised by buying a new dancing bear they
were actually able to buy a bible – a sound investment then. But this claim is
undermined by the fact that nowadays, if you give someone from Congleton a
bible they’ll almost immediately try and sell it for a bear, sometimes even
back to you if you have bear handy. They just can’t help themselves and should
be pittied for their affliction.
Along Congleton Road we notice a road side verge with a
large assortment of bouquets indicating this has been the sight of some kind of
traffic-based tragedy. However, other people have also chosen this place to
hurl a variety of tyres and other rubbish. Is this how they commemorate their
dead in East Cheshire? Weird. We pass a couple of walkers and discuss the heady
moment when we’re able to respond to their pleasant greetings of “good
morning”, with a “it’s the fucking afternoon, you dick.” We descend down the
side of the edge via the nick i’th’ wood by some fields and have our first pie
stop of the trail. Tone and I have played pie roulette. Unfortunately, it turns
out we’ve packed the veggie pie for day one and that the steak pie is sitting
in the back of Andrea’s car probably being munched on by Fran’s Crewe troubador
doppelganger as he plots our fate. Hardman has brought with him a hilariously
homoerotic food, which I can’t quite recall. Some kind of faggot perhaps, or
man cock. Smit has packed him some jerky, which we will later find has silica
gel in it. The food of choice of any self-respecting Gritstone miner, who wear their silicosis as a badge of honour.
We head across some fields to enjoy the lengthy canal-based
monotony of the Biddulph Valley Way. Time is ticking along and we are wishing
good morning to all and sundry. Conversation turns to the complicated interview
techniques favoured by google. Which apparently focus on dropping two eggs from
a 100 story building and working out which story the eggs will break at, while
only breaking one of the eggs? There’s much consternation at what kind of eggs
could possibly survive a fall from any floor of a tall building. Ostrich Eggs,
whale shark eggs and fossilised dinosaur eggs are all suggested. Another
logical puzzle is put forward, which involves you working out which of the
switches turns on a light in a room you can only enter once. Again I don’t remember
the exact answer but believe it involved sticking your penis in some kind of
electrical socket. In the words of Smit, ‘FUCK YOU GOOGLE.’
We leave the river and head over some more fields and after
a slight footpath diversion, caused by the seemingly inappropriate building of
some houses on the gritstone trail,we arrive at Timbersbrook. According to the
official Gritstone trail guide this is day three of the walk and we’ve done it
by twelve. Pah and people on the C4Lf facebook page were dubious about us doing
this in two days. We could probably do the route in one day (looking back now
this would probably have been a bad idea, we would have missed out on the
camping barn for one thing). I find myself an information panel and begin to
take in the rich heritage of Timbersbrook. It was apparently once the home of
the Silver Springs Bleaching and Dyeing Company, employing over 200 people and
sentmillions of yard of black cloth to China. Every Good Friday the villagers
would dress up in their bonnets and ascend up to the cloud. After the war there didn’t seem to be the same
need for dyed black cloth and the factory was finally demolished by the
awesomely named Blaster Bates in 1966.
Hardman interrupts my reading by saying good morning Fran,
to which I reply, ‘Did you know Timbersbrook was the sigh of an old cloth dying
mill?’ I’ve inadvertently spoilt his attempt to call me a dick for not
realising it was the afternoon. I say ‘good morning’ back to him anyway but
it’s not quite the same, and he gives me a half-hearted ‘it’s the afternoon you
fucking cunt’ but he doesn’t really put any heart inot. I reluctantly leave the
interpretation sign and begin the ascent to the Cloud, sadly sans bonnet.
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