Well, what can I say about today’s walk? A friend of mine, Minty wanted to see what all this walking lark was about and took the day off work to join me on a little hike. I decided to take him on the relatively easy Marsden walk I did about four weeks ago and to show him ‘Marsden Beach’ and the waterfall along the Pennine Way. We parked up close to Marsden railway station, and set off on a pretty pleasant morning with blue skies passing Marsden Moor NT visitor centre and then down and through Marsden (I had to stop off to waste my money on a lotto ticket) passing the Holme Valley Mountain Rescue centre on Manchester Road we then turned up Fall Lane then onto Binn Road. Making our way up the track past Butterley and Blakeley Reservoirs until we reached the Pennine Way. Now on the Pennine Way, it started to get darker, windier and wetter, we carried on along the trail to the waterfall on Blake Clough. Four weeks ago when I was last here, I crossed no problems, this time the water was raging, the rocks slippy, and then the rain started. We decided it was far too dangerous to cross so we turned back, I felt quite a bit of disappointment as I wanted to show him the beach. As soon as we got back to Blakeley Reservoir, the first hail storm hit us out of nowhere, I’ve not seen weather like that for years, within seconds we were both drenched. I felt it was luck the Clough was too rough to cross because we would have been out in the open on top of the moors if we had managed to cross. We eventually made our way back down into Marsden but I felt guilty having to cut short the walk when Minty had taken the day off, so after he said he had never been to Standedge Tunnel, I thought it would be a nice gentle easy walk along the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the weather had brightened up. We made our way along the canal, and with the tunnel visitor centre within sight I went to get my camera out, as soon as I did, the second hail storm hit us. We didn’t even get to see much of Standedge as the hail was so fierce. It was at that stage we looked at each other, said “SOD IT” and turned around to make our way back to the carpark in Marsden which was bright and sunny when we got back to it…. Typical!!! |