Bleaklow, How You’ve Changed

Walked for half an hour or so from the Snake Road summit onto Bleaklow along the Pennine Way. Half expect these wilderness areas to remain untouched, but that’s not the reality of course. Not like it was in my day blah-blah-blah, squelching through peat mud, just easy, comfortable walking on a sandy path and paving stones. It does seem a shame, but so many pairs of boots for so many years must have caused immense damage.

Still a great feeling walking there, even though we didn’t even get as far as Hern Clough (it was the second walk of the day…). Such splendid isolation, rawness, brooding hostility with evil pools either side of the path; yet beauty with abundant cotton grass, the call of a golden plover, the fluttering of meadow pipits. I’ve missed this badland.