Halloween on Pendle. 31 October 2013

Every year on Halloween our group puts on a walk in the Pendle area, famous in the past for it's association with witches and notorious in more recent years for rowdy nights on Halloween, on and around Pendle Hill.

As always today's walk started, under Pendle Hill, from the atractive village of Downham and headed out through Worston, then up across fields to the historic Little Mearley Hall. This where the serious climb began as we took the steep ascent onto Pendle Moor, then more easily along to the summit of Pendle Hill.                                

 The start in Downham                                                                       John finds a friend in Newchurch

  Stile above Newchurch                                                                     Approaching Barley

 Fortunately the heavy showers, that had been forecast, were holding off and we had time to take in the fine views that can be enjoyed from here on a clear day.

The next stage of our walk took us down into Ogden Clough, then up through the wood and over the ridge into Newchurch, where John had a loving cuddle with one of the witches outside the small curiosity shop. From Newchurch we followed the ridge of Thorny Bank to join the bridlepath, which we followed to our lunch stop at the picnic site in Barley.

Jeff, our intended walk leader for today, was at home nursing an injured knee and stand in leader Dave was soon presented with a problem when we discovered the permissive path, up to the sculpture trail in Aitken Wood, has now been closed. We had, therefore, to backtrack towards Barley to get on a path that would take us round to Black Moss reservoir, where we re-joined our planned route, that took us from there over Twiston Moor to our final break of the day in Twiston.

Looking North and West we could see heavy showers over the Bowland Hills, but luckily for us we were able to make it all the way back to our cars in Downham in the dry.

A very good and interesting 17 mile walk enjoyed by all 13 who joined us on the day. Thanks Dave for standing in at such short notice and well done to those who appeared in wiches hats and a various assortment of ghostly attire.