Walk Leader – Neil Harwood

Number on walk – 9

Distance – 11 miles shortened to 8 miles

Weather – Wet!

The title and aim was to walk over into Yorkshire from the starting point of the village of Hurstwood near Burnley but ironically we never made it as I will explain.

The weather was poor with heavy rain at the start, but the forecast was for it to clear later in the day. With the hope that this might be early afternoon I decided to walk the route in reverse so that the worst of the rain would be whilst at relatively low levels and then on the return over the moors we would hopefully have better weather. So we headed to Worsthorne and we could still just about see Pendle Hill across the valley but not for long! The rain then seemed to become heavier as we made our way through the woods following the Burnley Way to Roggerham but in part this was due to the very wet vegetation and overhanging trees on the path. A shame this really is a very pretty part of the walk.

In view of the conditions, we then kept to quiet lanes before taking the Bronte Way down in to the Thursden valley, another very pretty part of the walk. It was now almost lunch time so we found the best shelter we could in woods before we made the climb up on to the exposed moors. It is indeed a steep climb out of the Thursden valley up on to Extwistle Moor and the rain was still persisting. So we had a choice, shorten the walk and carry on along the Lancashire Way/Pennine Bridleway directly back to Hurstwood saving almost three miles or take the original route into Yorkshire and visit the Widdop Reservoir and Gorple Stones. The one photo of the day was taken at this point and you can see how wet we were and with the decision made to shorten the walk, there was finally a smile or two!

There was one last climb on the way back and then the descent to the Hurstwood Reservoir and the strange landscape that marks the remains of the “hushings”. So, we were back early and whilst it was still very grey, the rain had finally stopped. And later in the afternoon I received a text from one of the walkers sitting in his garden in the warm sunshine complaining about my lack of planning – tongue in cheek I think. A shame that what should have been a really pleasant walk was dominated by the weather, again! And Yorkshire will have to wait for another day – no bad thing!