thousandmilesblog | Walk Post 041 - Greenfield to Mossley Down Memory Lane

Date of Walk: 11/07/10
Walk organized by: Tameside Countryside Service
Start time: 10:30
Start location: Royal George Hotel, Manchester Road, Greenfield
Walk length: 6.81 miles
Weather conditions: Dry, sunny, warm

Top Mossley from Luzley

Details:
I've missed going on TCS walks. They're always interesting. I meant to go on the solstice walk but that week was quite busy, so this is the first one I've been on in a while, and in a place I hadn't really been to for a long while. It's not odd that being in a place you haven't seen for ages brings back memories, but it's sometimes surprising which memories surface. This walk took in the Tame Valley through Mossley, and the hills either side. The name Mossley refers to a clearing in a wood that exists in a valley bottom (or a swamp, depending on who you ask), but it's an oddly shaped valley because it has a watershed (a line separating neighbouring river catchment areas) in it. They're normally on the top of hills. Other interesting factoids from this walk, we passed near Lydgate, which means gate-gate (there's a hill hill hill hill, Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria, so that's not altogether odd) and Quick Edge, the Quick part referring to a dairy farm. (Keswick is a cheese farm apparently)

Pretty good site for place name origins is here. Ordnance Survey also has some information, but the site appears to be down atm.

The walk started from the outskirts of Greenfield and headed along the Tame Valley Way, crossing the River Tame and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in Bottom Mossley along Egmont Street up to Manchester Road. We crossed this and went up the path just by the railway bridge onto Luzley, where we stopped at the top of the hill overlooking Top Mossley for lunch. We then joined Luzley Road and crossed Stamford Road to go up onto the hill at Brook Bottom, taking the lower path across the hill to Holly Bank. We crossed the valley floor here, passing a stone marking the unusual watershed, and walked up across Lees Road onto Quick Edge, making our way up the hill along farm tracks and through fields. At the top of the hill my favorite cotton jacket snagged on a piece of barbed wire wound round the inside of a stile and tore. Still, at least it wasn't my trousers. We then encountered a horse who tried to mug us for mints, but nobody gave any up.

We came down the other side of the hill along part of the Oldham Way, down Strawberry Lane, crossing the railway, river and canal again back towards the Royal George, where we finished the walk with cold drinks in the beer garden while the sun shone.

It was a good walk, with varied terrain, lots of interesting info about the local flora (and the uninvited and not very local, we saw one patch with Himalayan Balsam and Japanese Knotweed growing next to one another) and fauna (swifts evolving useless legs because they never land and even sleep in the air, and how to tell the difference between swifts, swallows and house martins), a couple of bits of random foraging (raspberries on the way up to Luzley, and I'm sure wimberries didn't used to be out until September but there were some of those too) and some light music with lunch. Also, there were hills and I was not always last up them. Just mostly.

River Tame

Near-obligatory shetland pony, who lives next to Manchester Road and recently recovered from too much being fed by passing strangers.

Path up to Luzley with excellent raspberries

Interestingly stripy tree roots

Looking down Luzley brow, at interestingly ruined building

Hill by Brook Bottom, with wimberries (or bilberries, depending on where you come from)

Crossing the valley bottom towards Quick Edge

Looking south back along the valley

Stone sticking out of wall on the right marks the watershed on the valley floor. Raindrops falling to the right of the marker end up in the Medlock, those to the left in the Tame.