Wardle to Shaw
Distance 21 miles
Little lambs, stonechat, fire, oyster catcher, deer, buzzards, midges
We started off the day with a forgotten phone, a near deer encounter and an angry bus driver (which seems to be the default for bus drivers, perhaps understandably.) We got off the bus in Wardle and walked up the lane and on the footpath up someone's drive and under their washing, across the field and on to the stone paved access road to the reservoir car park. The route goes along under the dam wall and around the reservoir and ponds, where there were deer and tufty ducks, before turning up through the woods and up on to the moors.
There are no Rochdale Way signs here, and the route on the map didn't really correspond with any of the paths on the ground, so we headed in the general direction on sheep trods and tracks, ending up at a corner of a field with a big wall and no gate or obvious exit. One wall negotiated, we continued around another wall skirting the hillside on some very dry grass and bracken, then headed up the hill to come down on a clearer path. The path disappeared into bogs, with a bit of backtracking we found some rocks that crossed over the stream and a path with some wooden bridges across the bogs.
A very eroded path led down the steep hillside, by an air shaft for the Summit Tunnel and over a stream that had at some point quite recently washed most of the path away. After picking our way over this and over a rickety stile, the condition of the path improved and it gently zigzagged its way down through a quarry into the valley. From the partially washed away road at the bottom it was clear how much damage the water had done.
We crossed the canal and headed up the driveway on the other side, passing the farms which have now fenced in the footpath, neatly containing it within the stream / bog, and up on to the moors under Warland Reservoir. Here we stopped on a wide rock for a break and a foot faff (our socks probably didn't dry out much in ten minutes but it was quite nice to take wet shoes off for a bit) while watching the growing plumes of smoke on the horizon.
As we went along the track to Blackstone Edge Reservoir, the smoke and fire on the distant hillside became visible, and there were a lot of fire engines and firemen with fire beaters. Our route took us around the opposite side of the hill, although I did read that a couple of hours later the road was closed and the White House Inn didn't open that evening because the fire was close, and down the roman road towards Lydgate and Whittaker Lane.
The Rochdale Way goes along the lane into the golf course directly to the clubhouse and Whittaker, which is a pretty hamlet of stone cottages, before going down through some oak woods with a green woodpecker, around a fancy farm house with fancy sheep and down towards Hollingworth Lake. There were lots of people here, many coming and going in taxis. Leaving the crowds, we had a rest in the sunshine just off the path, before heading up under the motorway and along the rocky path to Piethorne Reservoir.
The path goes around the reservoirs (Piethorne, Kitcliffe and Ogden) before crossing the road on a sharp corner and up on to the moors to skirt around a come down through the farm at Top O' Th' Hill. We feared the farmer was spreading something brown and unpleasant looking, but he stopped just as we approached. After a bit of hesitation we walked though the farmyard down to the path at the back of the yard, much to the surprise of a chap walking his dog who asked the farmer if you could get down that way, to which the answer was a definite yes you can.
The path (which wasn't as wet or farmyard effluent-y as last time we used it, brings you out at Jubilee Colliery nature reserve, and from here we headed through Dunwood Park into Shaw.
