Saturday 27th January 2024
For many months before this walk I had hardly done any walking, partly because the ground was so saturated after heavy rain that it wasn’t worth going for a walk, but with January being less wet I was keen to break out of my rut, drag myself out of the house and go for a walk, and I felt so much better for it. My place of choice was the Churnet Valley, a little-known area in Staffordshire that I first visited in 2021 and ever since I have been obsessed with it, loving its steep wooded valleys. I parked at the Mill Road car park in the village of Oakamoor and soon entered Cotton Dell Nature Reserve, which is a magical place in any season passing through a narrow valley where fallen trees litter the stream. The restorative effect on me of just a short walk through this wood was amazing and I was in awe of every step as I took loads of pictures and slowly made my way up the valley. When I reached a junction of paths I turned left, as I always do, to follow the right-of-way steeply up the muddy bank and out of the valley. A slender path continues up the bottom of the valley which I have often wanted to explore but that part of the valley is not open to the public so instead I have always followed the right-of-way that keeps high up the western slopes and past Cotton Bank Farm and Side Farm.
My route for this walk was taken from the OS Map app where it is called “Oakamoor/Alton circular (staffs)”, and I had already deviated from the route to visit Cotton Dell, but now I was back on course following a track north. So far I had been in familiar territory, but a right turning coming up took me into countryside that I was not familiar with and even that first turning was missed! Once I had retraced my steps I took the difficult-to-follow path across the valley and onto Cotton Lane passing the derelict buildings of Cotton College and St Wilfred’s Catholic Church. Eventually I turned left off the road to take a track up into Ramshorn Common where the path was very faint and often exceptionally boggy. At one point, after crossing a bog, I found a good path that was a pleasure to walk upon, until I realised that I was going the wrong way and I had to retrace my steps back to the bog and take a non-existence, boggy path through the wood. I suppose in better weather this would be a good walk, but not at this time of the year. Eventually I reached a farm where the Ordnance Survey map indicates that a track passes to the north of the building but in practice footpath signs took me through a narrow gap between the buildings and into a farmyard filled with cows.
Thankfully I managed to safely get away and after a short walk along Green Lane I crossed several wet, grassy fields to reach a gap between fields that the OS Map app directed me along but was clearly not a public right-of-way. Roads instead took me to Sycamore Farm where a path through grassy fields took me to the edge of Kevin Quarry. Ahead of me now was a view of the Weaver Hills and the promise of reaching these hills spurred me on through further difficulties with the path, weaving a course between various limestone quarries and battling overgrown bramble until finally I reached the foot of the hills. The prescribed route doesn’t climb the Weaver Hills, but I have wanted to climb these hills ever since I first saw them on a map while trying to find the closest hills to my home, first in 2009 and then again during lockdown. Initially I had been looking for the nearest hill more than a thousand feet high and although the Weaver Hills lost out to Alport Height, if I had been looking for the nearest hill twelve hundred feet high then this would have won and significantly the Weaver Hills are considered to be the southernmost hills of the Pennines.
Broad grassy slopes led me slowly all the way up to the windswept summit ridge where I made my way to the trig point that marks the top. The extensive views south were very hazy, while frustratingly west were the quarries that I had just passed but north the views took me into the Peak District. After lunch I headed back down the hill, rejoining the prescribed route and after passing through the village of Wootton I entered the country estate of Wootton Lodge, which is owned by the family behind the JCB manufacturing company. In places the paths were very well signposted but in others they were very sketchy, and surprisingly the public footpath passes very close to the grand seventeenth century country house of Wootton Lodge which was an impressive sight. When I reached Brookleys Lake I was reminded that I had come this way in 2022 and now I followed my steps over the hill and around the edge of Alton Towers Resort, passing the holiday cottages and hotel before dropping down the hill to reach the old railway line at the bottom of the Churnet Valley. A relaxing walk along the disused railway brought me back to Oakamoor and offered me a chance to ponder on the walk, where I had enjoyed the exercise but also where route-finding was so difficult I was frequently checking the map and still I made mistakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment