Saturday 16th June, The White Bear Way

 

The White Bear Way is a circular challenge walk, run by Adlington Scouts on similar lines to LDWA events. There’s a choice of 10 or 21 mile routes, starting and finishing at the scout hut in Adlington. Being rufty-tufty Challengers, Judith and I settled on the 21 mile route.

Judith, a new LDWA member, lives on the Wirral. To save an early Saturday morning faff she drove to Timperley after work on Friday evening to stay at JJ Towers. After a carbo-loading meal we headed off to Costello’s in Altrincham, brewery tap of the Dunham Massey Brewery . I know how to treat a girl! I had arranged to meet up with Rick & Richard of Nelson-Peach folk super-group fame and a pleasant couple of hours were spent in increasing our hydration levels.

Maintaining hydration is just so important.

Next morning we were up bright and early for the drive to Adlington, near Chorley, and the start of the day’s little expedition. Driving up the M61 we saw the top of Winter Hill shrouded in clag, but from experience we knew that it was likely there would be at least some views from the top.

We were supposed to have been joined by other members of the Timperley Walkers And Tipplers but injuries and / or the weather forecast for heavy rain had put them off. As it happened, the weather stayed fine and dry until were en-route to the last checkpoint.

Adlington Scouts were thoughtfully providing tea and toast at the start, and after registering we took full advantage of their kind offer. The 21 mile walkers set off at 8.30am, aiming for the first checkpoint just north of Horwich. Following a section of canal towpath for 2.5km enabled us to get our pace sorted…nice and slow – Pigeon Pace, nice.

Judith on the canal towpath in Adlington

Footpaths, farm tracks and very quiet country lanes took us across a railway line and then the M61. I always find it strange, when on a walk, to cross a busy motorway – everything seems to be happening so quickly on the roads whilst we plod along quite happily at our pedestrian pace.

Anderton Services and the M61

Passing to the north of Horwich I spotted some interesting wildlife:

Not very native wildlife 

It was around this point that the first runner flew past us, striding out with apparent ease, whilst we plodged our way through muddy tracks. We were to later learn that the first runner arrived back at the scout hut in well under 3 hours – and he was well ahead of all the other runners.

 

The tower at Rivington Pike, SW of Winter Hill

Walkers approaching Winter Hill

View from the climb up Winter Hill

The masts on Winter Hill come into view

The top of the main TV mast disappearing into the cloud

The route then started to climb over Winter Hill, passing directly by the TV transmitter mast and all the ancillary buildings. At 456m ASL, the summit was still claggy but certainly not bad. There were views to the south, the Peak District and North Wales being quite visible.

Many hills have memorials, Winter Hill is no exception:

A very steep descent to Hordern Stoop and another checkpoint – and it still wasn’t raining! We were slightly off-route at this point, but the descent was one I’d used before on this walk.

Judith, smiling (grimacing?) at CP4 

 They expect bad weather around these parts.

Another minor navigational faff was corrected by referring to the map. A map is A Good Thing when walking over moorland, especially when it’s not a map of Wales. We weren’t in Wales and the maps we were carrying proved it. We soon knew where we were. I think.

Tagging on to a group of walkers proved to be helpful to a point, but they decided to miss out part of the route to avoid the memorial to a bomber crew who died nearby in 1943 when their plane crashed. I don’t like to miss out war memorials, nor does Judith who has ‘connections’. Oh yes, you don’t mess with Judith. I hadn’t mentioned it before, but I’d promised Judith good weather for this walk – if it turned bad she’d promised to give me a good kicking.

Anyway, with my fingers crossed for continuing good weather, we did the decent thing and ascended the short but steep climb to the memorial:

The short-circuit walkers bypassed the climb and the muddy woodland path to take the easier LRT route to Checkpoint 5 where it still wasn’t raining.

Cakes, biscuits, cordial and water were on offer at the checkpoints. This was fine but after a while all the sugary-sweet stuff became a bit too much. Tea and something savoury would have been good, even at only one of the checks. Still, we didn’t go hungry at all so that was okay.

If you hadn’t arrived at CP5 by 3.30pm you would be asked to retire from the walk. If you hadn’t made it by that time you would be most unlikely to be able to arrive at the finish within the 10 hours allowed for the walk. As it was only 1.30pm we were well in time and it still wasn’t raining.

We weren’t rushing, so spent 15 minutes at this checkpoint eating, drinking, stretching, looking at the views. Blackpool Tower was quite visible in the distance. Whilst we chatted to the marshalls a few other walkers came through but we let them get on with it. We weren’t racing.

At just before 2pm the wind got up and heavy rain stopped us in our tracks – time for overtrousers….and for me to watch my back. I mean, I could have been attacked at any time. Fortunately, although It looked like this rain was going to be it for the rest of the day, it wasn’t, 5 minutes later the rain stopped and all was well and I could relax my guard.

Another navigational faff (probably because we were gassing too much to bother looking at the map) had us walking around a lovely little reservoir…one that we shouldn’t have been walking around. Oh well.

The reservoir we shouldn’t have walked around

A quick about-turn soon had us back on track, heading for the northerly end of Anglezarke Reservoir. We were joined by a couple of lads from the scout group who were very familiar with the route so we didn’t need the maps any more – we just followed them! After being on open moorland for a lot of the day it was an unpleasant shock to be walking alongside the noisy M61.

Crossing the M61 

The Wet

By this time the rain had returned and it wasn’t going anywhere fast. Except in a downwards direction. I determined to keep Judith in front of me, if I was going to be on the receiving end of a ferocious attack I wanted to see it coming at least. I can run faster than Judith.

Splodging and paddling through water-sodden paths eventually took us to our final checkpoint at the Black Horse pub in Limbrick – an excellent pub, well known for it’s folk club and good beer.

Stream…or footpath? 

The excellent Black Horse at Limbrick

With around 2.5 miles to go we ate some more cakes and drank some more cordial before girding our wotsits and setting off on the last leg of the walk.

The rest of the route was easy-peasy, most of it was on the canal towpath. The two lads from the scout group proved to be very good company and the walk passed quickly.

Back at the scout hut we removed our soggy boots and sat down to excellent hotpot and mugs of tea. Being a healthy eater I only had two helping of the hotpot and left it at that. A certain lady of my acquaintance also had two helpings….but then she snaffled a doughnut too!

 An un-named lady, called Judith, at the scout hut.

We collected our certificates and sew-on badges and thanked the organisers for the day – they had worked very hard to put this event on. It was a shame that the last hour and a half was marred with rain, but what the hell – this is England in June, what do you expect?

A character building day. But we had fun too!

Oh, and I’m not sure whether she forgot or just couldn’t be bothered, but Judith didn’t hit me – not even once.