Sunday 17th March, The Two Crosses Circuit

The Two Crosses Circuit is an annual challenge event organised by the East Lancashire section of the LDWA. There is a choice of route, 17 miles or 25 miles in 9 hours. I’ve done both routes in recent years and was planning on doing the 25 miles route on this occasion. Bad weather on Saturday night convinced me that the 17 mile option was favourite this time round.
At 8am (the one in the morning) the 300 participants, a mix of runners and walkers, set off from the event centre in Tottington, near Bury – famous for Black Puddings. And a rather good market.

  Only the British can queue properly

This is primarily a walking event but in common with a lot of LDWA events it’s attracting more and more runners. Runners have a definite advantage in the early stages of this event – they get to the stiles well ahead of the rest of the field – and when there are 299 other participants….well I’m sure you can guess.
Any hopes of staying mud-free on this event were dashed after the first mile – the gloop was, er, very gloopy. And deep.
Our ‘team’, at this point, consisted of just Fast Pike and me.

  3 miles into the walk and there are still walkers BEHIND me!

 Gaining just a little height, and the snow is getting thicker.

 The West Pennine Moors are under threat too

Judith, who had also entered the event, had intended staying over at JJ Towers on the Saturday night so we could travel up to Tottington mob-handed, but she decided that my sense of humour was too much to bear and drove straight to the event on the Sunday morning. I didn’t spot her at the start but a few miles into the walk she caught me up….EVERYONE catches me up – and then they pass me.
Poor Judith had taken a tumble early on in the walk and was ever-so slightly mud-stained. In the interests of not embarrassing her I won’t mention this again. 
More gloop and snow followed until a gentle descent to Turton Tower (famous for Turtons….or Towers) and the first checkpoint…..and Jelly Babies! Our Norman was in charge and he ensured that walkers were dealt with efficiently before packing them off over a relatively good track that would eventually take us to the highlight of the route (for me!): John & Viv’s foodie checkpoint at Turton & Entwistle Reservoir. This checkpoint is a threat to all walkers – I’m sure some must have baled-out at this point, not because of the rest of the walk, but because the food and welcome are just so wonderful.

  Just some of the East Lancs Catering Corps offerings

I’m sure it wasn’t Judith, that mud-stained world-famous TGO Challenger, who was spotted gleefully demolishing a huge bowl of banana & custard, fruit salad and fruit jelly, whilst happily muttering something about being in party-food heaven. I’m equally sure that it wasn’t me who followed her example.
But it might have been.
It was here that our little party expanded in size yet again, taking on board a lady who’s partner had retired at the foodie checkpoint….some excuse about having a twisted knee. Yeah, yeah….
Dragging ourselves away from the checkpoint, we headed East (which is A Good Thing), passing the Strawbury Duck pub and the north end of Wayoh Reservoir before the climb up to Bull Hill. We didn’t need to climb too much before we were back on snowy ground once again:

Some of the local residents:
This little piggy found our party fascinating, following us as far as it could – until it came to a gate. I’m quite sure it would have followed us a lot further if it was able to.
The higher we climbed, the deeper it got:

Approaching Bull Hill

The next checkpoint of note, CP6 a.k.a. ‘The Naughty Corner’, is on the northern slopes of Bull Hill:

The Naughty Corner…with some of the refreshments on offer

Turning south (which the more observant of you will note, is NOT east) to cross Holcombe Moor, an army firing range, the path became particularly sludgy and slippy. Staying upright wasn’t a problem, but trying to move at a decent speed certainly was. The ground was so gloopy that too much effort put in to making headway just resulted in feet sliding all over the place.
Peel Tower, above the town of Ramsbottom, must have had castors installed – it just didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

Clouds gathering over Peel Tower

Eventually we did get to the tower and we could just about make out the end of our walk, about 4km away as the crow flies:

Manchester in the distance

Unfortunately we weren’t crows…and we still had the treacherously steep descent through Redisher Woods to contend with. Redisher Woods is famous for muddying bums – and today it lived up to it’s reputation.

 The already muddy Judith starts to descend through Redisher Woods

Fast Pike, just ahead of muddied Judith, takes to her bum to descend the slippy slope.

I won’t mention the fact that Judith slid down the muddy slope on her bum….for about 6 –7 feet. It wouldn’t be fair – and I wouldn’t want to embarrass her. Judging by some of the skid-marks on the slope, Judith’s slide was minor – one skid-mark was truly epic in length.
Having safely descended through the woods, we then had our only significant navigational faff of the event. This faff was anticipated, it was a repeat of last year’s faff. And the previous year…
It didn’t matter too much, we had one checkpoint to go and then it was a flat yomp of just a couple of miles to the end.
The last mile of the walk was on a disused railway line – nice and flat with a fairly good surface. We arrived back at the event centre just before 3pm – our finishing time was 6hrs 59mins, half-an-hour longer than last year. The main reason for this slower time was down to the appalling ground conditions, it was only 17 miles but the mud, slush and snow really slowed our pace.
A selection of excellent home-made soups were on offer at the centre – just the job! After eating too much and drinking too much tea, it was time for home.
£7 for a grand walk plus oodles of lovely food…and excellent company = pretty good value!

17 miles with around 2000ft of ascent.

More photos are here.