Eight ramblers turned up for this 8-miler from Longnor led by Mike Field: Mike, Toni, Derek, Pauline, Farmer Ken, Martin and two visitors: Jude who is technically a member of Berkshire group despite having moved up to the North West some years ago, and Mike from Staffordshire Walkers Group.
We were not sure what conditions to expect after the heavy rain of the last two weeks or so, and the mist on the Wednesday walk, but it turned out OK, on the whole.
We started south-eastwards, following meadows alongside the River Manifold.
The route was based on one of the walks in a very old folder of "Graham's Walks". Apparently this one was originally walked on 6th September 2000. Conditions on the ground did not quite match the original hand-written description. Where we crossed the B5053 before Reaps Moor (grid ref SK 088 618), the instructions say blithely to "cross the road and continue up the gorse-clad hillside". Evidently in the last 25 years the gorse has grown a bit, because on the recce on 24th January, it was almost head-high and it was a struggle to get through it, to such an extent that we called in on the way back from the Ilam walk of Wednesday 4th Feb with two pairs of secateurs and did some clearance. Unfortunately on arriving home we realised that yours truly had dropped his secateurs on the way down without noticing. Amazingly however, they were still there, lying on the ground, on Sunday 8th, none the worse. We picked them up, took them home, oiled them and put them away.
Near the top of the gorse we had a coffee stop.
Some of us got wet feet crossing Blake Brook at the ford just after Reaps Moor, which was a bit deeper than it was for the recce.
We had an early lunch stop on a pleasant grassy knoll overlooking a meander of Blake Brook. In this area, we saw two hares, and a small raptor (probably a kestrel) hovering, also looking for his lunch.
