Friday May 9th

 Holme, Black Hill and Twizle Head- David and Paul

This was a rematch of the walk that Paul and I had started back in April. We made a lot more progress this time, starting from Holme and down to the Digley Reservoir. This time, we followed the Kirklees way above Marsden Clough. I had told Paul that Carol's Tea Waggon would be up at Wessenden Head on the Isle of Skye road, but... much to our disappointment, she wasn't there. To compensate, there were a few Belted Galloway calves beside the ruins of the hotel.

Belted Galloway calves

From the Isle of Skye, we turned up the Pennine Way to Black Hill.

On the way to Black Hill.
This was "The Wessenden Alternative" back in the day.

We then headed over to the Holme Moss transmitter and crossed the Woodhead Road, joining the path below Twizle Head Moss and above the basin containing the Yateholme, Riding Wood and Ramsden reservoirs. Although the path is fairly level, it weaves in and out of lots of cloughs, making it quite lengthy.

Rounding one of many cloughs

Although it seemed that there were a few paths down to the reservoirs below, most of them were restricted in their access.

Looking down Ramsden Clough- we stayed high

Despite some of the marked paths having limited or no access, the walk actually took paths that weren't marked on the map- notably to the west of Crossley's Plantation. From the plantation, we had a view all the way back to Black Hill, with much of the route that we'd taken visible, even though the path was not.

Our route covered much of the skyline

In the same vein that no technical document is complete without a reference to Micky Mouse, no blog entry is complete without a picture of a few cute lambs.

Obligatory lamb picture

Our route rejoined the Kirklees Way just beyond Corssley's Plantation, on a track marked as Ramsden Road and dropped down to the Ramsden Reservoir dam and then back- fairly steeply- to Holme, where I had an episode of real deja vu- a semi-subterranean house. I knew that I'd seen it before, but I was sure that it had been in a completely different place!

Semi-subterranean house (complete with UFO)

In fact, the house was in the right place: Jacinta reminded me that we'd passed it on our walk from Holmfirth on April 1st, 2023.

Paul and I stopped for a drink at The Fleece in Holme after our walk of 12 miles with 560m ascent.



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