This Week’s Walks
September 8th-14th 2024
I never know how long these posts are going to be when I start writing them, so I’m hesitant in saying this but this may be a shorter entry than usual this week because there hasn’t been too much walking in it for me. Well, too much interesting walking, I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of my stroll to the supermarket. I’m saving that for a time when I’m really desperate for material and can deconstruct it into a 10,000-word epic story focusing in over-exquisite detail on every one of the steps there, back, and around.
But you are saved from that fate because this week I went to church on a Sunday. Specifically, Lud’s Church, a rock formation in the Peak District a little south of Buxton and a little west of the hills I’d climbed before in last week’s post.
Summer changed to autumn while I was away in the Peaks. Friday had been hot, Saturday a little damp but enough warmth still clinging on, but by Sunday the rain was properly lashing in and the temperature had dropped again. On the way up to Derbyshire, my problem had been keeping the car cool inside, on the way back it was keeping it warm. I’m not unused to cold, wet days in September (or any month, I’ve lived in England long enough) just not to a sudden and seemingly irrevocable transition from one season to the next like we’ve had this year.
Sunday wasn’t much of a day for reaching hilltops or much at all in the morning, but the rain had eased enough by the afternoon to make a walk under a forest canopy seem like a good idea and so I set off down the back roads to Gradbach. The road peters out into a private track and car park around there and the ground was a little squelchy underfoot as I changed into my walking boots. From there I set out towards the steamy hillside, following the road as it dwindled away to a track, and the last few side roads to Gradbach Mill, the scout camp and farmhouses spilled out to the sides.
I could hear a river down below, and some young voices — possibly Scouts learning outdoor skills in the rain just like I did forty years ago — down by it, but the track was following a more undulating route higher up the bank, not meeting the stream until further along when it dropped down to some stepping stones.
From there a switchback path heads up the hillside. Lud’s Church is a chasm in the side of the hill formed at some point relatively recently in geological terms and relatively ancient, before people were noting down things like “bloody hell, the hill’s split apart”, in human terms. So it feels both ancient, a vast hewing of rock that makes anyone within it feel small, covered in moss and odd-angled trees, and new, the rocks still sharp and dramatically posed, a testament to the hill as a living and active place.
That combination is perhaps why some have assigned a religious or mythical dimension to it, but in tales that use it as a setting rather than those explaining its creation. Somewhere that is and always was, but also somewhere alive and powerful: the Green Chapel where the final confrontation in the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight takes place is thought to be either referring directly to it, or a literary location inspired by it.
It also served as a church for those who had to worship in secret, like Wycliffe and the Lollards, retreating away into forest and hillside to find secret places where they might gather and be safe, perhaps they’d even made the journey there on wet Sunday afternoons like this one.
The rain was easing as I wandered through it, taking in the size of it and the way it seals you off from the outside world, forcing you to walk the only route through the steep walls, descending and ascending rocky stairs worn down by centuries of feet before me. A simple enough afternoon’s walk, but a good one for a damp day and one I could combine with a quick visit to the New Inn at Flash on the way back, so I can now say I’ve had a drink in Britain’s highest pub which, refreshingly, still feels like a pub and not a tourist trap.
Time for one last stop on the way back into Buxton and after visiting Lud’s Church I popped in on Solomon’s Temple. Not a recreation of the biblical one, but a tower on Grin Low hill that overlooks the town originally built as a nineteenth century folly by a man called Solomon. Just a short walk, fitting in nicely into a break in the rain, and a chance to take in some nice views of the town and the hills around, along with the approaching rainclouds.
And that was the last of my proper walks in the Peak District. A bit of a wander round Bakewell on market day on my way back, but then it was back home and having to deal with running in the cold as I got back into half marathon training. Managed 15km on Wednesday, and then down to Basildon for Parkrun this morning. And in news that might make future walks interesting, I’ve been talking to my brother about buying his old campervan when he upgrades to a new bigger one. That should make for some interesting opportunities for finding new walks…
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