Bronte Way 1

BRONTE WAY. DAY 1 - Saturday 19th May 2018

This joint intention between me and Bowland Climber (BC, who comments here and is a long standing friend) has for various reasons been put on hold for some time, not least because of my replacement knee op. number 2  last November.

I have been building up to longer walks since Knee2, but always with a day or more rest in between, so when BC suggested we take advantage of the current good weather with a two day assault on the first half of the Bronte Way I welcomed that as an opportunity to find out what two continuous days of longer walks would prove.

We used two cars, one at each end of the day's walk, and I stayed overnight on Saturday at BC's.

The walking was varied on tracks, a few farmers cow trodden fields, canal towpath, and riverside tracks. Mud was never an issue.

We snacked on a bench in a kind of park on the edge of the River Brun north-east of Burnley. There were a number of Muslim families passing by and we said our hellos and sympathised at their imposition of Ramadan which at this time of year has the longest period between dawn and dusk. Part of the time we were also following the Burnley Way which BC had previously walked.

Ascending from Swinden Bridge we came across two old time farmers burning the remains of a wooden building that had obviously collapsed in a heap suffering from chronic and terminal wood-rot. The chatty one informed us about our walking releasing endorphins and afterwards we wondered how much further his knowledge extended on that subject (mine is pretty shaky.)

Our final approach to the parked car down the pretty Thursden Valley was a highlight to this nine mile day. We had done the equivalent of a day's Munroing in ascent, BC will I guess be more specific, but I felt about as tired as one would expect and perhaps a bit more so in view of the wall to wall sunshine and high temperature all day - 'twas a fine day's walk.

Our destination, Thursden, hardly even qualifies to be called a village, but it is a delightful spot and it has a surprising amount of unusual history - have a look at this website and scroll down a bit  until you see the heading Thursden

http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk/Newsletters.htm

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DAY 2 to FOLLOW