Friday 22nd. May 2026
"Have an objective for a walk" has been a recurring suggestion of mine. On Friday Bowland Climber took me up on it wholesale:
Two caves and three boulders.
1. Fairy Hole, 2. Harry Hest Hole, 3. The Thtree Brothers
But for starters we parked under disused Warton Quarry: nearly half a mile of exposed limestone with a height of around 300ft and today shining white against the contrasting clear blue sky - impressive.
Off we set climbing steadily to find Fairy Hole on evermore confusing paths. We had OS Grid references which showed the location perhaps fifty yards off a minor path at the foot of an escarpment, but guarded by woods on perilously steep ground densley populated with trees, fallen trees, holly, brambles and thick shin deep undergrowth, almost impenetrable. but BC was not dettered and I was similarly keen to find our objective. We both had heroic attempts to no avail and sad to say we saw no fairies out to play. Some may say that octogenarians should have more sense? BC had one more desperate attempt because we thought we could see a vaguely looking possibility but retreat was then made.
We retraced previous steps and I may say joy of joys when we found Harry Hest Hole, but this was a less than impressive affair on the side of the path filled with a dump of dead branches and cuttings which showed little respect for what is marked as a landmark on the map. We pressed on,and our earlier woeful navigation became even woefulier but after toing and froing, BC heading off in one direction and me in another, we found Three Brothers, huge boulders left behind by the Ice Age, one perched in umlikely balance, but all three almost hidden in dense woodland shrubbery and. brambles and apparently not much visited.
More footpaths followed often not marked by OS and those those so marked were not accurate according to our GPS.
Eventually we manged to arrive at the summit of Warton Crag and had a late snacking at around 2:30 I think.
I seemed to have had a block on taking photos on this trip, asnd many of dense green jungle and nothing else have been deleted.
Footpath confusion persisted to the end past the rim of the quarry and back down to the car park. There we chatted to a small party of bird watchers who were monitoring a pair of Peregrin Falcons nesting on the cliff.
I'm not sure how far we walked with all our diversions and jungle thrashing, but not much more than three miles I think but it seemed like more on this the hottest day of the year so far. I was grateful for the hot bath and an evening's chilling back home. With all the intrepid exploration this had been good fun, and as always in excellent company.
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| It may have been wiser not to show these photos to close relations and friends back home? And to think we used to worry about what our young offspring were up to in those days of parenthood |
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| Only an approximation of our wanderings. Anti-clockwise from the south |
That looks exciting - was I there?
ReplyDeleteIt looks on a par with thrashing through a commercial conifer plantation for difficulty, but with far more attractive and interesting surroundings.
ReplyDelete(Gayle - an iPhone/Blogger issue is stopping me from signing in)
BC - Well, you wern't away with the fairies.
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Gayle - We both seem to get drawn back to these situations despite saying "never again."
That just reminded me of something that the guys off Last of Summer wine would set out to do.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I put all the blame on Sir Hugh.
DeleteCrawling under a branch wearing a backpack normally ends in slapstick comedy, for me. :)
ReplyDeleteAlan R - I agree with your assessment but not sure which of the old geezers either of us would equate to.
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BC - Perhaps I had the map upside-down, as well as erroneously bringing that redundant compass of mine that had succumbed to reverse polarity?
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Tony Urwin - If we had made a video of the whole squence including both our efforts as well as other parts of our performance it would have rivalled most of the professional exponents of slapstick.
I suppose one always has an objective when embarking on a walk. Even the first step proclaims it - the aim being to complete that step. Thereafter repetition (lots of steps, all completed) blurs the issue. Theoretically one might invalidate this premise by not completing that first step; by hovering, both feet off the ground... Hmm. No doubt yoga would teach you how.
ReplyDeleteContrast this with, say, writing a novel. The objective being to finish it. Re-reading my earlier posts I find - to my horror - I started my current novel (Rictangular Lenses; the misspelling is intentional) years and years ago. True I'm close to 80,000 words written but not only am I unsure I'll finish it (I write under the wing shadows of The Grim Reaper) I can"t even ENVISAGE the ending. Pooh, you say, this is just literary pretentiousness. Not so. Three weeks ago I brought two characters together and the result is a line of narrative which is so potentially attractive that it threatens to undermine the gravamen (There's a five-dollar word for you!) of those words already written.
All my walking these days has objectives: To pick up The Guardian from Tesco's filling station (The jolly staff put it to one side for me) or to go a further three hundred yards to the supermarket itself and fill my shopping bag with loads of fruit to feed my recently developed fruitophilia. Only to find out that the load of apricots, etc, is too much to carry and I subsequently decided - in advance - it would be too much to carry and, thus, I arrived by car. A walk in name only.
Go on, tell me I misspelled gravamen.
First of all I applaud your continued walking to Tesco. however, if carrying heavier items is not possible Tesco do deliver. I have used them and others in the past and it can be a welcome conveneince.
ReplyDeleteI suppose thre are many ways of creating a novel, but I think that if the characters have taken over halfway through it must be a good omen for what has gone so far, but chaging the gravamen is pretty radical. To continue the analogy with my walk there are occasions when the objective may be changed, but that would be rare.; abandoning would be more likely. It is bit of a cliché that one comes across when it is said that he who knows when it s prudent to turn back derves respect.