Words & Photos John Gillham

December 03 2009

Hebden Bridge was buzzing as usual. The old mill town is blessed with a setting of great natural beauty – rugged gritstone moors riven by several deep and winding wooded valleys known in these parts as deans. Four and five-storey stone mills and terraces are built into the hillsides, while the railway, road, canal and the River Calder jostle for room on the valley floor.

We set off from the railway station, by which the River Calder was shaded by the beaches and oaks of Crow Wood. Stoodley Pike was to be our highpoint of the day. Lemon waymarkers highlighted a perfect course through the woods to the telephone mast on the brow of the hill.

One thing we noticed on traversing the high pastures of Erringden is the abundance of high hamlets and the sheer scale of the hillside cultivation. This is because in days gone by the valleys were inhospitable alder swamps and early attempts to tame them were unfruitful. Places like Heptonstall, whose two churches stand on the opposite side of the Calder Valley, and Mankinholes, which is neatly centred among walled pastures below, predate the valley towns of Hebden Bridge and Halifax by many centuries.

Old highways and byways led easily to the moorland ridge. We’d not seen many walkers until we encountered the Pennine Way close to Stoodley Pike’s summit but now many were looking down on us from the viewing platform a third of the way up the monument. Stained black from a combination of natural oxidation and industrial pollution, the gritstone 
obelisk-shaped monument was built in 1856 by locals of Todmorden to commemorate the Peace of Ghent.

The Pennine Way route took us along the gritstone edge to the wild flat moorland of Langfield Common, where the Warland Drain collects water for a series of reservoirs. We left it to head north-west towards the Gaddings dam and Rake End.

The Basin Stone, encountered near the dam, used to be a venue for local meetings. One particularly important chartist meeting, immortalised in an oil painting hung in Todmorden’s town hall, involved a protest about the right to vote (if you didn’t own a house you couldn’t) and prompted the formation of the Halifax Building Society.

The tall spire of the Unitarian Church acted as a guide as we descended straw-coloured moorland towards Todmorden. Passing through its graveyard we arrived in the town centre – dominated by its magnificent town hall – then ambled back into Hebden Bridge using the towpath of the Rochdale Canal, where there is a strange mix of sooty warehouses, quaint cottages, trees, ducks and boats.

Distance: 12 miles/20km Ascent: 1475ft/450m Time: 5 hours Start/finish: Hebden Bridge station (GR: SD 994269) Map: Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 103 (Blackburn & Burnley) Travel: Bus services 590, 592 and 594 link Hebden Bridge with Halifax, Todmorden, and Burnley

Technical Spec
Pass in front of railway station. Turn R under railway bridge and L past modern housing terrace. Turn R on track ‘to Stoodley Pike’, through Crow Wood to reach telephone mast. Head SW across fields, then L at next lane. Climb past Rake Head and Sunderland Pasture’s conifers before reaching Stoodley Pike’s summit. Head S to Warland Drain leat. Turn R by sluice gate on waymarked path past Gaddings Dam and R again at crossroads of paths on Rake End. Descend lane at GR: SD 937232 then follow unsurfaced lane down past spired church to Todmorden’s centre. Follow canal towpath back to Hebden Bridge.