The description of the walk said: 'From Hartington, to Wolfscote Hill, cross the Dove, over Narrowdale Hill to Wetton. Walk north between Wetton Hills to Ecton Hill then back over fields to Hartington.' Which I guess is what we did. The interesting thing about this walk was that it was taking advantage of access land rather than sticking to footpaths. So we covered areas that many of even the most seasoned members hadn't previously walked, and for those who like to collect them (and there are such people of course, two of whom were on the walk), there were not one, but two trig points. From my perspective, the focus on access land meant there were a lot of muddy fields. Oh, and did I mention the hills?
At the top of Wolfscote Hill, we were told that there were stunning views... on the day in September when the leader had recced the walk.
This being the White Peak, there was lots of limestone (my direction of causality may be a bit awry there).
The start point of the walk was a twenty five mile drive from Sheffield, but it was still slightly disconcerting as always to find ourselves on paths (we didn't avoid all of them) maintained by Staffordshire County Council.
Out of mild curiosity I clicked on your "trig points" link - and was glad I did. An excellent, and not too anoraky, paean to the humble (the Norfolk one) and the not so humble trig point (all the others).
ReplyDeleteGlad you survived your walk (you didn't say if you enjoyed it!)
There was an excellent documentary last year on the BBC which I caught completely by chance. I'm afraid I can't remember what it was called or when it was broadcast, but it described how the early trig points were built almost guerilla-style, OS workers climbing hills and mountains with cement in their rucksacks. I think the programme may have been about OS more broadly.
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