Dane Valley Way - Part 1

Look at this!  A route so damned long, I cant show you a picture of the entire route without it going off the edge of the screen!  17 miles.  17 GODAMN MILES!

A bit of the route

So todays objective was to walk the first leg of the Dane Valley Way, which begins at Buxton and goes to the source of the River Dane and follows the river all the way through Congleton, to Middlewich, 40 miles away.  Here for reference, is the Source of Dane (we didnt know at the time!).

So this was N's second attempt to kill me, with his perverse love of the Long Distance Path (and ducks).  The start point was to be Buxton which involved two buses to get there....

Congleton Park on a fine spring morning.

Bus 1 - Cong - Macc

Bus 2 - Macc - Buxton

As it turned out, the buses werent the piss stinking waiting rooms for the homeless and geriatrics waiting to die, they were both very modern and clean, left right on time and everything.  That blows my preconceptions out the water then!  The bastard things do insist on stopping all the time though, grrrr.

Is this the start of the DVW?  Nope!

Anyway, once alighted in Buxton, the start to the Dane Valley Way is what you might call 'inauspicious', i.e. nigh on fooking invisible!  It starts somewhere in the Pavillion Park, but the early morning mist and lack of any signage meant we only had to guess which way to go.

So out through the park, past Pooles Cavern, we eventually climbed out of the mist towards Solomons Temple....

Solomons Temple in the mist

Source of Dane somewhere near here

Bleak Moors

Controlled Fire

Three Shires Head

Three Shires Head

Three Shires Head

Three Shires Head  was idyllic in the warm spring sunshine, so the urge for a paddle was hard to resist.  However, bearing in mind its still March, ye God was that water cold!  Any more than knee deep and I think my legs would drop off.  Good for the feet though and felt more than ready for the next 10 miles...

Collapsed cliff Nr Danebridge

Danebridge

Loads of frogs!



Disused canal nr Rushton Spencer

Didnt know of this canal before the walk, most unusual.  It was apparently built to feed water from the River Dane to Rudyard Lake.

It was at this point, on the Danebridge to Wincle leg, that fatigue reared its ugly head.  Just as it did on the Gritstone Trail, it comes out in a rush, one minute fine, the next minute, dead.  At least this time it was a lot further on (in terms of mileage) than previous.  However any thoughts of plodding the extra ~4 miles back to Congleton soon evaporated.  Besides, it was only supposed to be 13 miles to this point, and already N's Star Trek Communicator was showing 16.....

"A" looking embarassed

So it was to the Knot Inn in Rushton Spencer, to call in a lift, where it just so happened 'A' was walking through as part of her DofE training.  Couple of pints and the sanctuary of my settee soon followed....

N - Please can we do a hill again next time?! :)

The Fourteenth

 

Today was the day we “do Wales”, the last of the Welsh mountains over 3,000 feet, which as you might have guessed from the title, there are 14 in total.

 

The lump in question was Elidir Fawr, which some might know as ‘Electric Mountain’, the power station that lies beneath the hill. in Llanberis. 

 

Red = Done

With us today was daughter number 3, “A”, age 15 (or 14!), no stranger to hiking but not so much in the hills, so today was a new experience for her.

 

The weekend started in the normal manner, N (and A) round to mine the night before for beers and a DVD (Trollhunter – most amusing) and early start to get us to Idwal Cottage for about 9.00am (via the obligatory Abegele Maccy Dees of course).

 

Although not mentioned much on this blog (all visits were pre-blog), myself and N have been to this neck of the woods (Ogwen Valley), loads of times, namely…

• Pen Yr Ole Wen & Carnedds with E, G & N
• Welsh Winter Skills – Plas y Brenin – N
• Tryfan – N (and previously with AP)
• Tryfan Camping then Bangor for Bus Stop Butties! – N
• Glyders & Y Garn via Bristley Screes (bag droppage) – N
• Glyders with N & R – met Ranger, no winter kit.

… and that’s just off the top of me head, there's probably more.  The  Ogwen Valley is a beautiful place, not like anywhere else in the UK that I know of.  Feels proper mountainous (is that a word?!).

 

Anyway, the route was as per the following picture, which is basically up the ridge of Y Garn, right turn for Foel Goch quick climb up to Elidir Fawr and then home in time for tea.  Once at  Devils Kitchen  , the real climbing begins…

  

The Route

On reaching what I thought was the top of ridge, through the gloom we could just about make out the summit of Y Garn.  It was a little closer than expected as it was never the intention to bag this one (again), it was according to the map a bit of a climb off to the left of the ridge.   "Never mind", thought nothing of it (at the time), so ‘A’ zipped up to bag her very first Welsh 3,000 footer.  She’d never walked this high before and was doing brilliantly.   Yay!

 

Whilst ‘A’ was the top it seemed an ideal opportunity to take a bearing to our next destination, Foel Goch, just for safety’s sake like, plus it was something to do whilst ‘A’  was climbing over boulders.   Although the direction was surely obvious?  We came to the end of a ridge, the summit was just off to our left and Foel Goch was a right turn.  Easy right?  How hard can it be to get lost on a ridge?  (We wont mention Crib Goch at this point)….

 

Soooo... bearing taken, point compass into gloom and hey presto that’s the direction we go…. WRONG!  It was telling us to go LEFT!  This cant be right,  That’s never right, this compass isn’t right, these magic magnetic rocks or my phone or SOMETHING is making this clearly not very RIGHT at all!  Every bone in my body was screaming “turn right”!!!!!….  So guess what we did?



Endomondo Track

You got it dear readers, we turned “right”, yet it still didn’t feel right, and a confirmation with the GPS proved it wasn’t right at all!  How the hell did that happen?  It wasn’t until I saw the actual track logged in the above photo (after we got home) that I realised our mistake.  You can clearly see how we basically did a loop around the summit of Y Garn and ended up approaching it from exactly the opposite angle.  Clag, its dangerous stuff and can be quite disconcerting how you can be ‘turned’ a whole 180 degrees without even realising.

 

So I’ve, said it before, and I’m going to say it again but a little bit louder, in case I don’t listen again…

 

TRUST THE FECKING COMPASS!!!

 

I didnt say to the other two at the time, but I was very very close to saying ‘lets go down again’ at this point.  Going wrong I can cope with, going wrong and not knowing why is a real head screw.  Grumpy Greg.

 

Ogwen Valley

 

A & N at Llyn Idwal

 

Ogwen Valley higher up

 

Llyn Idwal, our last view before the cloud

 

Number 14!!!!

 

Number 2!!!!!

N's in there somewhere

Height confirmed pretty accurately

 

 

'A's Styal fetish begins

 

 

'A' in a gorge, nearly home.

So that’s it, Wales.  Done.  Or is it?  Well no, you only have to look at all those green triangles in the 1^st picture to realise there's still shed loads to do.  Heres just a few ideas for a start…

• Snowdon Horseshoe
• Snowdon from Watkins / Ranger / Rhydd Du paths
• Nantille Ridge
• Brecon Beacons
• Rhinogs
• Cadair Idris in good visibility
• Cnicht

…. And so the list goes on....