Long Strides to Stoodley: a Hopeful Message on New Year’s Eve 2020

Wednesday 30 December: the penultimate day of a year none of us will ever forget.

The local, national and international news was loud: full of Doomsday talk of tiers, rules, lockdowns, “do this’ and “do that!” Listen too long and it depresses.

I wanted a breather: a temporary escape. I wanted peace and quiet and a fleeting escape from all of that ‘noise’. It was time to put on my boots again and head out to find it.

So it was that my son Jake and I decided to action a plan that I had long held dear since Lockdown 1 started in March 2020.

A long ‘there and back’ walk to Stoodley Pike; iconic landmark of the beautiful Calder Valley, had long gripped me. At 35-40 km long, in icy winter walking conditions and with limited daylight it felt like a good physical and mental test and a chance to boost my soul.

Walking to Stoodley and back felt like a good challenge.

As with any personal challenges I have recently embraced, I just decided to ‘try’.

Back in 1986 when I had completed the training elements of my Mountain Leadership Certificate I had embraced the words of wisdom from my instructor Clive.

“Never say ‘we will’. Just say ‘we will try.'”

Those words have long influenced my life and my career across the intervening 35 years. They have also influenced my time out in the great outdoors, where I truly find my greatest uplift.

I have long felt that we all need ‘escape routes’ in our lives and most especially as we face the current Covid challenges of day to day living in 2020.

I have always been willing to commit to the ‘try’ but never to the detriment of the need for gracious withdrawal. After all in a practical context, one sprained ankle or gashed shin from a fall on a long distance walk, will be likely to end the challenge with immediate effect.

It seems to me, that we have to remain pragmatic: a simple ‘try’ never gives the unforeseen its unmerited victory. So understating our dreams with practical realism, whilst still attempting them with total commitment, seems a wiser path.

With this in mind, we closed the garden gate quietly at 8am and in the creeping light of dawn we turned left and ‘tried’ to head for Stoodley.

Our morning light on that route to Triangle via Upper Greetland, Norland and Ripponden Wood, gave a visual testimony to the full undulations of the last 10 months of our Covid 19 pandemic.

The sunrise was breathtaking. The fabled ‘red sky in the morning’ warning fell on our deaf ears. This was ‘Morning Glory’ in its full reveal. The fact that my sunrise pylon photograph needed no editing was immensely satisfying. Today felt like it was going to be good day.

The warming comfort of this crimson sky, the mists of uncertainty, the fog of fear, the icy slip of despair and the sunlight of future dreams seemed to me, to sum up our year of 2020 perfectly.

My overriding emotion as I walked, tripped and slipped was of hope for a much better year in 2021, a better future and a ‘Better Britain’.

We walked fast when the conditions allowed us to.

A now mandatory parcel drop at a deserted Post Office in Triangle timed our walk at 1 hour 20 minutes for 7 kilometres of up, along and down. Not too shabby.

The climb up from Triangle through the beautiful hamlets of Mill Bank and Cottonstones and then across Burn Moor was stunning. Bright sunshine was frequently replaced by snowy white out. My camera, nonchalantly hanging from my shoulder was active. Today was a photographer’s dream.

We are lucky enough to own several prints by Peter Brook, the eminent Yorkshire based painter. His speciality landscape work revolved around snow and stone and always featured his black and white collie named Shep. As his unique painting style evolved over time, so did the appearance of Shep in more and more of his paintings.

As I saw the landscape so loved by Peter Brook unfold before me, I was comforted by the thought that next year we hope as a family, to find and own our own ‘Shep’; our own black and white collie who can then feature in my own more modest artistic ramblings and illustrations. It was an exciting, uplifting and positive thought.

As we joined the Calderdale Way and crossed Water Stalls Road the oft milky sun reappeared. We looked across Catherine House with its wonderfully distinctive chimney to the hamlet of Cragg Vale and to our target destination now revealed in its full splendour, as the morning mists started to clear.

Stoodley Pike stood tall, proud and dominant: another landscaped symbol of hope in a year-end where we all need it.

As we slithered into Cragg Vale we saw the moss coloured walls of the old church of St John the Baptist and then the eerily empty ‘Hinchliffe Arms’, a pub that on a more normal winter’s day would have now started, late morning, to fill with locals and walkers alike. I thought of its more typical visitor of yesteryear: mostly unpretentious folk, seeking simple camaraderie and warmth beside a log fire, accompanied by good food and kite marked real ales.

The emptiness of ‘The Hinchliffe Arms’ spoke volumes. It was so sad.

The fact that this popular local hostelry was so deathly quiet, gave loud voice to yet another cost of this virus. How we all yearn for that company, physicality, communication person-to person and not via screen. How much do we miss the simple act of touch? The uplifting emotion of a hug?

The surge of optimism that I had felt on the ‘Tops’ above Catherine House were momentarily extinguished in that valley bottom as the reality struck again, that this year end, had stunned and stymied so many people, their lives and dreams.

We climbed out of Cragg Vale on an unknown southerly path with a torturous gradient that made our lungs gasp and our calves strain.

We walked passed a massive pig in its wooded pen: gloriously fatted. I wondered if his days were numbered? I hoped not.

The Stoodley Pike that had seemed so close just 30 minutes ago, still seemed such a long way off.

It provided another fitting analogy for the last 2 days of 2020 where the ‘Hope from Oxford’ has had to be tempered by the news of the real casualties from this new ‘mutant variation’.

50,000 new cases on Wednesday, 982 deaths and new updated Tier 3 and 4 restrictions across the whole of England (The Scilly Isles excepted). I was struck that this grinding gradient, 1/10 in so many places seemed to sum up our next few months perfectly.

Just as that torturous climb out of Cragg Vale eventually levelled out so my optimism returned.

I truly believe the lockdown and misery of these next 8 weeks will eventually become a ‘living history’ for us all.

Jake and I had needed to ‘grind; out this part of our walk in order to reach the lofty splendour of that Napoleonic war memorial called Stoodley Pike. It measures 121 feet tall and was constructed in 1856.

Stoodley Pike was built to celebrate the end of the Crimean War and I reflected that perhaps we need a new Stoodley to be built to celebrate the rebuilding of our shattered world in 2021.

My thoughts dwelt on the need for us all to grind out these next months as best we can: for us to make rational and sensible decisions, keep the faith and ride though the storm.

Stoodley was simply stunning ……. despite it hosting a lot of walkers.

I need to say few extra words about it. I just hope my photographs can say far more than my limited attempts to eulogise.

The Pike was also freezing cold.

The obligatory climb up all of its 39 slippery stone steps saw us tarry just 2 minutes on the balcony. We very nearly fell on at least 3 occasions as the sheet ice compacted by so many feet in recent days, made it resemble a skating rink.

We headed back down to the entrance and found brief shelter from the biting wind below the southerly face of the monument.

A flask of hot chocolate (Cadburys of course) revived us. After 18 km of field, fell and trek it was time for us to turn for home. 4 hours after leaving home in Greetland we had reached and ‘summitted’ the Pike.

Our journey back was equally spectacular.

The multi sensory pleasures of that walk far outweighed our physical discomfort as we climbed up and over those familiar hills. The now familiar crunch of boot in snow gave comforting soundtrack to our strides.

We stopped and chatted to Roger, a local landowner and landlord of the Robin Hood Inn in Cragg Vale, currently in Tier 3 lockdown……again!

Walking on the frozen and rutted footpath was clearly an effort for him, but I was struck by his craggy humour, the warmth of his greeting and his grim determination to just keep on going. His spoken delivery was ‘Pure Yorkshire’; to the point and hugely understated.

Our brief exchange was uplifting and it re-energised me.

A ‘mute of dogs’ illuminated by the setting sun on a nearby ridge lifted my spirits further.

As the watery sun started to settle in the west we briefly met Jake’s ‘A level’ Geology teacher, Mr Howarth (and 3 walking companions) from North Halifax Grammar School.

As they all reminisced for a brief moment in that frosty landscape and discussed Geology, University and mapping projects in Appletreewick I was reminded that this current Covid- relayed lockdown was just a brief moment in geological time.

Normality beckons. A better ‘new normal’, where people and the opportunity to meet with them fully and in reality, really will happen.

So it will be that as the Spring lambs are born in early March 2021, (just 2 months away) and as the daffodils complete their annual glorious transformation, so our ability to once again trek, tour and map without boundaries, and to meet and greet without restrictions, will start to regenerate.

Today I was increasingly thankful for both the modern works of the brilliant scientists in Oxford and the ancient byways and associated landmarks that I love to trek.

A final sunset over Norland as we neared home seemed to say ‘Amen’ to my optimistic thought that the best is yet to come!

“The hard yards are always the last yards.” (Martin Moorman; 31 December 2020)

Be reassured reader: we are so near to winning this battle.

I was minded of the wise words of Gandalf in my favourite ever book: ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by JRR Tolkien.

“The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time,’

Keep battling folks, Hope is definitely on the horizon of 2021.

Thanks for the read and any decisions you may make to subscribe to my WordPress page. If you do so (it is completely free!), then you will receive my future blogs by email.

A very Happy New Year to you all and to all of your loved ones.

In time 2021 will prove to be a great year!

Martin x