A Slip and a Slide to Scammonden Steps

They say a week is a long time in politics.

I would like to suggest it has felt an even longer time as a resident of Calderdale.

Unbelievably it was only a week since my snow crunching walk to the farm in the middle of the M62.

This week, after the threats posed collectively by both Storm Christophe and Covid 19, it felt an awful lot longer.

By Friday, I knew I really needed another long walk.

With a kinder weather forecast it was time to lace up my ‘Scarpas’, get back out on the hills of West Yorkshire and head to the famous Scammonden Steps.

Last week I had made a mental note to return to this area and with 2 parcels to post at a Post Office on route, this seemed the perfect opportunity.

My immediate thoughts as I stepped out of the garden gate, was ‘forget it’!

Black ice carried an immediate threat on every tarmacced or man made surface. It was treacherous under foot and I immediately yearned for the 6 inches of crunching snow that had been such a welcome surface to walk on, just one week ago.

Giving up easily isn’t in my vocabulary, so with a mixture of speedy reactions, sticking to the more forgiving grassy verges that bordered the tarmac and with no amount of good fortune I slithered my way safely down to lower Greetland.

I crossed the Saddleworth Road next to the Sunnybank annex of Greetland School and onto the relative sanctuary of the muddy footpath by the Black Brook stream.

The mud was instantly more appealing than the ice, even though there was little appeal to the use of my camera at this point.

An abandoned golf ball, lay discarded on the fairway of Bradley Hall Golf course and I warmed my hands and lens up by taking a few vantage point shots.

I left it where I found it.

An empty shop is an especially welcome sight in these strange days.

Holywell Green Post office was deserted. Phew!

Embracing emptiness always feels weird in this strange world.

Normally I would to love meet and greet people in any location of the previous world we used to inhabit just 10 months ago. In those days I would always try to divert to catch up with an acquaintance nearby if I could.

In this time of Covid 19, I’m far less keen for obvious reasons: yet another sad statistic from this varianted ‘Beast from the East.’

The icy tarmac of Stainland and Sowood made the start of this walk feel like a real trudge and so it was a relief to pause for a 10 minute chat with my friend Ian in Sowood.

Ian is an active member of Halifax Rotary Club and a trustee of Overgate Hospice. As I was walking past his front door I deliberately stopped to catch up with him, whilst maintaining the new Covid enhanced 3 metre gap referenced in so many live radio talk shows this week.

It was good to catch up with Ian and swap news and views.

As I left him I yet again mentally applauded the work of that brilliant Rotary Club in Halifax.

Their charitable support across our locality over many years has allowed so many individuals and organisations to flourish.

Their motto of ‘service above self’ is a brilliant one and sums up the efforts of that fantastic group of people well. They seek no personal glory: they just seek to make things better.

I suspect Rotary has a big part to play in the recovery of Calderdale once Covid is confined to history.

As I joined the Stainland Moor Lane track and finally celebrated leaving tarmac behind, I remembered that the daffodils on the Huddersfield Road on the western side of the Shay Stadium in central Halifax will soon be in flower.

Perhaps when those banks of yellow begin to flower, we can all hopefully start to trumpet the arrival of a brave new world: a better post-Covid world.

I offered up another genuine ‘Thank You’ once again to the Rotarians of Halifax. They are the group who planted those daffodils of course!

At last my walk got more visually interesting.

It was bitterly cold, and my numb fingers began to warm as I started to use my camera.

I passed a faded ‘Thank You NHS’ sign.

Though the clapping has been silenced, it was a timely reminder that we must never forget the past, present and future sacrifices of so many within that organisation.

Sheep on a local ridge gazed balefully at me as I walked by.

I wagered that their wooly backs were much warmer than mine despite my wearing 5 layers of fleece and ‘quick wick’ walking gear.

A rainbow peeped out reluctantly above the electric cables of the pylons.

Fellow walkers greeted me.

The man was wearing shorts!

I reflected ruefully: I must be getting soft.

The constant up of my first 2 hours of walking meant that my target destination had started to come into focus on the horizon.

Bales of hay, smothered in their plastic covering, glimmered and sweated in the watery sunshine.

I looked back.

The hint of the rainbow that had trailed me throughout my ‘Stainland slog’ was revealing itself.

The arc of colour fizzed in the late morning sunshine.

My path turned west towards Scammonden.

The morning light was increasingly bewitching and I wondered if my amateur attempts with the camera could truly reflect the rugged beauty of that cold landscape before me.

A grizzled signpost, leaning askew under the weight of its triple load, shone in the golden reflections cast within its lichen weatherings.

My slippery slithering resumed and the icy terrain received my undivided attention for the next 200 metres.

I passed a farm yard caked with mud and I recalled the reactions of a young man with autism from much earlier in my teaching career, when he was confronted with mud of a similar thickness, on a school visit to a Cornish castle.

His response to a directive to keep out of the mud, by a very prim and proper National Trust guide on that visit had been legendary.

In reference to the thick mud on the footpath she had innocently commented: ‘That’s not chocolate cake’.

For the remainder of the visit Claude had repeatedly run to and from that same pool of mud, smeared it over his hands and run back to the warden shouting: ‘That’s not chocolate cake!’

At over 6 feet tall and powerfully built no one was able or willing to stop Claude confronting his factually inaccurate victim.

He was right of course. It was not chocolate cake.

I had never realised that Calderdale was home to so many horses. My latest acquaintances gave me cursory attention before resuming their elevenses.

Within 3 hours of leaving home in Greetland, I was back alongside the M62. Exactly one week on from my previous visit the road was much quieter. Maybe the restrictions of Lockdown 3 had started to bite.

I walked past the HGV graveyard that borders the M62 motorway between junctions 22 and 23.

It was sad to note that these carcasses of a previous economic time, carried no current messages of hope or inspiration.

I wondered which of the retailers they advertised were actually trading or even solvent in these tough times. Even if they were, would they recover?

My head questioned if they would.

My heart said ‘Yes they can’.

The creeping rainbow teased me some more.

As I surveyed the steps at Scammonden, the distant horizon offered some reassuring colour against the backdrop of Christophe’s retreating gloom.

In the distance I could see a few figures crawling up the steps: all 450 of them.

This time the Scammonden Steps that start at the bottom of the dam wall failed to draw me into their trap.

I’ve walked them before of course but today I was reluctant to lose my hard fought for, and consequently, very precious height.

The recent achievement of Manuel Benages and Stephen Olexy from the charity ‘Get Fit’ in December 2020, deserved respect.

Those 2 had walked up that flight steps 105 times in 28 hours.

The angle of ascent coupled with those numbers made me reflect within my respect that they were both nuts of course!

Before I started my walk I had found out some interesting facts about Scammonden and Deanhead.

Scammonden Dam was the first in the world to carry a motorway and remains the only motorway in Britain to do so. The village of Deanhead was submerged in 1965 when the reservoir started to supply Huddersfield with its drinking water and the village’s vicarage is now the headquarters for the sailing club.

Facts successfully remembered I decided to keep walking.

Scammonden Lake looked resplendent.

The hour it took me to walk to the southern shore and additionally ‘bag’ Deanhead Reservoir was well worth it!

The newer fish and sheep sculptures were a welcome addition to the visual feast that enclosed me.

The point and purpose of the rabbit and tree-grower sculptures passed me by.

C’est la vie!

I guess the beauty of art in all its guises it that the experience remains completely unique for each observer.

The dusting of snow on the hills that encircle these 2 great pools of fresh water was stunning and paid tribute to the created art so apparent in our world.

So it was that my walk ended up in the village of Deanhead next to St Bartholomew’s Church, high above Scammonden.

It was the perfect picnic spot before the necessary turn for home. After all, I was only half way round my 29 km walk and the afternoon sun was starting to dip.

I still had time to scramble up the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ that towers ominously above the motorway.

Engineers were still putting the finishing touches to their work to prevent the grim statistics of that bridge increasing.

To me, their efforts would make little difference. If someone is distressed enough to wish to fling themselves off that bridge, a 2 metre fence with far too many handy footholds, would not stop them.

it would be a much better works if we were collectively reactive to the possibility rather than the result.

I hadn’t realised quite how high Scammonden Bridge is.

Looking down at the empty motorway far below, it made me feel queasy and uneasy.

As ever, whenever I go near that bridge, I shuddered at its bitter legacy: and so I quickly left it.

Further on; on the track to Krumlin, I passed a floral tribute tied to the fence.

Frozen in time, it reminded me of the precious gift of life.

I swapped memories and news with Andy and Julie as I took a breather on the bench outside the Spring Rock pub. Our boys had grown up together and played football in their teenage years.

Andy and I had helped to run the team.

Happy memories and another reminder of the value of the ‘volunteer’ both then and into our future world’s when this is all over.

So it was that I walked home.

Today my walk had reminded me of many things.

It made me understand that now, more than any other time in my lifetime, we should appreciate life and not take it for granted.

The walk to Scammonden had made me think deeper than ever before.

I had allowed myself no technical distractions and had deliberately kept my headphones in my pocket.

In the silence of that 8 hour walk I had learned a few more things on the way and it seemed to me that the walk had summed up the realities of this January 2021.

It was a very cold and hard walk. My heels in my new boots had actually started to blister.

The walk had provided a personal analogy for the crisis which still grips us all.

The slippery slog upto Sowood had reminded me of these 10 months of lockdown, with a few more still to follow.

The bitter wind above the Steps had chilled me to the core, just like the daily statistics of Coronavirus that numb our senses every time we watch the BBC news.

But the sun and stories linked to Scammonden had lifted my spirits above the gloom.

A small clump of daffodils, sheltered from the biting easterly wind screamed out ‘Hope’.

I remembered that traditionally the daffodil flowers around St David’s Day in early March.

The sight of their buds of hope boosted me again, just as the rainbow had earlier in my walk.

I remembered that in 5 weeks time our world could be in a much better place just as the daffodils come out and Covid hopefully retreats.

And so I felt good.

I felt rejuvenated by the natural world: yet again. Why was I so surprised? After all the great outdoors has the power to lift us every day.

Storm Christophe had blown itself out and despite all the forecasts of heavy flooding across Calderdale, we had dodged that nasty bullet. Fair play to the engineers who have now installed £40 million of new flood defences locally.
They had worked.

Reasons to be cheerful on this cold day!

We can all remind ourselves that there really is HOPE for us all within the message of that single flower and its budding surprise.

Thanks for the read.

Best wishes once again to any who read this…..and to all your family members.

I hope the read has encouraged you.

Don’t forget you can subscribe to my blogs through the WordPress link if you find them a help.

Cheers

Martin x