--- En route to a walk on the moors on the Yorkshire/Lancashire above Manchester a couple of weekends ago, my old St Helens school chum Simon ('Miggy') looks worried as the carriage at Manchester Victoria is invaded by a large group of lads dressed as bizarre French stereotypes. I’ve never actually seen a Frenchman with a string of onions round his neck, but I’ve seen plenty with a baguette under their arm!

--- The stag party of about 15 were on a real ale trail hopping off trains to the nearest boozer or even grabbing pints in the station buffet, such as their first stop at the Campaign for Real Ale awarded Stalybridge Station, complete with its original Victorian features.

--- Our destination was the small West Yorkshire town of Marsden, and I had plotted a route back into Lancashire over the moors, hitting the Pennine Way and a line of ridge rocks before dropping into Littleborough near Rochdale. Half an hour later in Marsden we clocked a real ale pub the lads had mentioned with its own brewery, the Rivershead Brewery Tap, to whet our appetite before the walk.

--- But the lunchtime pint was put on hold for a while because Simon scoured the local charity shops to find some emergency clothing. His earlier scoffing words about me being foolish to bring a coat on such a hot day came back to haunt him as a chill moorland wind blew, and he was driven to buy a second hand ‘Gap’ jacket complete with residue underarm odour.

--- This area of the Pennine Hills abounds in packhorse bridges as a reminder of the former importance of beasts of burden to transport goods between Manchester and the emerging Yorkshire industrial towns. Not thinking of this, Simon, too pleased with his new image, strikes a deluded pose like a catalogue model. Doubtless this delusion stems from the confidence of his shedding two stone. With almost evangelical earnestness he'd just told me about a chicken and egg protein celeb diet from the Femail section of the Mail on Sunday! Might try it myself.

--- As we walked out of town we came across the mouth of Standedge Tunnel, the longest deepest and highest canal tunnel in Britain. We knew something of this because the train line we had earlier travelled on runs in near parallel with the canal under a Pennine hill, and that 3 mile tunnel was very long and dark indeed. I found it interesting to see ‘in the field’ how packhorse bridges, canals and then railways had all played their part in moving goods for the industrial revolution.

--- We quickly hit the steep moors above Marsden.

--- Once up the flanks of the hills the area abounded with cotton grass - June and July is the peak season for seeing its cotton wool type blobby heads set against breezy purple moor grass and the summer sound of skylarks.

--- After a few miles we’d linked onto the Pennine Way and it crossed the M62 at the highest motorway point in England (there’s a sign that says this). Here was the current most modern way of transporting goods across the Pennines, and a far cry from the packhorse bridge! A few miles further into Yorkshire along this stretch there’s the infamous split in the motorway to accommodate a working farm, Stott Hall Farm. A myth is that the farmer was awkward and so they had to build around him, but the real reason was the steep geology, and the original farmer was offered a new place by the Yorkshire Water landowners but decided to stay put. (link to a good article about it from the Yorkshire Post ‘stuck in the middle with ewes’ here).

--- Leaving the drone of the M62 behind we were soon back to cotton grass tranquillity broken by skylarks and the Pennine Way stretching miles ahead. For some strange reason this made Simon develop a walk like Prince Charles with hands behind his back.

--- His pseudo aristocratic composure was soon gone however when faced with leaping across a peat bog. And because he took minutes to pluck up courage to shift his carcass across, this gave me ample time to get the perfect shot, whereby he looks like some type of African wildlife migrating across the plains.

--- Blackstone Edge rock formations were spectacularly set against the Lancashire hills. Maybe if you were sporting the right jacket you too could imagine being Prince Charles thinking “ I own as far as the eye can see!"

--- On part of the Blackstone Edge was a Trig Point, or trigonometrical station, which according to Wikipedia “is a fixed surveying station for the geodetic surveying and other surveying projects on nearby areas.” They were often often put on top of hills by Ordnance Survey so they can be spotted from many areas in order to plot maps and suchlike.

--- Nearby was another waymarking feature - the Aiggin Stone which had its own notice board from the Littleborough and District Lions saying it was a medieval guide stone for travellers some 600 years old.

--- And slap against this waymarker was a stretch of 2,000 year old Roman Road arising from Littleborough, still in good condition complete with central hollow curved drainage stones. It formed part of the network linking Manchester with Halifax and then on to York.

--- After a much needed pint in the Moorcock Inn above Littleborough, we walked into the town and finished our 9 mile walk by taking the train back to Manchester City centre for a night out there. Our first stop was a bar next to the Printworks in the evening sunshine complete with the sound of Indian singing from a group of turban wearing lads. The Beck’s bottles on our table were already there - honest!

--- The peace was shattered by a drunk thrown out of a nearby bar who then punched a bouncer while his back was turned, which then brought the attentions of a policewoman on horseback who brought the horse up to him, which then caused him to fall into a table. As we lifted our streetside drinks away from the possibility of a falling drunk staggering past us, I managed to snap a moment when he was hurling abuse to both policewoman and horse, telling the beast to “sit” (and, by other accounts grabbing its muzzle too! ). As he walked unsteadily further on backwards carrying on hurling abuse, what can only be described as a SWAT team of police vehicles and a cavalry of extra mounted officers surrounded the lad. I looked back up the street to the bar where he was thrown out, and there was the group of French stereotypes back from their real ale train trail!

--- The night ended in the Northern Quarter and Lammars with its peaceful vibe and motown soul disco overseen by the spirit of Buddha.

Posted on Environment Times Online on 1st July 2010, photographs taken by Duncan Ashcroft (copyright) on 19th June 2010.