Gautries Hill

We headed off on a path towards Sparrowpit. At one point we came across a rather large memorial to Jonathan Luke Thomas Jodrell. According to the plaque, he died when he was 21 years old.

The path deteriorated into a bank of nettles at Rushup Farm and I was promptly punished for choosing to wear shorts. It then dumped us in front of the farmhouse itself with no further direction posts to assist in route finding. After pootling about the the farm's garden for a while I decided to just walk in the direction of the path on the OS map. This took me over what looked like a flowerbed, but hey-ho. There was a wooden gate at the other end (no direction badge) with access to the continuation of the path. I guess the occupants of Rushup Farm get some pleasure at watching walkers trying to find their way.

We reached Sparrowpit and headed off uphill towards some woodland. Gautries Hill was on the other side of the woodland and had a commanding view of the route we had taken so far. I'd nearly had a mutiny from Mo and Calse on our last walk (Kinder Famine Trespass) when I'd forgotten to have a break in the morning, and so I decided to have an early break now.

Perry Dale

On dropping down into Perry Dale we came across some odd looking sheep. We'd seen these before on our walk Perry Dale Tale. The lambs looked a little like teddy bears.

Scarecrows were out and about around Old Dam. My vote went to Sir David Attenborough who appeared to be doing some wildlife spotting. Several stuffed animals were dispersed in the undergrowth around him. There were several other interesting scarecrows, including Freddie Mercury and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Obviously the villagers had given it a bit of thought.

Bamford Moor And Eldon Hill

Further along the Old Dam Road we met up with the Limestone Way and this took us up to the trig point on Bamford Moor. Somebody had kindly erected some seating around the trig and so we stopped there for our lunch break. I happened to be on the leeward side of the trig and Mo on the windward side. He wasn't happy and our lunch break was shorter than usual.

After lunch we headed northwards along the Limestone Way. This brought us to a junction of paths from where we headed westwards towards Eldon Hill. A school group were sat around near the path at the junction. We'd seen several groups on our approach. Each group had specific rucksack covers and so it was easy to spot each team. It wasn't long before we were taking photographs of the cairn on Eldon Hill. We took a short walk down to the fence to get a better view of the cliffs of the nearby quarry.

We retraced our steps back eastwards and then took the path to our last Ethel of the day, Slitherstone Hill. The actual top is off the path, in a field, and so this would be yet another Ethel that we didn't actually reach the top. At the time, I'd forgotten this was an Ethel and so didn't take a summit photo. This caused a bit of a rumpus with Mo and Calse when I realised later on. Ho-hum.

At Windy Knoll an official was sticking parking tickets on cars parked near the roadside. It is confusing with some spaces where it is legal to park (next to the roadside broken white lines) and some spaces where it isn't.

It had been a scorcher and satisfying day with a tally of five Ethels for our records.