The trouble with looking out of the boat at hills all around you is that you're tempted to walk up them. And once you start going up it's hard to stop until you've reached the top.
Which is usually twice as far away as it looked when you started off.
Yesterday we walked up from Roaches Lock to the top of the nearest hill and found ourselves in Roughtown - a place that sounds like is belongs in an American comic book. The streets are so steep they really need motorised wheelie bins and god knows how you push a pushchair.
Tonight we set off (or rather up) from Uppermill. The road turned into a 'not suitable for motors' track, which turned into a steep, cobbled trail, which brought us out onto a breathtaking panorama of hills and moors lit by the low evening sun.
Now that made a fantastic walk...but up on the hilltop above us was a magnificent obelisk. It had to be done. Twenty minutes of gasping, panting, slipping, nearly falling backwards into a gorse bush and we were there – even if most my lungs seemed to be still severak hundred feet below.
The obelisk turned out to be Saddleworth's war memorial, erected in 1923. It's on Alderman's Hill, also known as the 'Pots and Pans' after the huge, curiously shaped rock formations near the memorial, 1200 feet above sea level and the views are truly awesome; hills beyond hills to the north, south and west, the entire valley below and the open Penine moorland to the east.
Well worth the effort. And a good excuse for a large chunk of cake and a couple of glasses of wine back at the boat!
Photo: copyright Andy Stephenson, used under Creative Commons licence.
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