Wednesday 4 December 2024 - Whin Fell and the Brennand Valley

Cary joined me and Sue for this enjoyable walk on a foggy day in December. Just as well that it was planned as part of my walks and rides programme, or we'd probably have stayed at home. It's walk number 12 in Mark Sutcliffe's Cicerone guide to 'Walking in Lancashire'.

We set off from the prescribed gravel area on the Trough of Bowland road near Dunsop Bridge. Langden Brook was soon crossed.

It took us a while to find the stile that we thought would be closer to the bridge. It's not the most robust of stiles! But luckily the fence isn't exactly robust either.

A pleasant path to the left of the river led to a coppice, a bridge, a stile and a kissing gate, before returning us to the Trough road, which passes Sykes Farm.

 

At Trough Barn we found a lady minding some nice looking dogs. She wasn't hugely communicative. She was waiting for 'shooters' and probably knew what our feelings would be. I recall a dishonest former colleague who used to pay a large sum to kill game birds in this area, which is also known for murdering raptors.

A Land Rover followed us up the track to Trough House, where there's a tumbledown mine building.

That was the last we saw of the Land Rover, and we heard no gunshots, so the shooters must have been elsewhere.

Mark's route by-passes the summit of Whin Fell (aka Whins Brow), but we decided to toil over the peat hags to reach the trig point. Here the sun was visible through the mist, but we weren't quite high enough to enjoy the atmospheric effects of getting above the cloud.

We followed a fence before turning right to rejoin our designated route, which led comfortably down to  Brennand Farm, where various activities including moving sheep around were taking place.

Our guidebook waxes lyrical about the beauty of the Brennand Valley. The next pictures were taken looking back up to the farm, and looking down the beautiful valley. What they don't capture is the beauty of the barn owl that flew just in front of us as we reached Brennand Farm.

The road rose gently to a point where a tarmac track leads to Whitendale. It looked like a good cycling route, but a large United Utilities sign indicated it was designated as a footpath and cycles are not allowed. There was however a welcome bench, on which we enjoyed our lunch. (And we had no cycles, anyway!)

The quiet road took us all the way to Closes Barn, on a track beyond the confluence of the rivers Brennand and Dunsop.

A Lancashire County Council sign attemps to show the paths in this area. (Click on the image for a better view.)

A very boggy/slurry path by-passes Closes Barn and leads to a finger post (by Cary's head) that released us onto the road a few hundred metres from the car. Luckily there was plenty of fresh water to wash away the slurry!

Here's our route - 13 km with 400 metres ascent, taking (as predicted by Mark Sutcliffe) about 4 hours.

An excellent day out, despite the paucity of visibility.

BC went this way in March 2023. Here's his report. We didn't see any sign of trial bikes on our walk.