Walk leader : Paul Doherty
We had a group of 13 ramblers.
The weather was fine becoming overcast but thankfully without the forecast rain.
The walk was on good tracks, paths, minor roads and several “thrufts”**, and with moderate elevations; this meant we were comfortably completing the circuit ahead of schedule and so the walk was extended to what was a 12 mile loop that still brought us back on time. Most of the group went onto the local Devonshire Arms for a drink or meal.
This was a diverse and varied water themed walk that took us by river and canal before moving up into open dry stone wall hillside with great views across to Kinder Scout before returning to the hilltop Mellor church built on a Neolithic site.
** A “thruft” is a delightfully apt, old colloquial term, probably Anglo-Saxon and possibly Cornish, to describe an old drover trail that takes you ‘through’ a ‘rough’ gradient between embankments of hedge or dry stone.
It is a rare descriptive term that deserves to be brought back into use, especially by us ramblers. Like the word, such locations are often enchanting places that invoke a feeling of walking through an ancient space that has survived the passage of human intervention unscathed.
Paul
12.11.25
