Bollington

BOLLINGTON AND ENVIRONS

Distance: 8 miles.

Difficulty: Easy.

Weather: Mainly Cloudy

A walkers: Colin Davison, Lawrie Fairman, George Dearsley, Alan Hart.

Apologies: Jock Rooney (diving supervisor in Columbia), George Whaites.(domestic duties), Tom Cunliffe (dodgy knee)

Leader: Fairman. Diarist: Dearsley

Starting point: Main car park in Bollington

Starting time: 9.27 am. Finishing time: 1.57pm.

This “old faithful” walk appeared to challenge Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, in that we seemed to go up and up and never come down.

Nevertheless, we were blessed with mild weather and good camaraderie, so the physics can be overlooked.

We began from the main car park in Bollington, stopping momentarily for walkers to buy the traditional “orgasmic” pies from F Smith’s on the main road.

We turned right into Ingersley Road and followed the sign to “Pott Shrigley”, which is actually Spuley Lane.

We then turned right at Hedge Row.

The path rises past what was formerly a pub called the Cheshire Hunt. Just past this building we went left through a gate.

This took us over a small, centuries old stone bridge and through a gate which was signed ”Jodrell’s Level”.

We then began a steep climb, the one that caused your diarist’s pal Jamie Philp to pull up and retire on his Wednesday Wanderers’ debut last year.

We reached a wall and here the track levels out a little.

Although the Wanderers have passed this way many times, Colin pointed out a carved wooden mole on the left of the path that at least three of us had never noticed before.

Mole

 We went through a gate and turned immediately right following a dry stone wall to our right.

A debate began about where exactly was Andrew’s Knob. This has nothing to do with Fergie and the Royal Family but refers to an escarpment.

Lawrie confidently gestured to a hill in the distance and confirmed it as the aforementioned Knob. Minutes later he was pointing at a contour around 180 degrees in the opposite direction, attesting with equal gravity that this indeed was the Knob.

Knob-spotting over, we proceeded on the path and turned right, crossing a stile and finding ourselves on a road.

We turned right again.

This brought us to a main road, the Whaley Bridge to Macclesfield Road

We turned right and then left over a stile sign posted the “permissive path”.

On the first occasion we walked this path the visibility was worse than a 50s London pea-souper fog.

On the second occasion we were buffeted by driving rain.

Now, we could enjoy the views from the path in all their splendour, although one was forever looking down to avoid a proliferation of cow pats, which looked as if someone had slipped a dodgy korma into the local herd’s feed.

View

 At Lawrie’s insistence the quartet stopped for Pie Time at 10.47 am stepping down into a natural hollow off the windswept path.

With no Tom Cunliffe to mither us we enjoyed a full 12 minutes of rest, plus the munificence of port, courtesy of Mr Hart.

Resuming our walk at 10.59am we continued along the ridge before climbing a wall and turning right.

We went down a steep descent for 10 yards and then immediately up again, through a gate and up a sharp incline.

This eventually brought us to Smith Lane.

We crossed a stile on the left and negotiated two more stiles.

We passed a farm on our right with a large solar panel resource.

Solar

Then we went through a five-bar gate and found ourselves back on the Whaley Bridge to Macclesfield road.

We could, of course, simply have carried on to our half way pub, the Robin Hood.

But with customary Wednesday Wanderers’ complications we went right up the side of a house and meandered over two stiles and through several fields before emerging back on the same main road by the church.

Here we turned right and reached the Robin Hood at 12.03pm.

Black Sheep and Doombar were both £3 and on good form.

The B walkers were already at the bar.

Conversation lurched from Hitler to Che Guevara.

Mr Hart revealed that “Che” actually means “listen” and was a nickname the revolutionary was given after calling crowds to order at speeches or rallies.

He is supported in this explanation by Wikipedia. However, Yahoo answers, by contrast, claims "Che"  means mate.

Apparently Che was half Irish and his real name was Ernesto Lynch.

Che

As a youth he was nicknamed “Chancho” (pig) because of his poor bathing habits and the fact that he proudly wore a “weekly shirt” – ie, a shirt he changed once a week.

All through his life people commented on his smelliness (though obviously not to his face once he had the power to execute people on a whim).

I can see you are already contemplating shredding those iconic posters and tee-shirts.

After his execution, a military doctor amputated Che’s hands.

Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara’s body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated.

The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba.

The mood lightened when conversation switched to Diana Dors. (Quite how we went from Cuba to Swindon escapes me).

Miss Dors (real name Diana Fluck) was an actress, who died in 1984 but whose name was recently restored to the newspapers during the Max Clifford sexual misconduct trial when it was disclosed how the PR man attended her regular raunchy parties.

Diana

Dors claimed to have left a large fortune to her son in her will, via a secret code in the possession of her third husband Alan Lake. But after Lake’s suicide, this code was never found, and the whereabouts of the fortune remains to this day a mystery.

We set off from the pub at 1.13pm, taking Stocks Lane and Chapel Lane to reach the Virgin’s Path.

We took lunch at the waterfall at 1.33pm, moving off again at 1.39pm to pass the derelict mill and to reach the cars at 1.57pm.

De-booted we met up again in the Dog and Partridge where 1892 was £2.70 and Unicorn £2.80.

Next week’s walk will start from the Cock in Whaley Bridge at 9.30am. The half way livener will be taken at the Shady Oak, Fernilee at around 12.30pm and there will be further libations at the Cock after around 2.15pm. Sadly your diarist will be back in Turkey.

Happy Wandering.