A very civilised way to start a walk for the leader – from their own house. So joined by Chris, Mike, Geoff and Hugh, we set off through the nearby allotments, and then houses of Bents Green, to quickly access the nearby fields on the outskirts of Sheffield. The weather was mild if damp, so there were lots of people out already, including two Santas on bicycles and later, a group of four cyclists dressed as Santa, a snowman and elves. Unusually for me, I’d actually recce’d part of the walk the day before, so I felt rather too confident about not going wrong. There was also the challenge of finding paths that neither of the two Sheffielders, Mike and Geoff, had walked before. So on through the wet woods above the Limb valley towards Long Line and Mike said ‘This is a path I haven’t been on before’. Then some road walking, and deep in conversation with Mike, I completely missed and over-shot the stile I’d wanted, which required a bit of back-tracking. The path after the stile was not very obvious, so I think we followed animal tracks [which I presume were new to Geoff] with great views behind us to the east, to reach Houndkirk road. Skirting north of Canning’s Plantation, we stopped for lunch in the shelter of the trees, before crossing Ringinglow road onto Hallam Moors and then looped back towards the top of Porter Clough. Mulled wine had been mentioned as a possibility on this walk, so the choice was made to detour to the Norfolk Arms, but unfortunately the queue for drinks was rather too long, so the offer of mulled wine was ‘cancelled’ and instead we headed down the ski slope and returned via some very muddy paths back to High Storrs Road.
Thank you everyone for your excellent company, and Happy Christmas to everyone else. We look forward to meeting up with you all next year, hopefully after not too long a time.
Vanda .
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