Abbey Village - New Year's Day 2016.

The Pictures:-

To see who was on the walk click on the following picture.

To view all Stan's pictures taken on this walk click 'Here' then click slideshow and full screen.

The Walk:-

Walk Leader - John Titterington.

The start of a new year and a larger group than usual congregated in Dole Lane for their first walk in 2016. It was a downhill start as John led us down to the River Roddlesworth, where the gradient reversed as we went up through soggy wet fields, passing Red Lea Farm and Higher Hill into Tockholes. Shortly after crossing the main road, we had an interesting few minutes peering through the gates of Golden Soney Farm, looking at the strange array of animal sculptures in their garden, particularly a huge bear. Moving on we followed Weasel Lane down to Earnsdale reservoir and into Sunnyhurst Woods, where we had a short break at the loos, before tackling the long climb up to Darwen Tower for our lunch break.

The next section of the walk was into a stiff breeze as we took the path along the edge of Darwen Moor to Lyons Den, where amidst mutters of "Ah! that's better" we turned our backs to the wind and headed down to Slipper Lowe. Here a call from behind brought us to a halt, as a belated Father Christmas in the form of John Evenden, produced from his rucksack port, sherry and mince pies for us to share. Thanks John - much appreciated. The remainder of walk was down through Tockholes Woods and along the embankments to Roddlesworth and Rake Brook Reservoirs, to our cars in Dole Lane. The day wasn't quite over for some of us as we spent a sociable half hour in the Hare and Hounds sampling their 'refreshments'.

There were 23 of us on the walk, which due to the very wet weather we'd been having, had to be re-planned slightly and shortened to a little over 9 miles. Thanks a lot John.

Stan.