Last Saturday was the first time I'd run off-road in some while, and it reminded me what I'd been missing, so on Monday I headed in the direction of some of my favourite, easily accessible trails.
I think I first discovered how easy it was to get to Birley Edge walking back from my sister's at Fox Hill, the path disgorging me from the fields onto the Baxter Road cul-de-sac near the bottom of Fox Hill Road, less than 2 km from where I live, so it quickly became a favourite dog walking route and - when I began running and got to the stage of being bored with the relatively flat routes, that too.
Monday was (and I know I probably overuse this phrase) perfect running weather. There was no wind at all, and it was cool enough to have no worry of overheating whilst being just warm enough to not feel the chill on bare limbs even before the blood began to flow. The sky was a hazy grey, but it looked as though that might slowly burn off.
I started at an easy warm-up pace down from Hillsborough, the streets bank holiday quiet, up the incline of Penistone Road North and Fox Hill, then I turn and there are the startlingly green fields. I'm not sure what this crop is, that I've seen in so many fields in the area. Perhaps it will be the bright yellow of rapeseed flowers in a few weeks.
The path forks, one part going up the middle of the field, but I took the more trodden part by the edge fence before it began to turn up the hill, the start of an almost unbroken climb of 200 metres over the next 4 k, where Woodhead Road separates Wheata and Greno Woods.
I'm soon out of the field onto what I think of as a "trail"; rough, sandy soil, embedded with a mass of broken rocks, surrounded by gorse and grass and ferns. I've run and cycled so many similar around the city, from here to Rivelin, the top of Wyming Brook, Lodge Moor, Redmires up to Stanage Pole, Ringinglow and Burbage, this kind of trail is one that defines out area.
I started running quite late in life, in my 41st year (as a lifelong cyclist, I'd always turned my nose up at this slow, sweaty endeavour), but quickly fell in love with it - and even more so when I left the predictability of the pavement and took to trails. As well as the scenery and lack of traffic, there's something about the focus required by having to watch your footing amongst uneven rocks and grasping roots.
Soon enough I was on Birley Edge, the dry sandy trail running below a broken-down drystone wall, with a view of the city behind me and to my left the fields around Worrall, Oughtibridge and Kirk Edge, below clouds made of tarnished pewter backed by a silver glow.
The only roads to cross are on the first couple of kilometres of the trail - the all-but deserted Midhurst Road and Stubbing House Lane, and then near the top of Oughtibridge Lane, or Jawbone Hill - then you can stay on trails for miles and miles, all the way out past Wortley and Oxspring and Penistone if you want, without ever having to take to tarmac.
Approaching Jawbone Hill, you start to enter woodland, at first straight white birches in a carpet of grass and ferns, and then you cross a stile and the forest begins to become more mixed, ash and oak, alder and sycamore and hawthorn. The path splits in many directions, and I take that that continues to wend its way forward and up hill. I sometimes forget how blessed we are for footpaths around here. The trail broadens and I start to encounter people, almost all seemingly couples out for a stroll on this fine if cool bank holiday. At the highest point is the car park by the Woodhead Road. I could cross into Greno Woods proper, where many trails snake down toward Penistone Road, but I'd have to return to pavement to get home (or come back up that hill!). I could turn down the broad paths directly into Wharncliffe, but I continue forward, turning by the little farm to skirt the woods and the field.
I unexpectedly find an alpine meadow opening up in front of me, backed by the tall, straight spruce and pine of Wharncliffe plantation. Before getting back to the woods there is an odd area of moorland, out of place somehow like a bit of Burbage transported north. I take the path that skirts this instead of crossing it, for no reason other than the whim of my feet. Getting back to woods, I find the most joyous track of my run. Just below the a high drystone wall, it is at times barely a game trail, winding and uneven. The soil here is a rich dark peaty loam, but is still studded with boulders which along with the gradients make it unfarmable, the reason we have so many intact paths. This stretch of track is just tremendous, as I find myself leaping over rocks, no doubt grinning like a fool at the feeling of exhilaration. In wet weather these little paths become horrendously boggy, but it's been so dry in recent weeks that, between the rocks and roots, the loam is delightfully spongy.
I switch between the trails and, when I must, the major named paths - Old Yew Gate and Pales Wood Gate - sharing the latter with the a few groups of walkers or cyclists. I've cycled these myself many times, although not the muddy, rutted downhill course that the hardcore mountain bikers have made. I grew up on a road bike, switching to a mountain bike only in my mid-twenties, and I think you don't start throwing yourself down mountains in the fearlessness of youth it's too late to start.
I'm only about 10k in, but I don't want to overdo and suddenly find my legs are done and I need to find a bus route to get home, so when I reach Plank Gate that runs along the bottom, western, side of Wharncliffe I sensibly turn left toward home. The flat firmness of the fire road bends in a long curve, rising and falling like a gentle roller coaster, bringing me back to Oughtibridge Lane where I cross into Beeley Woods.
In recent years this has been parcelled up and sold off, and is marked as private woodland with the public footpath sign pointing up the hill and around, however the paths through ARE still public rights of way. I really must contact the council about getting the signage fixed.
Again, these paths so often become a series of swampy puddles in wet weather, but the descent among patches of bluebells is dry at the moment. After crossing the track that takes the train to the steel works at Deepcar, the gradient suddenly becomes precipitous and I let gravity take me until I have to slow for a family coming uphill.
From here it's a gentle, flat few kilometres home. I cross the Don on the footbridge by Abbey Forge and keep to the path on that last bit by the river before returning to the road.
I feel ready for a pint or two of Vimto, and to get some food inside me, but that has been ridiculously fun - something I would have thought insane had someone said it to me 12 years ago.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the reading of it even a fraction as much as I did the running and the writing of it.
