This morning Duncan, Barry, Ruby and I drove over to Tockholes, where the boys were going mountain biking and the girls were going for something of a navigation training run.
Ruby and I went down into Roddlesworth Woods, coming out at Slipper Lowe car park on Tockholes Road. We crossed over the road and took the wide path through the farm up the hill. All of this bit I already know but I wanted to start exploring some of the other paths leading to Darwen Tower.
I'm really good at reading a road map and have never got us lost (unlike sat nav which once took us along a road which ended in the middle of a field full of cows!) however these skills don't appear to be transferring very well to reading OS maps.
Saying that, at the couple of points where I went wrong, I knew very early on that I had made a mistake so isn't that all part of the learning process?
After initially getting it wrong, I soon found my feet and managed to navigate my way quite successfully down to Duckshaw Farm before picking up the Witton Weavers Way and climbing towards Darwen Tower.
After going up Darwen Tower I decided to start heading back down as I wasn't sure how long the lads were going to be out and didn't want them waiting for ages. We went down Aggie's Staircase, crossed the stream and then when the path forks, we took the left hand path (the right one would have taken us straight back to the car park but I wanted to go a way I hadn't been before) then turned right at the farm house and ran down onto Tockholes Road.
We ran along the road back to the car park but the blokes weren't back yet so I decided to do a little loop around the woods to pass the time. When we finished our loop they were back so we all went into the cafe to warm up and get some grub. Whilst there I bought a copy of the Tockholes Orienteering map so I could have another go at learning navigational skills with actual points to aim for.
The main problem with trying to navigate today is that it was too cold for me to want to hang around for long reading a map so it might be a better exercise for warmer days. I really enjoyed it though and felt very proud of myself for finding my way so well. I used to think that navigating round the West Pennine Moors would be easier than a lot of places because there are so many paths but actually the amount of paths can be quite a hindrance because it's sometimes difficult to tell which one you want to be on when they're all so close together.
Total distance - 7.25 miles
https://www.strava.com/activities/248964669
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