The View
When a reader told me I mixed up my pikes, there was only one thing to do: mount an expedition. (And pack some humble pie.)
REVENGE IS CLEARLY a dish best enjoyed cold for reader Paul Oates of Huddersfield, who points out that I had got something wrong in the October 2023 Country Walking.
I’m teasing. There was nothing vengeful about Paul’s letter. He merely gently pointed out that he doubted that I can see the Napoleonic war memorial on Stoodley Pike from my high vantage point in the BBC studios at MediaCity Salford.
And indeed he was right. I was looking in almost entirely the wrong direction. Paul thought that it was much more likely to be the tower on Hartshead Pike, overlooking Mossley in Tameside. Thus chastened, surely no walker with blood in their veins could have resisted the lure of going to check. So the next sunny Saturday, I did.
Mossley is one of those towns that cluster in the clefts and valleys of the Pennines all across the Lancashire/Yorkshire border. They are pretty but gritty. They are both pragmatic and dreamy. They sit in soft bowls and hollows of green pasture and grey crag under skies ringing with lark’s song, but there are kebab shops and pubs full of brawny men with fists full of lager. I like them.
I left the train at Mossley and with a downloaded OS map on my iPad (which is really handy but always makes me feel a bit of a wazzock) I tackled the steep pull behind the station up Old Brow and was soon out on open moorland.
The views were terrific almost immediately, revealing Mossley, Roaches and Stalybridge tucked neatly into folds in the Pennine foothills. As the path gently curved around the shoulder of the hill, there were a few stiles to cross and the temptation of a couple of great-looking pubs to pass, all with beer gardens packed on the first glorious weekend of the year. But, just as the wafting aroma of barbecues and pizza ovens was proving an olfactory siren call to stop and refuel, the tower on the pike came proudly into view, a whole lot closer than when seen from the 16th floor of the Holiday Inn, MediaCity.
The tower atop the pike is a Grade 2 Listed Building built in 1863 by John Eaton to commemorate the marriage of Victoria’s son Albert Edward (
