I have written several times recently about the River Ribble and its tributaries, especially the Hodder.   Now, here is a new book to enjoy.

The Ribble is substantially a Lancashire river, but in fact rises in the heights above the Yorkshire Dales. These are outstanding landscapes, walking-country par excellence, from the bleakness of the river’s origins to the lushness of the mid and lower stretches of the Ribble Valley, and out past the old Preston Docks to the estuary at Lytham.

This new volume, Landscapes of the Ribble, by photographer Andy Latham (it is his first book) will be a welcome addition to the library of any lover of the region and its rivers.

Book Details:
ISBN-10: 0711230285  -  ISBN-13: 978-0711230286
Publisher: Frances Lincoln (2010)
112 pages; hardcover; 26.8 x 25.4 x 2.4 cm
Cover price: £16.99

As of 15th January Landscapes of the Ribble was priced on Amazon.co.uk at only £9.54.

In previous articles I’ve referred to my love of the River Hodder in Lancashire.  Recently I came across some photographs taken one very snowy Saturday morning in, I think, 1991 (or it may have been 1992). It was a splendidly crisp day, and great to walk where no man had gone before, as it were.  I started by the Hodder itself, and then decided to drive into the Trough of Bowland and walk up by the Langden Brook, one of the smaller streams that feeds the Hodder.  I’d lost the photographs for many years, but have never lost the memory.

The Hodder near Dunsop Bridge (1991?)

Got here before the gritters

Looking down on the Waterworks, Langden Valley, Bowland

I’m the first here – apart from the sheep

The snow is thinner here – but desolate for miles now

As I’ve said before, the Hodder with its villages, and the Trough of Bowland deserve to be much better known – but don’t come in droves will you; I’d like to see it stay peaceful.

As I looked around this morning for something that illustrated the challenges faced by people during this period of unfamiliarly heavy and protracted snowfall in England I came across the following.  It gives a down-to-earth description of the situation for many of the people who produce our food.  The rest of us should be grateful.

From the Lancashire Telegraph

East Lancashire snow: How farmers are coping

Monday, 11th January 2010, By Emma Cruces »

“THE big freeze has left East Lancashire farmers working around the clock to keep their animals fed and watered. ……….”

[And I liked the pragmatic get-on-and-do-it attitude of the closing sentences:] 
” You couldn’t prepare for it, even if you knew, and you couldn’t do anything more. At the end of the day it’s the same for lots of people. You still have to make a shilling, so you get on with it.”

Full article »

“Lancashire” – to many outside the Northwest of England the county name conjures up mental images of congested  towns full of blackened mills and street upon street of grubby ‘back-to-back’ houses.  Having grown up in Burnley then lived for several decades in Darwen and Blackburn I can confirm that there is a degree of reality in such an image.  But there’s more, much more. Lancashire is a county of many rivers.  Today it’s the Hodder on my mind.

“Cromwell’s Bridge” – from Lower Hodder Bridge on a rainy day

Historically the county of Lancashire stretched from the Mersey to the Duddon.  Between these lay the valleys of the Irwell, the Ribble and the Lune with their various tributaries, not to mention the collection of smaller shorter rivers spilling into Morecambe Bay from the southern lakes of what is now Cumbria.

The Ribble flows into the sea at Preston, having in the previous ten miles or so taken in the waters of the Darwen, the Calder and the Hodder.  The last of these, the River Hodder, is the only one of the Ribble’s major tributories that never flows through a town.  The Hodder is a totally rural river.

The Darwen, leaving its own town valley flows through Blackburn where it collects the Blakewater.  The Calder, having emerged from the Cliviger Gorge and passed through the beautiful Towneley lands twists its way in 19th-century cobblestone channels between the old mills of Burnley and hidden away near the town centre absorbs the Brun. 

The Hodder, in contrast, never sees anything larger than the scattered villages and hamlets to the south of the Forest of Bowland.  Its upper reaches have long been dammed, creating the Stocks Reservoir above Slaidburn.  From here it flows in twists and turns from east to west past Newton and Dunsop Bridge where it picks up the waters of the River Dunsop and Langden Brook and goes on south past Whitewell, at the back of its famous Inn.

The water then has to turn again, and counterintuitively it now flows from west to east, away from the sea as it searches for a way around Longridge Fell.  Meandering south again between rises in the land it flows under the Higher and Lower Hodder Bridges until near Mitton reaching the Ribble, a river which at this point is in no way its superior.  The Hodder gives up its name, the waters merge and together they flow to the sea.

The Hodder flowing (from the left) into the Ribble near Mitton.
(I must sometime get a shot up the Hodder from the other bank)

This is magnificent walking country, ranging from leisurely strolls by the river bank and higher paths along wooded hillsides to steeper hauls up and over the surrounding moorland,  Centuries-old stone-built houses, ancient bridges, quaint villages, and nearby is splendid Stoneyhurst; these all complement the beauty of the river itself. 

I’ve walked this Bowland (or “Bolland”) country in all kinds of weather: up by the Langden Brook deep in January snow, down from High Hodder Bridge slithering through muddy woodland in July rain, and tramping over the tops from the Trough to the Brennand Valley in September sunshine.  With a friend or walking alone this is Lancashire at its best.

When looking through the December 2009 issue of Country Walking Magazine I was rather surprised to find Burnley, Lancashire, listed among the month’s twenty-six recommended walking routes.  Now before anyone jumps to the conclusion that this is a southerner talking out of the top of his hat about the industrial north and “dark satanic mills”, let me point out that I grew up in Burnley, went to school there, and only left on getting married and moving fifteen miles down the road to Darwen.

The photograph above is copied from the 1909 official guide to Towneley Hall which, along with other publications, has been in my Burnley local history collection for many years – actually I have a 1911 reprint, not the 1909 first printing.

Having grown up in Burnley I think I can claim the right to be balanced and fair about it, without indulging in dishonest flettery.  There are some grotty parts.  I recently went back to the Burnley Wood part of the town and was seriously unimpressed with the condition of the area.  On the other hand there are some wonderful places, and Towneley Hall with its open fields and woodland park stands out among them.  So I should not really have been surprised; it’s just that it’s relatively unusual for the message to have got home to people outside the area.

I had the enormous privilege between the ages of twelve and twenty-one of living on Woodgrove Road  overlooking Towneley Holmes.  It was from this base that in my teens I learned the joy of walking in the countryside, across the valley, up and over the hill to Worsthorne and Hurstwood; along the valley to Walk Mill, Holme and  Cliviger Gorge.  Earlier this year, due to the illness and death of a close relative, I had to spend considerable time in the area and was reintroduced to exploring this wonderful landscape – wonderful, and yet so close to the legacy of 19th century industrialisation and 20th century urban sprawl.

The Country Walking route starts in front of Towneley Hall, takes you high above the town on the moors at Crown Point (where as a 10-year-old in the early 50s I was often to be found with the family Alsatian), down past Dyneley to Walk Mill and back along the valley close to the Calder to the Towneley Hall car park – or more likely the Stables Cafe.

This really is a inspired example of how people living in so many of Lancashire’s industrial towns have always been able to get out quickly into splendid countryside.  Towneley Hall itself warrants a future article of its own.