First Time at the Crags 24th May 2020

For the last 50 years or so, every time I've been travelling back from Manchester, either with my dad as a kid, or under my own steam, whenever I have passed Stocksbridge on the northern outskirts of Sheffield I have seen a large wooded hill on the right with some majestic rock formations peeking out from the foliage. But never in the 10 years or so since my interest in hiking perked up, had I been there. So today would be that day.

I hadn't been out with Malcolm for a hike since mid-January. The last couple of hikes prior to lock-down Malcolm was unavailable, so the group normally consisted of myself, Tony, Darrell and Nigel.

Now as we have that bit of extra freedom I gave Malcolm a call to see if he would be free; clearly no car sharing but we could meet up. So arrangements were made to meet at 8am in the car park above Wharncliffe Wood.

When Malc arrived he wound down his window and said "My app said it would be dry, so I haven't brought a coat", what a muppet. But, to the rescue I came with a spare coat that I always keep under the boot floor for emergencies.

The first part of the walk, a mile or so was along a quiet country lane, before we headed down through the woods towards the nature reserve. Lots of heavy foliage to keep us dry. The path then took us on a sharp turn as we headed up to the start of the Crags.

Now if the weather had been a bit better the views from around 1,000ft would have been excellent. Yes you have the suburbs of Deepcar and Stocksbridge directly below, but great views beyond them. As we walked along the Crags we were surprised to come across a fire crew putting out a fire, their engine was a few hundred metres away so there was a large red hose snaking it's way across the fields and through the trees. Thankfully by the time we were there, the fire was out and just smouldering bracken remained.

Much of the rest of the walk saw us continue under the cover of the trees, the whole area is very heavily wooded, and the final section mainly uphill back to the car-park. We had covered 8.3 miles in a little under 3.5hrs, so a decent workout and some great banter.