Over the Yellowhills

The Yellowhills aren't marked on the map, but they're a well known local walking destination not far from Witton Park in Blackburn. Locals gave the hills the name because of the brilliant yellow covering of gorse in the springtime. The hills lie on the route of Witton Weavers Way, a 32 mile long-distance footpath exploring much of the open countryside of the West Pennine Moors between Blackburn and Bolton.

The WWW can be split into four shorter and more manageable segments, and the one covering the Yellowhills is a six-mile route called the Beamers' Trail. Each of these segments is detailed in leaflets available from the council's website - click here for details: Witton Weavers Way.

Jean and Kevan came over today and after an early lunch (well, early for us!), we donned our walking gear and set off for Witton Park. We took with us a copy of Ron Freethy's "Drive and Stroll" book, which describes the route of the Beamers' Trail without mentioning it by name. This proved a pity, because as much as he excels with his knowledge of nature, he lacks with his map drawing and general guidance on directions. We hadn't even left the pavilion in the park before we were disagreeing over the route we should take! If only we'd brought the Beamers' Trail leaflet with us.

Anyhow, we made it through the woods to a car park near the top of Billinge Hill, a steady climb which generated a great deal of angst from one or two in our group. From there, the path rose gently to the top of the Yellowhills, where a fine panorama across the Lancashire coast could be seen. Unfortunately, we could also see some black clouds looming large over the coast and they appeared to be heading our way.

Heading down from the top of the Yellowhills, we made our way into a wood, where Ron's misleading directions were complemented perfectly by this marker post. Not surprisingly, we headed off in what turned out to be the wrong direction from here, and we only realised we were wrong after we'd gone downhill a good distance. There was no way we were going back uphill from here, so we pressed on and found ourselves near the duck pond on the way up to Pleasington Cemetery.

From here it was a mile or so back to the Pavilion in the park, but before we could go any further, we were drenched by a heavy shower. At least we had our waterproofs with us.

Finally we made it back to the pavilion cafe for a cup of tea, having covered around 4 miles rather than the 6 we'd planned, but who's counting?