From Bradfield to Broomhead one evening
I navigated this one really badly and it needs to be navigated well to do it justice as a run. The hills – or rather the sides of the valleys – are big and deep and the trails that cross their sides aren’t always maintained or easy to see. At this time of year, the big man-made areas like the reservoirs are easy to run around, but the trods that link them to the towns are consumed for a few months, their routes hidden under pullulating tides of green.
From my starting point at the pub in High Bradfield, I realise that I only ever come to this part of the Peak in deep winter or in summer. I don’t know why I’m drawn to one end of the year and then to the other. I think I enjoy seeing what the seasons do to certain places and I like the quiet here too, but for some reason I’m not often here for the transitions between the two extremes. Seasons are really the passage of time, dressed up as cyclical forces and then buried in our culture. Ferns and flowers stream from the earth every year at around the same time and they trigger holidays, diet changes, moods, how we sleep, interact and a million other aspects of human culture. It feels like we have returned to something regular or everlasting, but we, like the plants and animals that come out at these times, are not the same. I’m running past the church and the tumbling headstones in the churchyard look like they’re advancing outward into the fields and away into the distance.
I follow them past the church walls, toward a copse at the end, at the top of a hill and into the tip of a wood. The trees look like firework blast patterns, detonating slowly over centuries. They glow green now, but in the autumn, their leaves will turn red and yellow and whip away across the landscape like sparks.
On the other side, there’s a deep ravine that I feel like I might fall into, so I concentrate on where my feet land. This section is technical, but navigationally its straightforward and I know it almost off by heart. Its the same as a run I did last year with Tony in the depths of winter, and the route doesn’t change until I get to the very top of the basin. Its steep to get there and it eats energy and muscle power. I want to be back within two hours, so I feel like I don’t have too much time. However, I stop at the very top for the view – just like countless people must have done over the years – and see the treetops beneath me getting smaller and smaller until they’re no bigger than a fingernail. Joining with the sky at the far edges, the blue and brown hills of the Peak District bleed into the sky.
The run down to the reservoir is where my ankle gets hurt. My right foot bends inwards and my ankle touches the soil because I haven’t understood where my feet are hitting. This has happened to me so many times that my tendons and muscles spring back into place and after a few minutes of a careful, painful gait, I can behave and move like it never happened. Experience tells me that I can run on it indefinitely anyway and I return to crossing the bumpy, broken ground and enjoying the foxgloves sprouting anywhere they can.
Summer has hidden the way down to the reservoir and everything I’m wearing is wet by the time I arrive on Broomhead’s shores. I don’t know whether its familiarity or the passage of time, but reservoirs seem to be a man-made imposition that fits in well with what we think of as Nature. I run a loop of the water to the sound of young of buzzards and jog through Eden village for the first time. When I hit 4 miles, the sun is starting to sparkle on the water.
I don’t want to be out for too long today so I make a left turn up into Wilkin Wood and follow it through to a road, preceded by a steep field and populated by horned and staring cows. Its followed by another wood, one that I don’t know the name of and one that takes me so long to navigate, I give up on running altogether.
Running is only really running when you can see where you are going and you know that your feet can land somewhere suitable. In this particular wood – nameless on the digital map I’m using – the ground is wet and boggy, the paths are hidden under grass and tyre tracks, the undergrowth is overgrown and open sections of grass often lead to dead ends. I think its what Guy Shrubsole might call the beginnings of temperate rainforest.
Most of my time here is spent up to my ankles in mud and water, feeling cross and alive, climbing through bramble thickets, looking for paths and losing my sense of direction and time. Even when there are wide grassy areas with tractor tracks running through them, I lose them just as quickly and have to push through another bush of brambles. Eventually, the terrain angles upward and I come out – staggering slightly, no longer running, wet feet and bleeding shins – onto a high grassland soaked in sunshine. I force myself to the top, to get a bearing and a black dog rushes at me from nowhere, barking. I scream in shock and the dog disappears.
I can see Sheffield, but no path and head towards what I think is probably the right way. Its high up here and its beautiful in the evening sunlight. The fields glow yellow and the hills are rolling and the clouds look like the vehicles of deities.
My running time – or rather pace – is crushed and I’m lost, but its worth it to be up high and moving through a warm evening wrapped around something familiar yet new. I’m disappointed in my time, but happy with the time I’ve spent.