Love where you live.

Today I took my son’s dogs on one of the best local walks in the area, round Calf Hey Reservoir off the B6232, the Grane Road.

I have lived in the Rossendale Valley for about 35 years and this area never fails to impress me. It is a 2 mile, flat, circular walk, apart from a slight decline coming from the car park, funnily enough, it’s a slight incline on the way back. It’s buggy and wheelchair friendly, providing you don’t mind a couple of gates and a few puddles along the way. You can lengthen the walk by heading up into the surrounding hills and woods, or even make it part of the 41 mile Rossendale Way!!!

I love to walk around, the colours are always different depending on the time of year or day, you never know what will be visiting the water, how high or low the water levels are and what animals are being grazed in the fields around. Today, there were sheep and cows: the sheep below the dam wall was enormous, more like llamas, they can be seen in my last photo.

Although the car park might be full, ( further parking can be found just up the road at Clough Head car park, along with a fab little cafe) the path around the res is never too busy. How lucky am I living a 5-minute drive from such an amazing place? We should never take our local area for granted…

Today whilst walking round, I thought back to when I used to take my 3 sons up there for a runaround, we used to go either on our own or with other children. We went on bear hunts all the way around, a great way to get the reluctant 4-year-old walking. Sometimes we took picnics, other times we just “hunted.”

Back in the day, we used to risk driving up in the snow and ice as a regular sledging spot was down the dam wall, nowadays it is fenced off and access is impossible. Personally I am quite happy about that as it always terrified me as it is a really steep slope and as a parent always envisaged a trip to A and E!!

The wonderful thing is that my sons now take their children up there on a regular basis to do exactly the same…..long may it continue. Funnily enough, the bears have remained elusive all these years, along with the variations of dinosaurs, lions and more recently unicorns.

The reservoir was opened in 1860 at the expense of farms and part of the Grane village community. There are the remains of a couple of the farms/weaving cottages around the side of the res, one being Hartley House. St Stephen’s church was moved brick by brick down the road towards Haslingden and is now and Antiques Centre with another excellent cafe.

There is a very interesting article about the history of the Grane area.

http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/haslingdengrane4.html