The Widdop Road that heads NW from Slack is one of the more exciting drives to be had in the Pennines with it dramatic hairpins below the Gorple Reservoir. The summit is the 392m. spot height about a kilometre NW of the NW corner of the Widdop Reservoir. There is space here for two or three cars to park. It’s a bleak spot, chilly and windy with bare, treeless moorland stretching away in all directions. On the south side of the road a footpath is signposted going east. I would come back this way but I began by heading up the track that leads northeast, not a right of way but it is all access land now. On the map this track peters out after a kilometre and no path is shown from here to the top of Boulsworth Hill. But I thought maybe there would be one anyway and I’m happy to say there is, a decent enough path heading off right from just where the track gives out all the way to the summit trig point. Here I made a little detour east to have a peek at the “Saucer Stones” big lumps of gritstone with striking hollowed out tops. Then I walked back to the summit of Boulsworth whence a path leads downhill to the lovely track that overlooks the Forest of Trawden and here comprises both the Brontë Way and the Pennine Bridleway.
I followed this SW for a mile and a bit until it meets the minor road – Ridehalgh Lane – above Thursden. On the way here the track passes the strange arch known as the Doorway to Pendle which consists of the doorway, and only the doorway, of an old farmhouse built in 1672 and now, saving only the doorway, quite vanished. From Ridehalgh Lane the Brontë Way is signposted descending steeply through woods to meet another minor road. The Pennine Bridleway goes left here and would have taken me back to my starting point very quickly and directly. But instead I followed the Brontë Way right. It soion leaves the road to follow the Thursden Brook east and then climb through more woodland past a quarry to reach high pasture near Sweet Well House. Here I abandoned the Brontë Way and headed across a field and over a step stile to pick up the track that nears to near the top of Delf Hill. The area round the summit was populated by a quiet herd of belted Galloway cattle and some noisesome off road bikers tearing the place up. I circled both to find the trig point then headed pathlessly east over bare moorland until I picked up the Pennine Bridleway again a mile or so south of where I had left it. A very short walk north along it took me to where a good well-signposted path heads off east to where I had left my car.
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