The notion of rock climbing in February on an exposed crag like Laddow seemed improbable, but there we were, warm gritstone under our hands and the sun on our backs.
It couldn’t last. Two ravens, wings half closed like blades on a penknife, hung above us on the strong breeze catching Laddow’s crest. That must be cold, I thought, and so it proved when we reached the top and left the crag’s shelter. Worse, as the sun crept westward, the rocks were plunged into shadow, calling time on our unseasonal adventure. So, what to do instead?
A walk up Black Hill seemed the obvious choice, but I was reluctant. My last visit, many years ago, had been a grim struggle through treacly gloop, with little in the way of nature as compensation.
It’s certainly a place with a mixed reputation. John Hillaby described it as “a monstrous chocolate cake”. Alfred Wainwright, who had a particular animus against Black Hill, saw “a desolate and hopeless quagmire”. Wainwright blamed nature for this, but the true culprit was 19th-century air pollution that poisoned the vegetation.
Despite all this, it soon became clear that something rather magical has happened to Black Hill. There’s a lovely spot called Red Ratcher, where the moors fold into each other like rumpled silk, and here I paused, looking towards Dun Hill – the slope before the top of Black Hill.
There’s no heather here, but rather an even flow of cotton grass that spreads like the steppe in all directions, a dome of liberating space that we now traversed.
But the real surprise came at the summit, reached along a sturdy sequence of gritstone slabs that delivered us – dry-shod! – to a landscape utterly changed, and for the better. Almost two decades of restoration work, by the estimable Moors for the Future, has turned a hilltop once stripped of life into a vibrant green oasis. Best of all, close to the trig point, was a flush of sphagnum moss – a sure sign that the tide has turned. The black hill is black no longer.
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