I’d bought my ticket to Darwen and was on the railway platform before I realised that my Bakelite mobile hadn’t picked up the message about the group walk being called off because of train cancellations.
So I went for a walk anyway. I didn’t have a map but I did have my ipad, the OS app and perhaps enough charge to keep me on the right track. I decided the best route under the circumstances was to get off at Cherry Tree station and follow the Witton Weavers Way to Darwen station.
It looked fine on the app, but an enormous housing estate is under construction between Cherry Tree and the motorway, so I lost my path and followed another one that had been severely narrowed by the construction fence. Then a grim, muddy path sandwiched between the motorway and the kind of farm that is more like a dump.
And then all of a sudden I was enjoying myself. A stile into a little wood, a few streams and a little lane of old houses and all was right with the world. I walked up to Jubilee Tower on Darwen Hill, thinking about parallels between various jubilee towers and Bismarcktürme and wondering how much windier it could get. And then down into Darwen with thoughts of the heavy footprint of Victorian industry around this moorland – the chimneys, the factories, the reservoirs, the grand civic buildings, the ex-quarries turned into public parks, the terraces.
Reflecting on my day afterwards, I thought how appropriate it was that I’d followed the advice of that great Victorian sage, Mr Sleary, and made the “betht” of things.
Old Shoe Box 