Walking Maps

Calder Vale: Peewits and Pheasants

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Walk Description

This route is waymarked with a brown disc labelled ‘Calder Vale Walk Brown’.

1. Head south from Cobble Hey and along the track to the road.
2. Turn left along the road and take the first stile on your left. Cross several fields keeping to the left of Huds Brook Farm, and go through the wood.
3. Cross two fields onto Delph Lane.
4. Turn left up Delph Lane and take the first right along a track to High Moor Farm. Follow the concessionary path around the farmyard, and into a big field.
5. Head past Broadgate Farm passing the farm buildings on your left and through a kissing gate onto a track.
6. Follow the track through a narrow band of woodland into a field.
7. Cross the field passing Bleasdale Tower on the left and continue to the tarmac track.
8. Turn left and follow this track until the tarmac ends, turn left, go through a narrow wood and out onto a road. Turn right up the road, then left along a track to Rough Moor Farm.
9. Just before the farm take a stile on the left into a field. Cross this field to another stile at a fence junction. Follow the fence on your right and over the stonewall stile. Head past the left side of an old quarry to the farm track.
10. Turn right along this track and then left to pass through the churchyard and out onto the tarmac path down the hill, through the woods to Calder Vale.
11. Leaving the woods as you enter Calder Vale bear right along the front of Long Row Cottages. At the end of these cottages turn left, up the steep steps, and turn right onto the farm road.
12. Follow the farm road to enter Landskill farmyard.
13. Pass Higher Landskill farmhouse and turn right, and down to the end of the hedged track. Keeping the fence on your left pass through two gates and down to and over a stream and through the gate in the wall.
14. Continue straight ahead up through the field, heading for the gate ahead to lead you along a track into Cobble Hey farmyard.

About this walk

Cobble Hey is a good breeding area for a variety of wading birds such as lapwing, curlew and redshank.

The lapwing, also known locally as a “tewit” can be recognised by its wispy, black crest. The birds are particularly protective of their young chicks and will think nothing of mobbing anything that comes too close to their nest or chicks.

Pheasants, now found in most areas of the countryside are not native to the British Isles, having been introduced in the 11th or 12th century. They are a very popular game bird.

Bleasdale is a small privately owned estate. Bleasdale Tower was originally a shooting lodge, but in 1847 it was rebuilt and enlarged by William James Garnett. Garnett was a philanthropist and agricultural reformer, as well as an MP for Lancaster 1857-64. Garnett also set up, on the estate, one of the first reformatory schools in the country.

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