Mountain portrait
Green knights, great climbers and elusive marsupials: Jim Perrin delves into the legends around this mighty gritstone escarpment
Jim Perrin pays homage to the majestic Staffordshire gritstone escarpment that is The Roaches
THERE IS SOMETHING endlessly fascinating about The Roaches. This was one of the very first places, 60 years ago, that I tied on to a rope and climbed rock. I hold that memory very dear. But there’s so much more than simply rock-climbing about this majestic ridge. Since this is primarily a series on hills, let’s think of The Roaches as one. At 505m (1657ft), its high point is only a metre lower than Shutlingsloe four miles to the north, and we’ve already included that in this series. What does it matter that it’s only minutes from a road (albeit a very minor one), when its texture, its atmosphere, is so inexhaustibly rich? And its summit, between the Cheshire Plain and the rolling land of the southern Peak, is a real one, with a tremendous sense of space and height and rockiness. Here’s Paddy Monkhouse with his impression from the classic 1932 book on Peakland walking, On Foot in The Peak: “At Roach End, a lane crosses the ridge, which at once begins to rise. Ten minutes brings you out on the level again, but on another plane. The mild rocks which have flanked the path so far have dipped beneath you. Instead you are among huge tors of fantastically sculptured rocks, of the ‘Salt-cellar’ shape, deep black, rather smooth in texture for grit. It is a handy place to be caught in a shower of rain, for the wind has whittled out many cavities with projecting eaves, which afford shelter and some comfort.”
It’s said that from the OS pillar near the northern end of the ridge you can see as far east as Lincoln Cathedral and as far west as Snowdon. In these crystal blue-sky days of lockdown you probably can, though I don’t remember ever having seen anything clearly farther away than the very recognisable bulk of Arenig Fawr 60 miles to the west.
What I have seen on frequent occasions over 60 years are the wallabies. When I was a young climber in the early 1960s, you’d often bump into them as you played on the boulders beneath the Upper Tier. They were tolerant of human presence, and would hop away unalarmed after regarding you with soft, deer-like eyes. I’ve not seen them in that location for decades, and rumour had it that the hard winters of the 1980s had wiped them out, but a few seem to have survived in the quieter woods on the Black Brook side of Back Forest and around Ludchurch. Lucky, quiet people still encounter them there now and again, and photographic evidence surfaces. When we talk of The Roaches, really we’re talking of an area as much as about its dominant hill, and that area stretches from Upper Hulme just off the LeekBuxton road to Gradbach on the River Dane. It’s a region full of romantic and legendary association and interesting features. There are many – myself included – who would argue passionately that the climbing on its scatter of fine crags and outcrops is the best to be had anywhere.
That’s the general view held by devotees of rock-climbing’s gritstone sub-cult, into which I was early initiated and still bear the scarred knuckles that are proof of belonging. Gritstone’s a rough, outcropping sandstone that rims the northern moors, but for the northern climber it’s more akin to a religious mystery. At The Roaches in 1951 began the defining partnership of post-war British climbing, between Joe Brown and Don Whillans. Here are many of their notable test-pieces: The Sloth, Matinee, The Mincer, Delstree etc. So many weekends of my youth I spent here, sloping away from the rocks at dusk to sleep among the hay of an isolated barn at the back of Hen Cloud by Well Farm. But to consider The Roaches as a hill – how do you get to it and what’s the best line of ascent?
I have a strong preference here, and it’s for a circular 12-mile excursion from the west, starting at Danebridge, climbing up to the Hanging Stone that featured on the covers of my first two books of essays, and following the moorland ridge to Roach End, from which, as my old Guardian mentor Paddy Monkhouse tells, it’s only 10 minutes to the OS pillar. Add a further 15 of sauntering and you come to the Doxy Pool, where you may be fortunate enough to encounter a mermaid of legend (or even reality – I’ve a hardy friend who made a habit of camping here by herself every Christmas Eve and bathing naked in its peaty waters at Christmas dawn).
Beyond this gloopy puddle the path curves round beneath the main crag to descend the lower tier by steps to Rock Hall Cottage – dank and gloomy, built into the cliff, once a gamekeeper’s cottage, now the BMC’s Don Whillans Memorial Hut. From there it’s a short step down to the road and an excellent café on its farther side. I’ll leave you to find your own way back to Danebridge, but make sure you take the long traversing path through the woods from Bearstone Rock and branch off it to find the top of Ludchurch’s marvellous cleft, which scholars have identified as site of the Green Chapel in the middle English alliterative masterpiece Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
When you’ve emerged from that mossy cleft you’ve a blissful mile or so of downriver walking to Danebridge and its excellent pub. This is hill landscape as good as it gets in England.
“This craggy whaleback ridge, which dominates the borders of Staffordshire north of Leek, resembles a miniature range of mountains more closely than anything else in the district.”
Eric Byne & Geoff Sutton, High Peak (1966)