We ended up choosing Skirrid, a pleasingly accessible hillock to the north-east of the town that's claimed to be the easternmost outcrop of the Black Mountains. I drove us to the National Trust car park on the B4521 (indeed, the whole hill itself is owned by the Trust) and started out well by completely flattening this wooden post when turning in to the car park. I should have contacted the Trust to tell them really. Thankfully, perhaps due to the recent rain, it wasn’t too firmly anchored into the ground so there was no damage to my car.
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| Poor posty |
Mum kindly wrote us out some directions to the car park, though thankfully Google Maps did manage to locate it.
We set off up the well-signposted path from the car park that leads into woods (Pant Skirrid Wood), where there’s then a fairly steep ascent, partly up steps, until you emerge onto more open ground and the walk levels off. The sun came out on the way up, which pleased us both immensely, and there were some quite decent views. It’s a nice open path to the summit (part of the Beacons Way at this point). It was also quite windy, but thankfully there are no scary sheer drops off Skirrid so the odd bit of staggering about wasn’t too alarming.
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| Route up, looking back towards Blorenge |
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| On the way up |
We made the summit by just after 9:30am. It isn’t a long walk from the car park really.
While we were on the summit the weather started turning, and the initial part of the return walk involved quite large flakes of snow. We had intended to descend and come back via one half of the path that skirts the base of the hill. We did indeed descend from near the summit, but the path along the base proved so waterlogged that it was extremely hard-going. By the time both Ruth and I had fallen over, she decided she’d lost patience with it and insisted on us walking up the side of the ridge back onto the upper path, and then retracing steps. It was steepish but, thanks to plenty of bracken, not slippery and it was certainly a relief to be back on a decent path.
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| Snow on the return route |
As we’d brought hot drinks and snacks with us, but hadn’t thus far found anywhere to sit and have them, I insisted on sitting down on a bench not really all that far from the car park to have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. I was punished for this by my rucksack taking a nosedive off the bench into a muddy puddle. We finished up the rest of the food sitting in the car and poking fun at other walkers attempting to put waterproof overtrousers on in quite strong wind.
Skirrid has a notable landslip at the northern end. Mum and Dad tell me this is a good spot for a picnic. Legend apparently has it that it happened at the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, though Dad prosaically points out that it actually pre-dates that by many thousands of years.
The only previous time I’ve walked up Skirrid was on Boxing Day 2000, when from what I remember it was an extremely cold day. Here’s a photo I found of Dave, me and Mum on that occasion.
Our route last Saturday:
