Lower Moss Valley Circular (8th October 2024)

Here’s what the walk leader, Graham had to say about his walk.

For today’s walk I did an old favourite  that I hadn’t done for a couple of years. Starting out from The Swan pub in Ridgeway, I led a party of 15 members along the footpath alongside the Ridgeway School Garden and across three fields up to Haven Farms 1 & 2. Passing the underground reservoir at the highest point on the walk we then continued on an old packhorse trail called Bridle Stile Lane to the Mosborough Millenium Circle.  This was erected just before the turn of the century in 1999/2000 and has a range of interesting descriptions, near and far in all directions. After a short stop here we then carried on to the West Mosborough estate before taking a track on the right, back into the fields and down towards Eckington Park. This is a large area of woodland comprising of six separately named woods, owned by the Sitwell family of Renishaw Hall, with a mix of both public and permissive footpaths.  

On reaching Cadman Wood we turned left and headed towards Eckington Church. After about half a mile there is an old WW2 bunker alongside Ladybank Wood.  I stopped here and gave a brief history of it. It was used as a command and repair post for strings of dummy streetlights that were put up in the Moss Valley to fool German bombers that they were bombing Sheffield.  We continued on and came up the steps alongside the church to our halfway stop, Church Farm Tea Garden. 

We had just over half an hours stop here, enjoying Jenny’s delicious variety of homemade cakes, scones and sausage rolls in her lovely garden, which was now bathed in full sunshine.

Our return route took us back into Eckington Park but this time on the other side of the River Moss. We stopped at Seldom Seen Engine House,  a Grade 2 listed building that provided steam power for the many drift mines in the valley in the 1800’s.  It was then on through Twelve Acre Wood and back over The Moss to begin the steady climb back up towards Ridgeway. I gave an explanation of how Never Fear Dam got it’s name as we passed it by as we walked up to Plumbley Lane. Here we turned left and followed it for about half a mile and spotted a group of wild Guinea Fowl on the track in front of us. This was the first ever time I have seen them in the wild.  Turning right and then left, we descended some steps to a small footbridge, which was labelled as being built by German POW’s in WW2.  We carried on up past Kent Wood before coming out alongside the old Ridgway Craft Centre to our starting point, The Swan.                                                                                                                                                    

I was thanked by everyone for a lovely walk – which was made even more enjoyable by the unexpected ( and unforcasted ) sunshine. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Thanks Graham, the walk sounded great.