St Paul's Rambling Group Heaton Moor

The first question about our May walk was “what is a Diggle?”. The name comes from the Saxon word “degle” meaning valley. The original hamlets housed farm workers and loom operatives. We passed many of gritstone buildings with their distinctive mullioned windows. These were designed to support bigger windows to admit more light for the workers inside. The walk covered 4.5 miles in mainly dry and fair weather. Our group of eight set out from the public car park in Uppermill and climbed up towards the Pennine Bridleway National Trail, flanking the Saddleworth moors. We headed towards the Diggle Hotel pub which was unfortunately closed. This did not stop us from having a short refreshment break there on the outward journey and from using the garden benches for our lunch break on the return leg! We dropped back to join the Huddersfield Narrow Canal where horses were routinely used to pull pull the barges. However, a canal tunnel was necessary to pass beneath the hills. Here the...