St Paul's Rambling Group Heaton Moor

An excellent turnout for the Christmas Walk and eleven of our group set out from the Golden Pheasant at Plumley for a short walk of about 4 miles before the main event of the day, Christmas lunch. The weather forecast was for strong winds and rain later in the day, fortunately the wind could only be described as moderate and the rain failed to appear, so we were able to enjoy our morning in the countryside in fine weather. The circular route explores the beautiful countryside around the village of Plumley and the landscape is dominated by fields for arable and dairy farming, deciduous hedgerows and a scattering of small woods. Apart from having to climb a number of stiles and negotiate some extremely muddy fields, the trail was not difficult and we arrived back safely at our start point some two hours later in good time for lunch. Here we were joined by five more members of our group and sixteen of us sat down to enjoy an excellent Christmas lunch in the Golden Pheasant dining