Castle Hill

If you know anything about Huddersfield, you'll know that above it looms the ancient monument and settlement site of Castle Hill.

It's believed that there have been settlements at the site for over 4000 years and is regarded as one of England's most important early iron age hill forts.  When you stand near the tower it becomes quite apparent why this might be.... it's such an obvious outpost location and would be easily defended.

I shan't go into any detail about the hill because all the information you would care to read about it has already been written and can be seen in all its spurious glory along with everything else anyone cares to write about anything at Wikipedia!  Here is the page for Castle Hill and here is a page that is obviously spurious.

(I believe the spurious pages on Wikipedia are called "mountweazels" which is very pleasing!)

Ok, so today we (Dawn, Ben and I) went walking round the iron age hill fort on a largely circular circuitous route of the hill.  The weather and company were all perfect and we three all had a good time.  The largest downer of the day was having to drive frantically around a series of pubs in bad traffic trying to find one that was open at 2:00pm on a Tuesday afternoon....... Black marks are given to The Lockwood and Rat and Ratchet for being closed!

Ah well, here's some statistics..... 5.7 miles with 892ft ascent.  A pleasant stroll!

Here are some delightful pictures including a map and elevation profile.

Are you local?

One thing I love about living where I do, is that you don't have to go very from the doorstep to feel like you're outside... I don't mean like in the garden or even in the village.....  but REALLY outside!

I can walk for five or ten minutes in any direction from my house and be away from roads, on public footpaths or bridleways and find myself heading in all manner of directions.

Today's been a classic example... my mate Ben came round with his lovely dog Lola for a bit of a walk now that the snow's finally decided to budge....  So we actually set off from my house on foot and managed a sort of convoluted circular sort of walk on a route I've never done before, with no planning, and we've been out for maybe four hours, up and down hills and wombling free.

My GPS device was not turned on correctly so I'll have to give you a brief guesstimate of our path....  apologies for my technical failings.

Must be energised by the full moon tonight - didn't think we'd walked anywhere near this distance today.... could have gone on a bit more!

Stats:  distance 8.09 miles with 1511 ft ascent

Here is a Flickr set for the walk today.