The Cloud (Again, So Soon)

With a desire to go away at the weekend, but with only two days at our disposal, it made sense to go somewhere reasonably close to home, and as I had rather enjoyed The Cloud and Rudyard Reservoir when I was there in November (at which point Mick was failing to grasp the concept of retirement) a revisit fitted the bill perfectly.

After a chilly week, temperatures were forecast to rise over the weekend, but on Saturday morning, as we set out from the south end of the reservoir, it was still bitter out – once again giving the bonus of frozen mud. We capitalised on that bonus by opting for the muddier (and undulating) west side of the water for our outward route.

Beyond the reservoir, the flatness of a disused railway bed then took us to fields (which would have been horrible in warmer weather), thence into woods and by-and-by we approached The Cloud, accompanied the whole time by the sound of the local rifle-range.

Visibility wasn’t as good as my solo visit, but there were still views to be had:

An early lunch break on the top proved that the popularity of the summit when we had arrived was just a freak of timing. By the time just half of a sandwich had been eaten everyone else had left and we remained in solitude throughout three sandwiches and a flask of tea each. Not wanting to push our luck (or was it just that it was jolly cold, sitting up there?), cake was saved for later, and down we went.

The picnic bench I recalled having seen at Rushton Spencer seemed like a reasonable cake-eating spot. It did make us feel like small children though, with our dangling legs, as it was apparently too much effort for the installation contractors to bury the legs so that the table sits at an appropriate height:

The disused railway bed gave us a swift and easy walk back down the east side of the reservoir (it’s an incredibly pretty reservoir; not what I’d expect to find in Staffordshire at all), which was, by now, reasonably busy with families out for a stroll. It’s a good job it was an easy stroll too, as by this time I was feeling far more exhausted than I should have after a 12.5 mile walk.

Half an hour after getting back to Colin, I was struck with an enormous headache. Sunday morning saw me struck by a cold. That explained the exhaustion then! Alas, the poorliness caused an early return  home and thus the plan to visit another hill on Sunday was abandoned for another time.