Post: This is a real ride, but the way I see it, it is an opportunity for Charlie to use to good effect his wonderful descriptive talents. The route he takes this particular evening is well known and previously described many times, but he does paint a great picture of the moon effect that night.
Thursday, October 1 A Moorland ride under the Harvest Moon
It was a glorious evening when Ben and I started out about 7pm for an evening jaunt. The sky was a blaze of multi-coloured light, which gradually softened to a velvety blue, this giving way in turn to deeper tones as evening crept on. With lamps lit we stole through Lever park to Rivington Village, then started the long walk over the moors.
As we got higher, the brilliant moon crept over the moors, the ridge of Winter Hill looked strange as fleecy clouds frilled the summit and flitted across the moon, then the clouds sailed away and the moon gained in brightness as it climbed higher. We stopped at the road summit for a while. It was light enough to read a paper, the mellow light gave a strange aspect to the hills and the many deep little cwms were thrown into a deeper shadow. It all forcibly reminded us somehow of the bigger earth-clods and deeper indentations of Bwlch Oerdrws, and parts of the Bwlch-y-Groes, and as we dropped warily down the pass, we almost believed that we had been transported a hundred miles away to the Pass of the Cold Door. Passing a lake which danced and rippled in the breeze, and gave the reflection of a thousand moons, we came to Belmont, and the main road which had a beauty of its own tonight. Joe was sat on a form with a friend near the summit; we stopped with them, then all of us came down to Bolton together, and before we parted, Ben and I wished Joe and his partner good luck in the Bolton Wheelers ‘150 in 12’ on this coming Sunday. We seem to have passed tonight through an enchanted world, a world of strange lights and sights, yet it was just a ride over Belmont moors beneath a Harvest Moon.
20 miles
