Not to leave the way altogether undescribed, the best mode of procedure upon arrival at Simpson Clough is perhaps, soon after entering, to ascend the path among the trees upon the left, then into some fields and to the edge of a precipice, from which a view is obtained of a considerable portion of the wood, where an idea may be formed of the route it may be pleasantest now to follow. No part is uninteresting; the question is simply where to begin. Compared with the warm glades of Cheshire, Bamford Wood is upon the average quite a fortnight later in escaping from winter. Spring's "curled darlings" have already stepped into the green parlours of the Bollin valley, while up here a leaf is scarcely open; even the palm-willow, elsewhere always ready for the earliest April bee, is cautious and dilatory. The most interesting plant of the wood is the _Rubus saxatilis_, which, though found nowhere else in the neighbourhood of Manchester, is abundant near Coal-bank Bridge, but very seldom flowers. On some of the cliffs, at a tantalizing height, just out of reach of the longest arm, grows that beautiful sylvan shrub the Tutsan, _Hypericum Androsæmum_. The sides of the glen are in most parts lofty and steep, clothed with trees, and often decorated with little waterfalls, while the bed of the stream itself is so rugged that the wood after much rain is filled with the sound of its hindered efforts to escape. On emerging from the wood, at the upper extremity, or furthest from Simpson Clough, there is a fine walk over Ashworth Moor to Bury, from which place also it may be approached.
In 1839 there was no "Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway." Now by its help we reach the beautiful sheet of water called, popularly, "Hollingworth _Lake_," but which, like the water at Lymm, Rudyard, and Taxal, is really no more than a reservoir, constructed about seventy years ago to supply, in part, the Rochdale and Manchester Canal. The circumference, which is very irregular, exceeds two miles. Rising high upon every side, the encircling hills have a wild and rugged grandeur that contrasts most agreeably with the smooth and tender beauty of the environments of the meres of Cheshire,--from their summits, upon a sunny afternoon, the effects are quite as pleasing as the average of those gathered above Ullswater. An obelisk upon the highest point marks Whiteley Dean, the view from which is wonderfully fine, reaching southwards to Manchester; while beyond Littleborough, amid great piles of hills, stands Brown Wardle, famous, like Bucton Castle, as an ancient signal station. Amid them is a mamelon quite equal in graceful outline to Shutlings Low, and decidedly taking precedence of the more familiar one called Rivington Pike, since the latter, when looked for at particular angles, disappears; whereas the Brown Wardle mound keeps fairly true to its outline from whatever point observed, at all events upon the southern side. The best view of it, so far as we know, is obtained from near "Middleton Junction." As the word "mamelon" does not occur in English dictionaries, it may be well to say that it denotes a smooth, round, evenly-swelling eminence, thrown up from amid hills already high, a feature in mountain scenery greatly admired by the ancient Greeks, who gave it a name of precisely similar signification, as in the case of that classic one at Samos which Callimachus connects so elegantly with the name of the lady Parthenia.