Stoodley Pike

Took the train to Todmorden, the hottest day so far, then walked over the moors to Stoodley Pike and down to Hebden Bridge where I got the train back. It was a great walk, through the millstone grit villages, along the old "trods" [paved paths across the moors] and to the Pike itself. The memorial is eerie and ominous and massive. You can walk up the pitch black stairway to the balcony - quite an ordeal when the sheep suddenly decide to bleat in the echoing darkness.
The Calder Valley is one of my favorite bits of the Pennines. The deep valley has the canal, the railway and the towns, then there is steep woodland before an alp of other farms and fields before kicking up to the moors again.
I saw a Small Heath butterfly up on the arid hot moor

http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/species/bdata/small_heath.html