Trafford

Walk Details:
Date: 16/04/2005
Total ascent: 18m/ 59ft
Total distance walked: 0.7 miles
Walk difficulty: 1/10
Enjoyment rating: 2/10
Best bits: Bagging this meant we'd completed a quarter of the county tops.
Worst bits: A pretty miserable top for the 25% mark.
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: We parked on the roadside on Green Walk at SJ 754 872

Top details:
Name: The Devisdale
County top number: 52 of 207
Grid reference: SJ 75851 87343
Height above sea level: 70m/ 230ft
How nice was the top? 2/10
Views: 1/10
Description/Notes: The highest point of Trafford is an indeterminate point at the eastern end of a public open space

The Walk:

It had been a long drive from our last top in Birmingham and Jim was clearly getting restless ("are we nearly there yet?" etc). Looking at our prints from streetmap.co.uk I was not convinced we'd be able to to park very close - the nearest roads were the busy A56 or Green Walk, which didn't sound particularly amenable to cars. A hospital on Green Walk meant that any parking that was available would in all likelihood be taken up by hospital visitors. In addition I wasn't sure we would be able to access the top itself anyway. There was a footpath marked nearby, but the highest point of Trafford was to be on the far side of what looked like a private field.

Both these fears were groundless. Green Walk was a wide and affluent residential road, with plenty of roadside parking. We parked right beside a footpath that led down the side of the hospital and into the field in question. The field turned out to be a public open space full of dog walkers, which we were free to explore.

No, the main problem was actually finding the top. We used the GPS to get to a point that someone else had logged on the web as being the highest point. This took us to a boggy hole in the midst of a small grove of trees in the western half of the field - this appeared to be the lowest, rather than the highest point. We then headed to the highest point shown on the OS map, still in the western half of the field but tight up against the northern fence. This was a bit higher but still visually lower than the eastern half of the field… so we headed eastwards.

We eventually decided that the highest point of Trafford was a landscaping bank beside the eastern entrance to the field (which lead to the junction between The Firs and St Margarets Road). This meant we were a quarter of the way through our county top list - this landmark occasion didn't really make us feel any better about what had been a pretty poor county top.