Where are all these dogs coming from
Oh, yes.
Come and get some cuddles.
Oh my God. You're wet.
Today, we're going hunting for plane crashes.
The route starts just north of Glossop
at the Snake Pass Summit.
We're heading up Bleaklow Moor
where you'll find stunning views
all the way into Manchester city centre.
We'll make our way down into a picturesque valley
following a trickling stream all the way into Old Glossop.
And we'll finish up for a spot of cake and coffee
at this quaint little cafe right by the river.
Joining me is fellow Glossopian, Thom Hetherington.
He's created a portfolio of world class northern events
such as Northern Restaurant and Bar Exhibition
and Manchester Art Fair.
He's probably the most knowledgeable person
on restaurants in the north of England.
So hopefully I'll be getting some tips
on where I can get some really good scran.
- Hey, you must be Hanna. - I am.
So nice to meet you. You well?
- I'm good, how are you? - Yeah, good.
You're the only person mad enough to be out here at this time.
So I hear you're a fellow Glossopian.
I am a fellow Glossopian.
Yeah. So we both know this route.
Maybe you should lead this walk now.
I'm happy to do that. I think I know the way.
Oh, perfect.
Well, I know we're at the Snake Pass Summit.
So we'll follow the Pennine Way for a little bit
and head up to that little peak there.
Fantastic. Alright, shall we start?
Yeah. Let's get going.
Let's go.
So, Thom, you're so deep rooted in the hospitality scene.
What kind of hidden gems do you recommend in Manchester?
- Hidden gems? - Yes.
Well, hidden gems is tough
because I tend to talk about everything on social media.
Everyone knows where I've been for lunch,
but probably one of the places, I don't get back to as often as I like,
but I adore this place.
I actually went every work day for a year
and put on about a stone.
It's called Cafe Marhaba.
And it's one of the original little kind of curry cafes,
and it's on Back Piccadilly.
They do like the traditional rice and three,
where you get the plate with the rice and the three curries.
But the reason to go is the breads.
They have a proper tandoor oven.
They're the only one of the curry cafes
in the Northern Quarter that has a tandoor oven,
and they do these amazing kind of pillowy naans
they pop them in there, they hook them out with a little metal hook.
And brush them all with ghee and everything,
and they're just unbelievable.
So I would recommend that.
That's somewhere, possibly some of the viewers won't have been,
and I say go to Cafe Marhaba.
So you also recommend places to go to Jay Rayner, big food critic.
Yeah, I've known Jay for a long time.
We originally met on a website that was basically just a forum
where food geeks would go and argue with each other.
Post reviews and argue about the best restaurants.
And Jay was on there.
So I struck up a relationship with Jay,
and it's always good fun to go out with him
because when we first used to do it
he wasn't the kind of the personality that he is now,
he didn't used to so as much TV,
so we'd go and sit there and we'd have quite a normal meal.
But now when you turn up with Jay Rayner,
he's quite a big imposing guy as well.
You walk through the door and you see people's faces like,
"Oh my God, Jay Rayner's come in."
and you can see people nudging the chef and going
"Right, just cook better tonight."
"We've got Jay Rayner in, you're going to have to absolutely ace it."
It's making me hungry though, talking about food.
I know we'll have to walk faster and get to the cafe.
Let's go.
So this is Devil's Dike here, which you've ran many times I'm sure.
I have run on occassion yeah.
This area here was known for UFO sightings.
Is that right?
There was a lady back in the 1980s driving along Snake Pass
said she saw a couple of fireballs of light in the sky.
Really?
Do you believe in UFOs?
You do the big questions on these walks.
I thought it was just going to be about food and art and things.
Do I believe in UFOs.
I did a science degree, so I think about it in quite a scientific way,
and you know, as far as we know, we're in an infinite universe.
So there has to be everything.
You have to have everything.
If you've got an infinite universe, you have to have everything
and that has to include alien lifeforms. Surely.
- We can't be the only people out there. - I agree on that one yeah.
There has to be something.
I don't know whether it was those three balls,
not convinced about that.
- but I reckon there's something out there. - Maybe they were meteors.
Yeah, yeah, it could be.
So I'm not convinced by Laverne's story.
Right, so we're at the cairn here.
Absolutely.
Do you see a lot of these on your runs in the hills?
Yeah. They're the route markers, you see them about. Yeah.
This is a nice, big one.
People have been working at this.
Have you brought a stone to add to it?
There we go, we've done our bit.
We've added to the cairn.
It actually comes from the Gaelic language the word cairn.
Does it? You've been doing your research.
I must have been up here a thousand times now,
and I never get bored of it.
It's stunning, you can't get bored of the views can you.
Gosh. So this is the B-29 Overexposed site.
Yeah, the Super Fortress.
So this came down I think in 1948.
There was a crew of 13 on it, who sadly all died in the crash
but yeah it came down in low cloud.
They just misjudged the hill.
You know the radar systems were quite rudimentary back then.
A lot of it was done by eye.
It's actually not the only plane wreck.
There's about 80 different wrecks all over the Peak District
all over the Dark Peak.
Different planes all from the 40s and 50s, same sort of period.
There's one famously just on Mill Hill just over that way
where it was an American jet and it came down
with two pilots on board and they actually survived
and they dragged themselves out of the wreckage
and they managed to go down the hill to the pub,
to the Grouse Pub,
and they kind of turned up wanting a pint.
You know, they did get rescued.
They got people to kind of look after them.
I think they were covered in blood and stuff.
But, yeah, you can just imagine two American airmen turning up going
"I need a beer. I've had a right night of it. Get me a beer!"
The locals must've wondered what was going on.
Yeah, they were like "where've you come from?"
Yeah, well, out the sky literally.
God it's crazy, amazing landscape.
Yeah it is. Quite poignant.
Look at Manchester. Look at the views.
Oh my God, that's so nice.
Ah that's wicked.
Got like 60 - 80 square miles of complete wilderness in this direction.
And then you turn around and Manchester's right there.
15 miles away, you can see all the city laid out.
It's a lovely little balancing act.
That's what I like about being up here.
You've got the countryside, you've got the wilderness,
and the city is right there.
You know, you're at a little tipping point between the two.
I think we need to start heading down
before we do got blown away off the top of Higher Shelf Stones.
I think we should at least go for the Lower Shelf Stones.
I'm hoping there will be a little less wind down there.
So we're at Lower Shelf Stones.
If anything, higher wind speeds on Lower Shelf Stones.
We called that one wrong, or I called that one wrong.
I'll take responsibility.
We'll blame you, we'll blame you.
Even in Manchester, you still feel quite close to the countryside.
And certainly I felt drawn back here,
you know moving back up to Glossop
back to where I've grown up,
I mean, in a literal sense, it felt like coming home.
I suppose you've got the same sort of thing.
You've kept that connection with it as well.
Yeah, I think this is home
and it's always got a soft spot in my heart
and it's great.
It's nice to share it with other people who share the same passion as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think you get quite evangelical about it, don't you?
It becomes quite a passion.
You want to try to persuade everyone else,
everyone who likes going to the gym
and you know, going on a treadmill,
you want to say to them, "no, get up here, get in the hills."
So this will be the second crash site on the route.
Yeah. So there isn't so much left here as you can see.
This was a Canadian Air Force Lancaster Bomber.
This came down in 1945.
I've got a confession.
Go on.
The easier way down off James's Thorn
was to carry on straight ahead
but I wanted to bring you and show you this one as well
so we've taken a little bit of a detour
and we're now going to carry on with the detour
and we're going to go on what is a more scenic route.
That's my sell.
Perfect.
It's a very, very, very steep route as well.
- Are we up for that? - I'm totally up for it.
- You sure? - Yeah.
- Strong ankles. - I hope so.
Oh, look, at all the birds.
That looks creepy.
It's so beautiful here, isn't it and peaceful with the water.
Yeah.
It feels like a different world to being up on the tops.
It does yeah.
It's a little bit more sheltered once you get into the cloughs here.
It's very different from when you're kind of out on the tops
out on the kind of bleaker areas up there.
It's lovely. It's beautiful.
So the only thing I remember from GCSE Geography is that, that
curve is an oxbow lake.
Looks like Eastenders to me.
No it doesn't.
- It does. - It doesn't.
Look at it.
Where are all these dogs coming from?
Oh, yes, come and get some cuddles.
Oh my God, you're wet.
This is a lovely spot.
Yeah, so this is a bit of a rite of passage really
for generations of Glossopians. We're just by Mossy Lea Farm
on the weir here,
everyone brings their kids up to paddle in the pool at the bottom of the weir
it's just one of those things that you do.
My other fun fact about this part of Glossop,
right in the distance there, that's called Dog Rock.
Just the furthest point,
the kind of straight line across between the valley,
and Dog Rock was this massive outcrop of rock.
And back in the 50s and 60s, everyone went climbing there,
and the farmer at the time got so grumpy
with everyone treading across his land that he just blew it up with dynamite.
He blew the entire--
It was an enormous outcrop and he just blew the whole lot up
and it all slid down into the valley below.
And he basically said, "There you go. There's no reason to come anymore.
"No more climbing. All done. Go away. Get off my land."
What a grumpy b*****d.
I know old school farming that is.
I stress they're not like that anymore.
But that's what happened back in the day.
Nice place for a walk, but no more climbing.
That's a shame. It's beautiful here.
So, Thom, you're the founder of Manchester Art Fair.
I am.
What do you think of the Manchester art scene?
I think it's changed a lot.
I think it's fantastic at the minute.
And I like to think that hopefully the Art Fair has been part of that,
because when we launched the Art Fair, I think it's 15 years ago now,
there was some great galleries showing art
and they had wonderful collections.
But if you actually wanted to go and buy a piece of art, there's almost nowhere.
A handful of galleries in the city centre, maybe two or three.
So we decided to launch an art fair
and everyone said, "You will not sell art in Manchester."
"There's no galleries because no one buys art."
And we said, "No, no one buys art because there's no galleries."
There's huge potential, loads of people
I don't believe that it's not going to work.
And we've now sold about £5.5 million worth of art
into Manchester and the wider north, and a significant chunk of that,
about 40%, is going to northern galleries and northern artists.
So it's supporting the local arts ecology.
So are we getting any closer to this cake and coffee then?
We are, I reckon we're about a mile away.
If we walk quick, we're going to be there in like five minutes.
- Let's go put our foot down. - Get a stomp on.
'Get a stomp on' - is that a saying?
And we've made it.
- After you. - Ah. Thank you.
Lead on Macduff.
There you go guys.
- Thank you. - Thank you Jane.
Lovely, so we're at your favourite cafe, Shepley's.
Yeah, we are indeed.
This is Shepley's Cafe in Old Glossop.
It's a vegetarian and vegan cafe.
The cakes are fantastic.
The coffee is fantastic and the tea is fantastic.
So we've had glorious weather and sunshine to finish.
We have a little windy at times, but it's been fabulous.
It was. We made it. Stunning views of the moorlands
and especially the brook as well. That was lovely.
Yeah, it's such a glorious part of the world.
I'm always surprised how few people know about it.
Even people from Manchester. They might know about Kinder
and they might go to the Lake District and North Wales
but I suppose one of the things I love most about having Bleaklow
on my doorstep is the peace and quiet.
If you're not on the Pennine Way,
as we saw today, once you move away from there
it's so quiet and so peaceful.
Cake time.
- That's good cake. - Oh my God.
Victoria Sponge.