30/6/2012. New location, it's not so close to the cliff edge now and its upgraded to a small.
When I started geocaching this was one of the first places I wanted to put a cache. I made an early trip with a big box and just could not find a suitable hole. In the mean time Steve (aka m0sgb) put out his Bradshaw Walk Trail. This passed very close and number 9 was below the 550ft requirement so that was that for the time being. However number 9 was archived recently so I returned to today with a micro and finally managed to place the cache that I always wanted to do, particularly as finders of the Bradshaw Walk trail my have missed this spot which is the finest view point in the area.
"Dead Man's Cliff" sounds rather dangerous and melodramatic. It's not as bad as it sounds. There is a steep drop but its not sheer. Today when I placed the cache I had my 6 year old son George with me, and in fact when I was a kid I used to scale it and climb up and down the cliff face (something I forbid George to do today!). However George was charging about up top today and his Grandad was having palpatations so I am not going to put a child friendly icon on. Please take care up here!
So where does the name come from? Well I grew up in this area and when I was a kid this area was known as "Dead Man's Cliff". The reason was that there was a local legend that once a man drove his motorbike off the top, plunging to his death in the Bradshaw Brook below. I have no idea if this story is true or not. I do recall that it was an established rumour at the time, even my teacher at school thought it was true because when we had a school trip here he warned us to be careful by relating the story!
There's a fine view point up here, when I was a lad I used to walk my dog up here, you can see down Bradshaw Brook below and Bolton Town Hall in the distance. To the right you can see the expanse of the "Jolly Brows". This goes all the way into Harwood and was another childhood play area for me, one which is denied to the children of Bolton today as to much local opposition the council cashed in on it and made it into a golf course. :( Good for golfers I guess but bad for children.
This is a micro and its quite well hidden, This is going to me much harder in the summer, when I suspect it will get rather overgrown. Its fine at the moment though. You can probably cache and dash this from Breightmet but its far far better to come from my Firwood Fold cache.