15-May-2026
Cracking walk today. Right up there in my Top 5.
Recipe:
1. Start by walking down to Braddan, to catch the bus to Crosby.
I never get tired of this beautiful churchyard, now awash with wild garlic
2. Pop into Costa in Crosby for a hot drink and a toilet... Then head off up the hill to the north of the main road. Initially, you're following the Millennium Way, but soon you're branching left.
You're already getting great views...
... and sharing the landscape with just the sheep and one pair of mountain bikers
Always cool to get views of the sea
I love how wild the uplands are here on the Island... You leave the fields and the trees, and then you're up with the moorland and the plantations, and soon you lose the plantations too, and it's a different world...
3. Branch off again, to follow a scarcely visible track that climbs steeply up through the heather. You'll get no mountain bikers here... Eventually, you reach the top of Slieau Ruy (meaning "red mountain"). Now you're 479 metres up, and you're on the 11th or 12th tallest of the Island's mountains (depending on the source you consult). Enjoy the views!
Zero point trying to do anything with your hair up here...
4. Head down a fairly gentle slope to the summit of Greeba, Slieau Ruy's little brother.
5. Descend to a patch of stricken trees, where the remains of a wall offer a nice sheltered place for your lunch.
Lunch outlook
6. Carry on down (concentrating, because the track is rough here), and then enter what is known as the King's Forest. A complete change of scene...
7. Catch the bus back to Braddan (or thereabouts). Do NOT, as we did, catch it from the stop outside Greeba Castle. The pavement is narrow, and the road is busy, so this is definitely a bus stop to be avoided. Even worse, the bus, when it came, almost didn't stop... And when we got on, we received not an apology but a dressing down for waiting in a shady area wearing dark clothes... What??!! Not our fault they put the bus stop there, we said. Well, wear light clothes, then, repeated the bus driver... Yeah, right, like hiking clothes generally come in pastel shades... I was more than a bit miffed about that incident. The first nasty person since we got here, actually. But never mind... Put it under your foot, as my grandma used to say...
8. Grab a mocha at the Kirby Garden Centre (plus a bit of ginger cake, if you're Nigel) to fuel you up the final hill home. Congratulate yourself on a day really well spent.
***
Apart from the bus contretemps, this was a truly AWESOME expedition. Incredibly varied terrain. Vast views. And novelty: I'd covered hardly any of this territory before. My uncle had a farm, Cronk Dhoo, on the lower slopes of Greeba, but I'd never been further up the mountain than the top of his yard.
My mother and my uncle at Cronk Dhoo
My father
So this walk held a sense of connection as well.
File under Inspirational.