Last Thursday was predicted to be the day summer returned to the British Isles. Based on that, we planned a visit to Rivington Pike and climbed up the hill. Here are the meadows at the bottom. You then go through the terraced gardens of the old Lever Estate until you reach the moors at the top allowing you to finally reach the summit of Rivinton Pike and the incongruous hunting lodge which perches at the top as can be seen in the sketch below.
Rivington Pike is part of Winter hill which is visible over twenty miles away from where we live in Southport. As you can see by the time we got there the clouds had started to drift in, but it was a bright enough day to get a bit of painting in, along with a pleasant walk.
On Monday we decided to visit a hill called Rivington Pike. It is on the western edge of the Pennines and is visible from where I live in Southport. I’ve never been there before because, even though it is fairly close, the roads to it aren’t direct. So here is a sketch from the top which will save you the effort of scaling it yourself, even though it is only 1200 ft high. This view points to the direction of Southport, but with the clouds on Monday, you couldnt see too far.
Above is the Pike viewed from Southport on a sunny morning from a painting I posted in January. In the first painting we are sat on the purple point at the top on this view.
The strange building you can see on the first painting is part of Lord Leverhulme’s ( Billy Lever of yore – founder of what is now, Unilever) country getaway, built on the side of the hill in the early twentieth century with ornamental lakes, gardens, bridges and a bungalow; somewhere the poor man could wander around and think undisturbed. This strange, incongruous tower was built for ornamental pigeons and doves that roosted on the first two floors and as a sewing and music room, for his wife, on the top floor. Whether he locked her in there wasn’t revealed. That may have been what he was thinking about – where he had left the key.
When you descend from the pike you go through Lord Leverhulme’s Folly and into a country park. In this park I was taken by the lush, verdant greenness enhanced by the sunshine. I thought that I would pause and paint the path leading down to the carpark. However, once I got started the clouds came over and ruined the dappled effects created by the sun and foliage and trunks of the oak trees which lined the path. I managed to get some of the shadows in on this one.
graham mcquade 