Winter Hill sloe gin (Is this the way to San Marino?)

I had never been to Winter Hill – an open expanse of moorland above the large industrial town of Bolton – before. As a committed urbanite, I hadn’t walked up many hills of any scale. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that I finally fulfilled a long-held ambition of climbing Kinder Scout in the Peak District. I was inspired by a longstanding interest in the famous Kinder trespass of 1932, which pitted the rights of working people against private landowners who sought to deny them the freedom to roam in the open countryside that surrounded polluted, overcrowded towns and cities. When I heard about ‘Winter Hill 125’, therefore – a march to commemorate another successful and significant, but lesser-known, mass trespass – it seemed like the perfect excuse to get on the train to Bolton and take another walk. 

I didn’t expect it to be so far – or for this sunny Sunday in early September to be one of the last blazing hot days of the year. From the station, I walked alongside busy arterial roads to the start point of the march, a nondescript health centre a mile and a half out of Bolton town centre. Mingling with the crowd, I followed a colourful array of banners bearing socialist slogans and campaigning imagery, as the beats of the PCS union’s samba band buoyed us uphill through residential streets. Most of my fellow walkers seemed to know each other – and commented that I appeared to be the youngest on the walk by some distance! Many shared memories of taking part in similar commemorative walks, on previous anniversaries (including the centenary of the Winter Hill trespass in 1996). 

As we passed through different neighbourhoods, people turned out to wave: everyone, young and old, seemed pleased to see us. Heading towards the outskirts of the town, the houses changed in character, from dense redbrick terraces to mellow stone. Eventually, the roads narrowed to a country lane. I ate handfuls of blackberries from the side of the road, and picked a few sloes – a woman of South Asian heritage, curious, asked me what I was doing. 

As we left the town behind, the air began to clear and the samba band dispersed. For the first time, I stopped to look behind me, and saw the mass of people in the distance. There were hundreds – you don’t appreciate how many there are when you’re in the middle of it. I realised how high we were now, the town far below us. 

I kept walking. As we picked our way across the moors, over rough stones and clumps of grass, my footing became less steady. What should have been panoramic views of the surrounding landscapes were obscured by haze, and sheep and moorland was all that could be seen. Climbing higher and higher, I began to wonder where we were actually aiming for – and if we would ever reach ‘the top’. Eventually, six miles out of town, we seemed to come to a natural pause at a TV transmitter, a giant aerial stretching into the deep blue skies above, almost too tall to comprehend. 

Other walkers took out their sandwiches and made small talk with the Bolton Mountain Rescue team, parked up in a van. I wondered what going on. It turned out these were splinter groups, local rambling societies with plans to go in different directions and find their own routes across the moors. It appeared that I had, in my zeal, outpaced the rest of the organised march, and that we were now waiting for them to catch up. I felt truly as if I was in the middle of nowhere. It would be a long walk back down again and I began to panic, wondering how I would ever find my way back to the station. 

‘There’ll be buses from San Marino,’ I was repeatedly reassured. But what was San Marino? A little bit of southern Europe in windswept, post-industrial Lancashire? It seemed unlikely. Eventually, and gratefully, I was rescued by some friendly faces. Two former colleagues from my past working in the co-operative movement (which felt like a lifetime ago) appeared, who I hadn’t seen in years, and who lived nearby. 

We walked downhill together, a shorter and gentler route. San Marino was a Mediterranean restaurant in a picturesque spot overlooking a reservoir (one of many in the area, originally built in the Victorian era to service Bolton’s growing industries). There, we were met by local buses, which took us back to the town centre free of charge. The short journey back to town wasn’t just a welcome opportunity to rest my legs, but to catch up with others on the walk, find common ground and connections, and share stories. Winter Hill had brought us together.

Sloe Gin

This week, coinciding with the start of the freezing weather, I had the first taste of my sloe gin, which has been steeping for ten and a half weeks. Although it's a bit early, I wanted to bottle a small quantity to give to a friend for her birthday this week. It's a deep red colour, almost opaque, that glows warmly when you hold it up to the light. The consistency is smooth and glossy, thicker than gin, and there are two distinct tastes — intensely bitter (perhaps because of the gin, or maybe because I picked the sloes early in autumn before they'd had chance to sweeten) and very sweet — but with an overall fruitiness. It's so rich it invites being savoured in tiny quantities. I looked all over for the perfect bottles, considering some ornamental Vom Fass bottles from the Selfridges food hall, but it wasn't possible to buy bottles without the oil and I didn't want the problem of what to do with the oil. In the end, I bought a 250ml bottle of Devon apple juice from the chiller cabinet as it had a screw top, drank the juice, sterilised the bottle and came up with a colour co-ordinated, vaguely icicle themed label. The rest of my sloe gin has gone back in the cupboard to steep some more before I get it out again properly in December.

Sloe gin, blackberry and apple pie and other recipes from the Ashton Canal

Sloe gin

I developed a taste for homemade sloe gin at my grandparents' house at Christmas time, and I have been regularly consulting them for advice on how to make my own sloe gin. Here are some instructions.

First, identify a sloe bush (as I have discovered, this is difficult — it took me ages, after going through a process of elimination with several other bushes with black berries. It helped when I found out sloes are a type of plum, as then I just squeezed the berries, which look like fat, purple grapes, to see if there was a stone in the middle!). I discovered a bush, conveniently enough, growing out of a wall opposite my favourite building along the Ashton Canal and spent a couple of hours immersed in bushes getting plucked and scratched by branches and stung all over by nettles.

Second, find your jars — I spent a long time wandering around city centre shops in search of suitable jars, before finally settling on some biscuit jars from a pound shop (I'm sure you could probably do better than this by finding a demijohn or something). Then, sterilise the jars by putting them in a pan of boiling water.

Third, pick the sloes! All the recipes called for 450g per litre of gin but, even after doing some climbing to reach the higher branches I only managed to gather 350g (so I accordingly adjusted the amount of gin I used to 777ml).

Once home, wash the sloes and prick all over with a clean needle (I dipped the needle in boiling water). This is the most time consuming part.

When the sloes are ready, place them in the jar with the gin (I used cheap gin from Aldi) and 175g of sugar (the recipe called for caster sugar, I only had light brown sugar so used this instead).

Then, shake, seal and find a cool, dark place for the jars — mine are in the cupboard under the stairs. I split the mixture across two jars so there is space to shake the liquid without spilling it.

Then, shake the jars every other day for a week, then every week for two months (or longer, depending on how soon you want the gin to be ready). After a week, my sloe gin has already turned a warm, red colour like rosé wine and the sloes are getting lighter and lighter, starting to leave the bottom of the jars where they all settled and float around the liquid.

If you don't manage to find any sloes, try grape vodka instead, following the sloe gin recipe above but substituting the gin for vodka, adding grapes instead of sloes and using half the amount of sugar.

Blackberry and apple pie

Shortly after I had picked the sloes, I found an apple tree laden with ripe apples sitting next to an abandoned, boarded up housing estate. Frustratingly, I could only reach one of the apples, although I managed to knock another down with my umbrella and picked a third, after inspecting it for maggot holes, up off the floor.

There were also several blackberry bushes nearby, so I also picked lots of blackberries.

I made a pie using two of the apples and about a dessert bowl's worth of blackberries. I had some pastry in the freezer from the last time I made pastry, so defrosted it. However, to make the pastry:

Place 112.5g butter/margarine in a large bowl. Add 225g plain flour and rub it into the butter. Add a little salt and gradually add cold water table spoon by table spoon until the mixture starts to stick together, and shape it into dough. If you like cinammon as much as I do, add a table spoon of cinammon. When the mixture has formed a dough, wrap it in clingfilm (or a spare carrier bag if none is to hand) and refrigerate for 30 minutes. It will then be stretchy pastry!

Instructions:

Chop the apples and simmer in a little water and 75-100g sugar for 15 minutes (a tea spoon of cinammon is also a nice touch), adding the blackberries towards the end.

Meanwhile, divide your pastry in two (with one portion slightly larger) and roll out two separate pieces of pastry, thinly, on a floured surface. Line a tin or small round baking dish with the larger of the two pieces of pastry.

Add the fruit to the bottom of the pastry, having drained off almost all of the liquid (retain these juices, add to milk, sprinkle with cinammon and allow to cool down for a delicious milkshake!). Then, place the other piece of pastry on top of the fruit to form the pie lid, removing any excess pastry from the sides. Fold the edges of the bottom layer of pastry over the pie lid to form a thick crust to seal the pie. Use any leftover pastry to make a blackberry or apple shaped ornament on top.

Cook for an hour (after 45 minutes, I added a glaze consisting of of 50ml milk, a tea spoon of cinammon and a tea spoon of sugar to the crust) or until the pastry is hard. Allow to cool down then serve with custard.

Apple porridge

The remaining apple I used in porridge for breakfast.

Instructions:

Chop the apple and simmer in a little water for fifteen minutes or so (depending on how late you are running for work!). When the apple is soft, add 50g porridge oats, two tablespoons of cinammon and stir. Add half a cup of milk and stir, adding sugar and more milk or water as required.