I fully recommend this walk.
It is based on yet another Walks with Taste. leaflet. I don’t start it at the Higher Trapp Hotel for several reasons. I still, after several years, avoid some venues for complex emotional reasons, the Higher Trapp is one of them. Besides it is a restaurant venue, not suited to my sweaty after walk pint. I suspect its gardens and views over the surrounding parkland will be in superb condition today, see for yourself one day. I also like honest Sabden as a base.
“Admire spectacular views of Pendle and the South Pennines as you pass through pastoral countryside. The trees along the route are also particularly interesting, with the route passing through beautiful old beech woods on the lowland, following the shapes of weathered trees on the high ground” Sounds good doesn’t it?
I park in the village centre, there is plenty of street parking as well, as a pay and display, take your choice. Sabden was originally a farming and quarrying community, but the water quality of the brook that runs through the village led to cotton-manufacture and calico printing. At one time there were seven mills in the village and workers must have travelled from much farther afield. I will be walking some of their ways today. As it happens I start my walk past the one remaining mill building, now used for diverse commercial premises. Union Mill. 
The route out of the village has at one time been cobbled and as I slowly gain height gives good views back to Sabden with the bulk of Pendle rising behind. 
Up the hill are some of those trees mentioned in the blurb above. 
There are god views across the Sabden valley and over to Whalley Nab. 
I come out onto one of the small delightful lanes that seem to wander through the hills up here. 
At New Hall they have an unusual floral display of Petunias in ‘pots’.
Down through more beech woods…
…and then I recognise the country lane I meet, Whins Lane, the original medieval road between Whalley and Padiham before the turnpike road was built lower down in what is now Read. Along here are the posh houses of Read boasting large gardens and views south across the valley.
I stop to take a photo of an amusing cluster of ‘snakes’ painted on old ivy roots when the lady of the house appears to offer me anti-venom if needed. She says the children love them – I have to agree. 
I cross Trapp Lane (where I should have started)…
…and march on along past the sawmill thinking to myself that it would nave been better to have taken to the fields and woods above the lane. After a quarter of a mile I realise I should have done and backtrack to find the rather hidden stile. 
Nobody seems to have walked this way across the fields but the stiles are obvious. What’s that building up to the left? I’m soon entering some impressive beech woods. Another world. 
I emerge at Priddy Bank and weave through the private properties. 
Another hidden gate gives access to a rather boggy hillside, I notice the nearby property has planted large leaved Gunnera to take advantage of the moisture. 
Onwards and upwards in the rough field with no obvious path but I keep coming across stiles until I’m faced with a field of hefty bullocks. 
They crowd around me as soon as I enter the field, I back off and take a diversion on my side of the fence as they follow me closely on their side. 
Eventually out of their range I am able to climb the fence and proceed in the field up to the road at Black Hill unhindered.
From up here there are wide views south over Padiham to the Rossendale hills, the photo doesn’t do it justice.
It’s all down hill from here but beware, don’t take the stile directly ahead but keep to the right side of the fence to avoid very boggy ground. A wooden stile brings you out of the field into rough ground for the descent to Sabden, which is seen in perspective to the road dropping down from the Nick of Pendle. Silver birch trees dominate this last slope. 
Old terraces of mill workers’ cottages make up a lot of the village. 
I find myself in the beer garden of the Pendle Witch inn for a pint of Moorhouse’s Brewery’s White Witch. My table companions had been up Pendle, we share stories in the sunshine. Perfect. There is no mention of the Sabden Treacle Mines!
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