Vandalism, repaired

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:57:50 GMT

I've dumped my photo album onto my laptop, and today, whilst I was waiting in the garage for my car to be fixed, I started to sort them out - the problem with digital cameras is that it's far easier to take photos than it is to keep track of them! I've found some stuff I should really post, so expect it to come out in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks. Here's the first instalment.

These 'kissing stones' are more properly known as Wain Stones, a famous Dark Peak landmark, and an ancient land boundary marker. I have an enlarged version of the picture as my desktop background as well, so I'm quite fond of them. Last year, the farmer who's land they are on (Bob Clarke) sadly died. Someone - goodness know who - thought it would be a good idea to hack his name into one of the two rocks.

I'd only met Mr. Clark once or twice and briefly at that but Mossy Lea Farm was always immaculately tidy, as was the rest of his land - and tidiness isn't a trait farmers are known for - so I can't think he would have approved of the crude and thoughtless way his name was hacked into the stone. Needless to say, nobody who saw it was happy, and one of the other Rangers came up with a way of ameliorating the damage as far as possible. He carefully smoothed away the rough edges of the letters and then painted over the raw yellow of the fresh rock surface with a mixture of peat and used engine oil.

As you can see from the photo above, from a distance it's barely noticeable - if you get up close you can still see it, but it's far better than it was.

As an interesting aside, if you look at the stones you can see they are pockmarked with small holes that look just like the bullet holes you see in the walls of shot-up buildings. Well, local rumour has it that during WWII bored pilots would strafe the stones as they passed over, so they are in fact bullet holes, softened by the passage of time. So thoughtless vandalism is nothing new...

Some Dark Peak pictures

Sun, 02 Mar 2003 07:26:15 GMT

The other Rangers I work with have been nagging me to put some more pictures on this website. All of these have been taken within 6 Km of where I live. Click on the images to see a larger version.

Wain Stones, looking south towards the Kinder plateau, which is on the right-hand side of the skyline, about 6 Km away.

Looking North from Harrop Moss. The valley in the centre of the photo is Crowden Great Brook and to the left is Crowden Little Brook, about 6 Km away. The edge you can see curving left to right in the centre of the photo is Laddow Rocks, which the route of the Pennine Way follows as it climbs out of Crowden up towards Black Hill.

This winter panorama was taken from above Shittern Clough, looking southeast up the valley of Shelf Brook.

From left to right:

The stream in the foreground is Shittern Clough,a corruption of Scriesendclough, which probably means 'stream used as an open sewer' - this area of Glossop is thought to have been a centre of population in the 13th century.

The hill just behind is Lightside, which at one time housed the targets for a rifle range - the firing positions were below and to the right of where the photo was taken from. Next along and in the far distance is Shelf Benches, which was the site of some large quarries which were active into the latter part of the 19th century.

Just right of centre in the centre, running from top to bottom of the picture is Shelf Brook. The lower part (the green fields) is known as Mossy Lea. Along the valley bottom runs Doctor's Gate track, named after Dr. John Talbot, who was vicar of Glossop from 1495 to 1535, eventually climbing up to join the Pennine way at Snake Summit. This is purported to be a Roman road, but is in fact a medieval packhorse route.

The hill with the noticeable plume of smoke on it is Coldharbour Moor, on which Mesolithic and Neolithic flints have been found. To the right of that in the far distance is Glead Hill, and finally the round hill on the far right hand side of the photo is Shire Hill, on which a Bronze Age burial urn was found in 1957.

Most of the moorland around Glossop is managed for grouse shooting, which requires that thenheather is burnt on a regular 15 year cycle to provide fresh growth for the grouse to eat - hence the trails of smoke on the skyline.

Looking east along Mossy Lea, Shire Hill is just out of shot to the right. This is the green valley bottom you can see on the panorama above.

Looking south-west over Glossop from near the bottom of Shittern Clough. This was taken a couple of hours after the panorama above, and all the smoke from the heather burning had drifted down over Glossop - very atmospheric! (pun intended ;-)

James's Thorn, looking west over Glossop and to Manchester in the distance. The round hill on the left of the picture is Shire Hill (see above). The scrap metal in front of my kid's feet is all that remains of a Canadian Air Force Avro Lancaster that crashed on May 18th 1945, just days before the squadron went back to Canada. All six crew were killed. Behind and below the viewpoint there is the remains of another crash - a Skytrain. The Dark Peak is littered with aircraft wrecks, the most well-known being the USAF RB-29A 'Over Exposed' that crashed near Higher Shelf Stones, about 1 Km away from this site.

Above Ferny Hole, looking west towards Yellow Slacks and Dog Rock (the outcrop on the facing hillside in the centre of the photo). Dog Rock was used by the early sports climbers in the UK, and was the scene of some pretty heated battles over access in the 50s and 60s - the local farmer fenced the crag off in an attempt to keep the climbers out, and the local climbers used to go up in the evening, cut the fences and throw the wire, the posts and all the tools off the top of the crag. The farmer then resorted to dynamiting the crag to make it unclimbable, but in fact it ended up improving the climbing! Eventually the whole thing ended up in court.

Last summer we had a day of torrential rain which resulted in Shelf Brook bursting its banks, along with most of the other rivers that flow through Glossop. There was extensive damage, some of which is still being repaired. The picture on the left is what it used to look like, the picture on the right was taken the day after the floods. Both these pictures are taken from exactly the same place, the footbridge over Shelf Brook. The picture on the right shows that at its peak the brook had come clean over the bridge, and in fact had pushed it downstream - notice the curve? Paradoxically the bright and sunny picture was taken in the middle of winter, and the wet and miserable ones were in the middle of summer - not an unusual state of affairs for Glossop!

Alan's Ramblings - wain stones tag

Vandalism, repaired

Some Dark Peak pictures