Now in broad daylight on the first of May, the Slow Warts could better see where they were going so there was less chance of doing the odd bit of circling around to find checkpoints. To compensate for this, we instead went searching for circles and found three, two stone ones and a mown heather one. In so doing, we were reminded of Jim O’s (absent tonight) story of the sliding sun. At sunset on Nov 1st and February 1st, the sun appears to slide down the summit slope of Win Hill, if it’s a clear sky and you happen to be watching from the Hordron stone circle. Sadly, since we were in the right place with a clearish sky (yes, no rain and sunshine!) but on the wrong day, no sun sliding was seen. Possibly save it for a future outing?
We started from Dennis Knoll where car parking charges were applied, there’s now only a few free car parking places in the Peak District, which theme was picked up in the YBI later. Brett was bemoaning the difficulty of getting permissions for events (organised) in the National Park. There was a feeling that access is becoming a bit more difficult with a reduced number of car parks and the charging there. Yes, there are a few rail and bus routes available specially in summer but there is some constraint. Maybe the Slow Warts should stop complaining and just bite the bullet and pay up, to support the upkeep of the Park.
Our journey to Hordron was via Stanage Edge and a slightly trepidatious scramble up the final rocks to the Edge path. Once there, whilst we were tempted, we didn’t go to the remains of a shed but simply waved at it in our keenness to continue our admiration of the carved and numbered grouse water bowls, one of them being number 22. Unlike recent Slow Warts’ outings we were not significantly affected by much deep heather (see last week’s blog about the Cakes of Bread race), so we quite enjoyed the descent to and the crossing of Moscar Moor which included passing two pairs of stone door posts in a ruined wall, likened to some Greek mythological feature or other.
Whether the Hordron stone circle is from the same era is not known but the stones do look old from their well weather worn appearance. Equally so worn was our next check point, the Jarvis cabin, which on each visit appears to be becoming yet more derelict, the roof particularly looks rather fragile. Let’s wait to see if it’s still there for the carol singing season.
We’ve still got one more checkpoint to complete, to the Moscar Moor stone circle which is now surrounded by circular mown heather which should make it a bit easier to see. Tim and Roger still had a bit of difficulty finding it, after all, the stones are only about 15 or so cm high in a fairly level stretch of moorland. It was nevertheless satisfying and the outing was capped off with a direct sheep track to the car park found by Moz.
Most the world’s problem were again resolved at the pub with John joining us having survived his separate run around Stanage.
Thanks to all.
Graham