The Ruby Stone is on a wooded slope overlooking Reddicar Clough and used to be a feature on what was in the very early days a standard Wednesday club run from the Sportsman. The route was subsequently adopted as the off-road alternative winter Wednesday evening run, engendering the term ‘[stal]warts’. It went out to Wyming Brook, along the edge path over Rivelin then down towards Reddicar Clough and then back up, passing the Ruby Stone, on the way to the Headstone, then via Trout Sike Ridge to Stanage End, beginning the homeward loop by High Neb and the conduit to Redmires. This route was gradually abandoned as people looked for more variety, and after a famous episode in the early 1980’s (pre-CROW days) when somebody, from the direction of Wethercote Farm, took a pot shot at a group of runners which included Chris Worsell himself.
Since then the vegetation above Reddicar Clough has overgrown much of the area around the Ruby Stone, which is now on the wrong side of a new fence and very difficult to locate, even if you know what you’re looking for. The Ruby Stone is the only proper boulder in the vicinity. About the size of an old cathode-ray tube TV set, it sits low on the ground and has the following inscription on the front:
JIM+DORIS RUBY WED 35-75
GOLDEN WED 35-85
DIAMOND WED 35-95
Jim and Doris were the parents of the eminent City Councillor Peter Price, Lord Mayor of Sheffield in 1996. He kindly responded to my email when I explained to him that I was investigating the story behind this ‘thing we run past’:
“The Ruby Stone was a favourite lunch stopping place for my parents who were both in their seventies and keen ramblers. They often took the grandchildren, my daughter Julie and Peter my son with them. When it was their Ruby wedding anniversary my father took his hammer and chisel and marked the anniversary in the rock. Ten years later he repeated it for their Golden Wedding anniversary.”
On a Wednesday club run in the early `90s which had ventured out north of the A57 in the Dungworth direction, the pack had split into various groups but most returned across Hallam Moor towards the Headstone. Frank Galbraith and Alan Yates decided to drop down to visit the Ruby Stone, for old-times’ sake, and were followed by two other runners, who went the same way having overheard what was afoot.
Peter Price’s son (also Peter), at that time a member of Dark Peak, begins to feature in the story:
“You can imagine my son Peter’s surprise some years later, when he kept hearing members of the Dark Peak Fell Runners referring to the ‘Ruby Stone’ and then discovering it was his granddad’s ‘very own rock’, the very place where he had spent many happy childhood hours. Both parents are dead now but we all still visit the stone from time to time, indeed on my 75th birthday, I dragged all my four children with partners and nine grandchildren up to the stone in snow as part of my birthday celebrations. Not sure everybody appreciated it, but I think it did bring back fond memories to us all. The vegetation has changed quite a bit over the years and it is more overgrown now and views blocked by self propagating trees.”
Here is Peter junior’s own perspective on the Ruby Stone coincidence:
“I was a keen ‘member’ of the Warts in the early 90s regularly running from the club hut over the moors on Wednesday evenings throughout winter. Unfortunately work took me away from Sheffield and I could no longer make the Wednesday evening runs.
I’m afraid I’m nowhere near as fit now as I
was back then and a couple of stone heavier,
my running now limited to park runs and I
do more cycling these days. I do miss being
part of the Warts, head torch and all, and
the beers in the Sportsman after a good run
across the heather.
I had been to the ‘Ruby Stone’ with my
grandparents, years before I ran to it with
DPFR but wasn’t sure of its exact location
and we ran to it from a different direction
than I had walked to it previously. The run
was via the Headstone if I remember rightly,
after which someone said let’s go to the Ruby
Stone, which was the first time I’d heard a
Dark Peaker refer to it as a local landmark. I
was very surprised as were my fellow runners
when I explained the family connection! It’s
great to see it is to be mentioned in the 40th
Anniversary edition of the club magazine and
my Grandma and Granddad’s favourite lunch
stop going down in Dark Peak history! I did
tell them that it was a famous landmark after
the incident on the club run and that amused
them.
I have taken early retirement and plan on
increasing my running, losing weight and
maybe turning up at the Trunce to break me
back into fell running. You never know I may
end up back running with the Warts! “
How serendipitous that the grandson of
the couple commemorated on the Ruby Stone
should have eavesdropped by chance on two
club-mates and thus have located a feature
of particular family significance for him at
the same time as revealing the story behind a
special DPFR landmark in the way recounted
here.