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 Image: A pool of light under West Nab. Location: West Nab, Peak District National Park, West Yorkshire Pennines, England, Link To Map At West Nab, Tuesday 23rd May, 8;30pm (All images taken this evening) I drove back to West Nab this evening for a walk under the threatening skies that had gathered over the Black Hill. The lay-by was reassuringly empty when I pulled up, maybe this evening I would have the hill to myself. It wasn’t to be; as I made my way over the stile and onto the moor another car parked up behind mine, well nobody should have a whole mountain to themselves. West Nab is probably one of the few hills in the Peak National Park that could be properly described as a peak. It is also a lazy man’s hill; me being the lazy man in question, can reach its summit from the car park in less than twenty minutes and only break out in a moderate sweat. It is the kind of place where you go to ask those big philosophical and theological questions and I always half expect to descend with my own set of stone tablets. I made my way up through the cotton grass which has only just starting to come into its own. The ridge line tapered away like a dragon’s tail of millstone grit blocks towards the industrial town of Melham below. I thought about venturing off the track to hunt for the partially carved mill stones after which the local rock is named, but the summit pulled me on. 
Out of the shelter of the ridge the wind picked up as I jumped from boulder to boulder above the trig point. The Black Hill to the south straddled the landscape like a sleeping giant and I traced out the edges of the lesser hills that leaned against its mass like tilted flagstones. Beams of light broke through the clouds illuminating the outline of Snailsden and Royd Moor, before falling on the turbines and lighting them like seagulls under a blackened sky. The occupants of the other vehicle had finally caught up to me and I moved on a little shy of setting up the camera under watchful eyes. I followed the chain of rocks down along the eastern ridge watching skylarks bolt from my path. Another lone walker had taken this trail down to meet the Pennine Way and I watched his progress amongst the sculpted figures of grit stone. Along the edges of these giant blocks the cross bedding of river sediment could be seen in section. These zigzag markings looked like the work of an apprentice mason intent on practising his chiselling, the open peat still bearing the white chippings of his handiwork. Behind me the sky had started to clear although the sun remained within the low cloud covering Lancashire in the West. I found a bowl of water carved by the Pennine climate into the top of a boulder; a single feather lay dampened at its edge. Looking back to West Nab, still in the shade I decided to wait for a shaft of sunlight and enjoy a coffee. The warning notes of Golden Plovers rang through the clear mountain air, rising in pitch as I scrambled over the boulders for a better look. Before long the clouds parted over Lancashire throwing the hill into the deep colours of a low sun. For a few minutes the landscape echoed under this magic until the light faded.  I sat back down looking into the west expectantly below, Saddleworth Moor stretched away to meet the horizon and I thought about unmarked grave of Keith Bennett out amongst the Cotton Grass and peat. Not normally a man moved to acts of public grief, as a parent I couldn’t help feeling for that child and his family. The sun split the sky again and I turned back to West Nab a little broken by the dualism of this place. High cloud swung in like ribbons and I moved off with the returning shade.
Back at the trig point the valleys of West Yorkshire had begun to settle in for the evening, stringing amber lights across the landscape. I walked back along the ridge towards the path that led down to the car, spurred on by the height I ignored the down turn and continued on along the dragon’s tail. In the Half light I lowered my eyes to find a suitable route over the terrain. The sparse covering of bilberry and heather gave way to patches of black peat loosely covered by grit weathered from the surrounding blocks; and then I laughed at my own stupidity and enjoyed a moment of clarity. The ground beneath my feet had looked familiar and at first I couldn’t fathom why, and then I remembered walking along the roadside verge below Tinker Hill while searching for the lapwing chicks who had taken up residence next to that busy road (see previous 2 posts). After waiting for them to emerge into view I had collected them returning them to an adjacent field and supposedly out of harms way. The next evening I had found them back alongside the road and thought better of interfering again. As I looked back down at the ground beneath my feet I saw tarmac instead of peat, the white flecks of grit stone as the loose road chippings and all set amongst the wild plants of the verge. The baize of green pasture in which I had deposited the chicks might as well of been a desert, these were birds of rougher landscapes and had followed their instincts and the pattern of their camouflage back to the verge. Their parents returned to the sheltered landscapes beneath the Black Hill for the space in which to raise their young. What had once been a place of rough moor land had been cleaned up by generations of farmers into the neat fields of the high pastures, by accident rather than design the verges harked back to that older landscape. Maybe this was an inscription for my tablets of stone. Taken from the Manchester Evening News Archives, an interview PC Bob Spiers THE mysterious magnetism of Saddleworth Moor and the bloody-mindedness of a rookie cop led to the discovery of Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. He said: 'To be honest I don't know why. It sounds daft but something was drawing me up there. I don't know why. Why did I go right the way up there? Those moors had been searched the previous day and the day before that”.'I don't know what made me stay but something did”. Taken from Suffer little children A song by The Smiths. 'Oh, find me ... find me, nothing more We are on a sullen misty moor We may be dead and we may be gone But we will be, we will be, we will be, right by your side N.B. As a mark of respect please do not search out the infamy of the Murderers but remember the victims. 
Image: A heart amongst the blackened waters, West Nab, Peak District National Park, West Yorkshire Pennines. Comment Permalink Posted by paulpadam Category: Places, Nature, Color | |
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