Gwaith 18: More Discoveries (Saturday, 15 Oct 2016)

Helo Pawb

Another wonderful day visiting amazing places with my good friend Grevel Lindop. We started around midday and drove out through Macclesfield to The Cloud, an escarpment like Alderley Edge, but longer and higher. We had a long walk along the road at its base and up through woods of birch, beech, oaks and rowan, with ferns crowding around. Closer to the summit, the woods dropped off and we walked past bracken already starting to go brown, as was the heather near the escarpment edge where we had our lunch. The edge afforded us fantastic 360° views of the Cheshire countryside, with the Jodrell Bank dish, which we had visited the previous day, in the distance seemingly floating on the haze.

View from The Cloud

Jodrell Bank in the distance

Early autumn heather

After lunch, we went down another path to the bottom of The Cloud and walked around to The Bridestones, a strange arrangement of vertical stones off to the side of a double chamber open tomb, with other stones in the nearby underbrush. Apparently, the only other similar arrangement is in the Orkneys, though I was reminded of the forecourt at Cairn Holly II in Scotland (about which I will write about at another time).

Front view of The Bridestones

Side view

Grevel inspecting the stones

We then found a ‘right of way’ that looked like it could take us back to The Cloud. Along the path, we found some tall holly trees that looked splendid with their full boughs of berries. The turning of the season is becoming more and more pronounced now, with birch leaves going yellow, oak and beech turning yellow to orange and other trees (maples or sycamore) going green to purple. The countryside will be covered in speckled colours soon.

Berry-ladened holly tree

At one point, I noticed a crow sitting in the middle of a field and, a few yards away, a short, single standing stone, which was not marked on Grevel’s Ordnance map. Like the Allgreave Menhir, it had a flat vertical face, facing north, not south, and sinuous curves on the other side. The stone was streaked with white droppings, as if a bird had spent a lot of time sitting at its top. Grevel spotted an owl’s pellet made up of insect bodies and small white stones. Owls have these stones in their mouths to help grind down their food. So, we decided to call our discovery The Owl Stone.

Raven and standing stone

The Owl Stone, showing the west face

View of The Cloud when we walked back to the car

We then drove back home for dinner and to watch a DVD of Frenzy, which I hadn’t seen before, and a BBC program on Southern Rock.

That was my last outing during my stay in Manchester. Sunday was another rest day, during which I caught up on some writing and emails, and I left on Monday for Scotland. I am enormously grateful for the hospitality shown to me by Grevel and his lovely wife Amanda.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Cofion Cynnes
Earl

Gwaith 17: Snow in Corris

Haia Pawb (Hiya Everyone)

A couple of weeks ago, we had a little bit of snow, though the temperature wasn't cold enough for it to do more than settle in nooks and crannies on the tops of the hills surrounding the town. However, this morning I woke up to snow covering the ground and still falling.

View out my bedroom window

After taking some photos from the front door of Stiwdio Maelor, I threw on some clothes, including my waterproof overpants, and went for a walk.

From the Stiwdio Maelor doorway

When I first wandered up the road, the snow was falling so fast I thought I might not last too long. However, it slowed down after a few minutes and after I took some photos close to the village, I went up past The Italian House.

A field just down the road 

Birds dancing on the snow?

Today was not my first experience of snow. I have visited snow fields near Melbourne. However, this is the first time I've actually experienced walking through softly falling snow and walking on a thick covering of snow. One thing I noticed was the sound of my boots with every step on snow that no one else had traversed, a crunch-pop as the weight broke through the top layer of snow crust and burst through to the softer stuff below. Not quite the snap-crackle-pop of that old TV ad for Rice Bubbles, but close.

Below are more photos from my walk:

My footprints 

The Italian House

The trail to the lookout

Once I brushed away the snow from a flat slab of slate, my usual meditation spot at the lookout, I sat down to absorb the view of white crusted trees, swaths of snow on nearby rocks and smothering the bases of trees, and the distant slopes half hidden by mist, half bleached by snow.

Distant view from the lookout

Closer view of trees

Some ruins at the lookout

The Arthurian pool at the back of the lookout

From the pool

Whenever the traffic from the main road on the other side of the valley disappeared, all I could hear were the occasional creaks of pine trees as they bore the weight of snow, the constant tumble of water into a pool to my right, and the soft plops of snowdrops on my jacket. Every now and then a robin, a coal tit, a tree sparrow or some other hidden bird would trill, tweet, chirp or chit-chit-churr its appreciation or annoyance at the chilly whiteness around us.

An old slate miner's house

The trail down the other side of the hill

By a local kid

By the time I returned to Corris, the road was wet with snowmelt, and, as the day wore on, the snow disappeared, drawn up by the hidden sun’s heat into a mist that hung over the valley.

Corris in Snow

As always, I hope you enjoy this post and I welcome your comments.

Cofion Cynnes

Earl

What do you think? More tomorrow!

PS. I realise I have been quite lax in posting news of my travels. My excuse is that I have been busy with the Christmas trip to Germany to catch up with Jo and with tackling my 3000+ words a day of draft three work (which has not been entirely successful), plus Welsh language and landscape immersion. I’ll write another post soon to let you know the status of things. Thanks again for your ongoing support.