Wednesday, October 24, 2018

the leaves are just the colour of your eyes.......

So me & Chris went walking on The Tops again today. 
Up Cragg Vale.
I wanted to show him the route I took on my 30th Birthday , doing The Pennine Way with Phil the Ex-Fireman ..i thought it might help........
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragg_Vale
 I have always thought it a strange,particular, place.
 Last week's post   showed  it's magical spaces ( deer;mushrooms:holy wells ).
 But  (this week) it feels to have  sinister elements too......
The Cragg Coiners tried to hide away there , from the government...but they got themselves found and hanged eventually.....
http://www.mytholmroyd.net/features/coiners.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragg_Vale_Coiners 
In more recent times, Jimmy Savile was a churchwarder at the local church. He lived in a campervan in the church's grounds........
He Put on lurid costums & gave sermons from the pulpit.
How'a about that then? 
https://bitsofbooksblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/savile-and-st-johns-in-the-wilderness/ 
For 3 weeks over my 30th Birthday, me & Phil 'did' The Pennine Way , including our passing through Calderdale & Cragg Vale.
 I remember turning '30' being quite traumatic for me.
. It's funny. '18':'21''40' even '60'! never really bothered me....
But '30'.wow! a shock....
 I remember the night I turned 30. We were camping in some Godforsaken village in North Yorkshire. I got terribly pissed.
I started chatting-up up some woman in a local pub ( even though her boyfriend was sat right next to her at the time).
 He got a wee bit angry & was going to thump me.
 Luckily Phil ( home on leave from Northern Ireland) whisked me out of the pub sharpish. It was closing time, anyway....
" A Lucky Escape" I remember Phil saying as we went back to the empty field we had put up our tent.
. The next morning. Hungover, we crawled out of our tent , to find the couple had (in the night) pitched their tent right next to us.
we made our excuses, & left rather fast....

2 comments:

Sackerson said...

I often think of the moors round there when I'm up the hills round here. From Blackstone Edge up to Widdop and Lad Law, and over to what used to be the Withins Inn. I remember once walking from Halifax to Hoof Stones Height, then dropping down a long valley full of ruins down to Hebden Bridge.

You're right about "strange" - it's a word I often find myself using to describe the places you find up there. The weird gritstone shapes help. That crag at Widdop is even called "Mystery Buttress" by climbers.

I, too, have been up there with my children. There's something about the experience of walking there one wants to pass on.

tony said...

Yes! thinking of the moors...
Often ,when in other places, I remember these rocks & their shapes & textures.
They cant be sifted away! :)

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