You can see the Universe from here
Sep. 1st, 2005 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienOr, what I did last Saturday
On Saturday morning I was possessed of a sudden urge to go to Castleton, much farther into the Peak District than we normally penetrate. The problem was what to do when we got there. 'I suppose we could go up Mam Tor,' I suggested vaguely. (This conversation took place on the bus down into town; we left home without knowing exactly where we were going, other than somewhere on the 272 bus route.) So to Castleton we went, and there, at the end of a rather circuitous bus journey, we arrived just before noon.
Castleton is in the limestone country, the White Peak, quite different from our familiar stamping ground of moors and gritstone edges. The hills are honeycombed with caves and pockmarked with old mineshafts; the rocks are full of fossils and minerals. The village boasts a ruined Norman keep, romantically perched on a cliff above a huge cavern entrance, and four show caves, most of them associated with the mining of lead and the famous 'Blue John', a rare blue-streaked variety of fluorspar. It is, of course, heavily touristified, full of curio shops and tea-rooms. I'm reasonably sure that the little blind valley of Cavedale, behind the castle, featured briefly in the movie of The Princess Bride. In real life, its lower end opens into a quiet back lane of the village, not a scary forest!
We cast about in the village a bit, and eventually found a path going the way we wanted, over steep meadows where we ate a precariously-seated lunch, to the opening of the Winnats pass. The Winnats is one of the more spectacular bits of landscape in this part of the world, a steep valley lined with eroded limestone crags that look almost architectural in shape. From above, it looks like a huge hole in the ground, and there's a theory that that's exactly what it is -- a collapsed cavern system. From near the top, one strikes off over steep pasture to the foot of the Mam Tor track.
Mam Tor deserves some description. Nicknamed 'the shivering mountain', it's not limestone but shales, and one side of it is a raw cliff where half the mountain has fallen away -- and continues to fall. When I was a child there was a main road hairpinning across the lower slopes, but round about 1979 there was one landslip too many and the road was closed for good. I was there with my father and sister shortly afterwards, when the sheared edges of the roadbed were still sharp and new; I imagine time has softened it by now, but the ruins of the road are still there. Ten or fifteen years ago, the summit of the mountain, and the track down from it, were getting so badly eroded from too many walkers that the National Trust took drastic action and basically paved the whole thing, with steps where appropriate. Not with local stone, either -- we weren't at all sure where it came from, but getting all those big slabs up there must have been quite an exercise. There are also educational notice boards at intervals up the ascent, explaining the archaelogy; there was an Iron Age fort up there, though there's not much to see now.
'You can see the universe from here,' a little girl exclaimed as she began to climb the track. 'The universe!' That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the views are certainly fine, with Castleton and the Hope Valley, the green sinkhole of the Winnats and the looping ruins of the ex-road all spread out at one's feet.
We made it to the top, and carried on down the other side. The traditional thing is to traverse the whole ridge, over a couple of smaller summits to Lose Hill at the Hope end, but we didn't have time for that, so we took a rather poor track down to Edale, in the valley on the other side of the ridge from Castleton. This gave us fine views of the heather-streaked rampart of Kinder Scout ahead. With amazingly good timing, we got to Edale station just in time for a train home.
On Saturday morning I was possessed of a sudden urge to go to Castleton, much farther into the Peak District than we normally penetrate. The problem was what to do when we got there. 'I suppose we could go up Mam Tor,' I suggested vaguely. (This conversation took place on the bus down into town; we left home without knowing exactly where we were going, other than somewhere on the 272 bus route.) So to Castleton we went, and there, at the end of a rather circuitous bus journey, we arrived just before noon.
Castleton is in the limestone country, the White Peak, quite different from our familiar stamping ground of moors and gritstone edges. The hills are honeycombed with caves and pockmarked with old mineshafts; the rocks are full of fossils and minerals. The village boasts a ruined Norman keep, romantically perched on a cliff above a huge cavern entrance, and four show caves, most of them associated with the mining of lead and the famous 'Blue John', a rare blue-streaked variety of fluorspar. It is, of course, heavily touristified, full of curio shops and tea-rooms. I'm reasonably sure that the little blind valley of Cavedale, behind the castle, featured briefly in the movie of The Princess Bride. In real life, its lower end opens into a quiet back lane of the village, not a scary forest!
We cast about in the village a bit, and eventually found a path going the way we wanted, over steep meadows where we ate a precariously-seated lunch, to the opening of the Winnats pass. The Winnats is one of the more spectacular bits of landscape in this part of the world, a steep valley lined with eroded limestone crags that look almost architectural in shape. From above, it looks like a huge hole in the ground, and there's a theory that that's exactly what it is -- a collapsed cavern system. From near the top, one strikes off over steep pasture to the foot of the Mam Tor track.
Mam Tor deserves some description. Nicknamed 'the shivering mountain', it's not limestone but shales, and one side of it is a raw cliff where half the mountain has fallen away -- and continues to fall. When I was a child there was a main road hairpinning across the lower slopes, but round about 1979 there was one landslip too many and the road was closed for good. I was there with my father and sister shortly afterwards, when the sheared edges of the roadbed were still sharp and new; I imagine time has softened it by now, but the ruins of the road are still there. Ten or fifteen years ago, the summit of the mountain, and the track down from it, were getting so badly eroded from too many walkers that the National Trust took drastic action and basically paved the whole thing, with steps where appropriate. Not with local stone, either -- we weren't at all sure where it came from, but getting all those big slabs up there must have been quite an exercise. There are also educational notice boards at intervals up the ascent, explaining the archaelogy; there was an Iron Age fort up there, though there's not much to see now.
'You can see the universe from here,' a little girl exclaimed as she began to climb the track. 'The universe!' That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the views are certainly fine, with Castleton and the Hope Valley, the green sinkhole of the Winnats and the looping ruins of the ex-road all spread out at one's feet.
We made it to the top, and carried on down the other side. The traditional thing is to traverse the whole ridge, over a couple of smaller summits to Lose Hill at the Hope end, but we didn't have time for that, so we took a rather poor track down to Edale, in the valley on the other side of the ridge from Castleton. This gave us fine views of the heather-streaked rampart of Kinder Scout ahead. With amazingly good timing, we got to Edale station just in time for a train home.