The Most Dangerous Bus Stop?

The stretch of wall, on the opposite side of Hathersage Road from Piper House, regularly finds itself pushed ten feet down into the woods by a motorist misjudging the bend. In the middle of this picture there should be a bus stop. You can still see several of them if you look down through the gap in various stages of destruction surmounted by metal barriers each of which eventually finds itself on top of the others.

I've often considered that I ought to travel up to Blacka by bus. It would be a responsible thing to do. But as this is the bus stop I would use, somehow I don't feel easy about it. Each time I've looked over the the gap I've half expected to see several individuals in a bus queue frozen in time lying in the mud ten feet below.

There are presumably reasons why the highways authority does not take action that seems obvious to the rest of us on this dangerous bend but I've not heard them yet.

Conservation Through The Looking Glass

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' ...

(from Alice Through The Looking Glass)

Absolutes should be avoided. ‘Wild’ and ‘Artificial’ when applied to landscape are best qualified with ‘more’ or ‘less’.

Once Blacka’s largest section was an artificial grouse moor with heather burning and sheep to keep it under control. Over the 70 years since it was given to the people of Sheffield it has become more natural and more wild a change much welcomed by those who choose to visit it.

Sheffield Wildlife Trust’s website is http://www.wildsheffield.com/ A key outcome of their recent consultation with local people was that Blacka should be a ‘wild landscape with minimal intervention’

So what does this wildlife trust and its backer Natural England decide to do? They decide to enclose it with fencing and other eyesores, to poison scores of mature trees and leave them dead or half-dead yet still standing (as a lesson to other natural phenomena that they must behave or meet a similar fate?), and they institute a farming regime to bring the whole site to heel.

Wild?

I think we are into postmodernism here where words are deemed to mean their opposites. Humpty Dumpty was probably the original postmodernist.

The Pleasure of Paths (5)

'The White Canons Path'

In this case the pleasure is less with what's under foot more with the associations and the surroundings. Being the main route through the Blacka site this bridleway gets plenty of use and at times is wide and stony. This is what I call the White Canons' Path because it was the route used by the monks between their farmland at Strawberry Lea and their community home at Beauchief Abbey about three and a half miles away. It would be interesting to know how much, if any, of the route looked like this during the 300 years that the abbey was established from the end of the twelfth century until the dissolution. This could have been the major route in the area but it's hard to believe traffic would have been a problem. Today you can still find peace here amid the greenery, the blossom and the birdsong.

The tower of Beauchief Abbey today

For the Romantics

After heavy rain the stream here is a wild and exciting place to be. Those who travel to spectacular venues in far corners of the world may think it tame stuff. But I'm sure Coleridge and Wordsworth would have found Blacka Dyke this morning to be inspirational.

Did You Drop Something?

Over the last four years litter has increased manyfold. The greatest quantity as you would expect is below the wall that borders the main road. Nobody takes responsibility for collecting this, certainly not the landowners. Seeing as this is not a pleasant place to walk, just yards from the traffic, not many people feel the need to complain or may not even be aware of it.

Plastic bags blowing onto the site after gales endearingly attach themselves to trees, and there's an occasional balloon released from some distant event.

More troubling than this is the increase in drinks containers cast aside considerately by cyclists. I have known cyclists who indignantly deny that this is the responsibility of others who share their mode of propulsion. But its hard to go against direct observation. It seems to go with the activity. I've always thought that the persons who move most slowly are the ones who most respect their surroundings. They live longer with what's around them. It's a truism of modern life that the quicker you're gone the less you're bothered with what you've left behind.

It all seems to bear out what Dalrymple writes this weekend:

The environment is what we all live in, of course, but to judge by their behaviour the British don't think much of it. They can't see an open space, or a landscape, without throwing a plastic bottle or a tin can at it.

A Perfect Marriage

The fauna and the vegetation are an ideal match. New fresh young trees and lush green undergrowth are just the thing to attract the wildlife that thrives in this setting. Simply looking at it confirms this. No amount of farm and grouse moor management in the past would have produced the excitement of this spring. Another sudden encounter this morning with wild deer and overwhelming explosions of birdsong.

We know this would not have happened like this if the managers had been in control for the last 50 years. And yes we know it's changing and we like change that is natural change, restoring something that was removed when unbalanced management exploited the vegetation for one specialised purpose. And I can put up with bramble and bracken and other minor irritations rather than the huge intrusion of barbed wire and barriers and clipboard-toting managers.

Weekend Activity

Accustomed to the gentler pace of Monday to Friday, these wild and wonderful animals were disturbed by a Saturday morning jogger.



Running uphill on a stony track seems an extreme
way of starting your weekend. But, once you've done it, presumably all's downhill until Monday morning.