Bleaklow, Derbyshire

Derbyshire 19

Image by thesweetcheat

Rhiannon Jan 20, 2006 12:33:21

Please help an ignorant southerner. I've been reading about Bleaklow, which is between Manchester and Sheffield. It's an area full of naturally peculiar shaped rocks
http://www.cressbrook.co.uk/features/bleaklow.htm
and is also known (in current times also) for its strange lights (which the poor mountain rescue people have to investigate in vain).

So it's obviously quite a wild and strange place. But there aren't any stone circles or rock art or anything else marked on the OS map or on the tma map browser.

Does anyone know why this might be? Is it TOO bleak? It's rather boggy and there aren't any paths (apart from the Pennine way?) Or is it not worth competing with the artistic rock formations of nature?

I was just wondering.

PeterH Jan 20, 2006 12:52:16

Replying to Rhiannon

It is a dreadful place of peat hags and mire. It is the scariest place I have ever been to, though some people like it. I don't know anything about its pre-history and it may have been drier once. There are weird natural rock formations, but everywhere it is wet, black and treacherous. I got lost there when the mist came down and it was really very frightening.

ocifant Jan 20, 2006 12:59:19

Replying to Rhiannon

I don't know the area, but it looks very 'empty' of scheduled monuments on Magic too...

jacksprat Jan 20, 2006 15:55:57

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon - I might be wrong but I'm sure that Alan Titchmarsh covered somethng about this in his programme British Isles: A Natural History. Episode 3, He explained how the landscape was carved by a glacier and because of the way of rainfall and drainage in the area, was never suitable for farming or grazing, therefore never attracted settlers. This may explain the lack of Neolithic sites. There's a link that might be useful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/britishisles/prog_summary.shtml

I'm guessing that the difference between that area and Dartmoor is that you couldn't really skirt round Dartmoor and had travel through it, from East to West and vice versa, encouraging eventual settlement, where as you could skirt up either side of the Bleaklow region and so it was avoided. That is a guess though!

The Eternal Jan 20, 2006 23:31:44

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon,
The huge amount of peat (to a great depth) suggests very heavy aforestation - maybe that's why.
As for PeteH finding it scary, there are numerous instances of people finding upland areas scary in the last two or three centuries. Perhaps the proximity to the clouds, and the threat of very bad weather closing in without warning are reasons.
I've come across quite a few people on the hills in Cumbria who have also been scared and out of their depth. Most aren't used to it, and find the proximity of extreme weather to be frightening. Perhaps that's why our ancestors shied away from it, although that isn't the case elsewhere.
Maybe the evidence is buried under the peat.
Just a few thoughts,
Regards,
TE.

stubob Jan 21, 2006 03:22:59

Replying to Rhiannon

Hey up Rhiannon,

I've been up on Bleaklow a number of times and it's one of the craziest places out there, not only for the huge number of strangely shaped rocks and outcrops but because of the deep peat groughs you have to walk through. Easy to spend an entire afternoon up/in there and see nothing but sky....or more than likely cloud. Paths aren't a biggy mind much of Bleaklow has been Access Land for sometime now....

Ain't always been so bleak though.....In the Mesolithic the Bleaklow moors with their broken birch kinda scrub vegetation were the hunting hotspots and within easy reach of the wooded valleys of Derwent and Ashopton etc. The eastern edge of Bleaklow, especially around Charlesworth and Cold Harbor Moor, has turned up masses of microliths and flakes, especially along the natural routes of the cloughs between the high and low ground.
Peat started to form on Bleaklow before the Mesolithic was out and the moors have been largely 'ignored' ever since.....

nice one
stu.

PeterH Jan 21, 2006 07:55:57

Replying to Rhiannon

Alfred Wainwright on Bleaklow:
"...a few isolated boundary posts serve as waymarks over a rising desert of peat groughs, heathery hummocks and boggy hollows. Progress is slow and made only by a series of trials and errors in a confusing terrain. Reliance cannot be placed in following bootmarks in the mud, which may be the wandering imprints of lost pilgrims....My own experiences on Bleaklow were dreadful, one on a day of sluicing rain and another of drifting mist. Many other walkers have reported this hill as an unfriendly and cheerless place and rescues have been necessary."

When wet (and that is almost always) you sink up to your knees in liquid black peat at every step and flounder - not nice at all.