Mondays quite often a good day to go for a walk and take photos – Its not the weekend so you avoid the crowds, but its also not the day when you get a lot of pensioners up on the hill because they’re recovering from weekend duties with grandkids and relatives.
Because of the above, I like getting out on Mondays as early as I can to get a few people-free photos of the hills before what few people there are get out there. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE to see people out and about but sometimes a photo is more pristine without a head poking up somewhere in the shot.
I parked at Upper Burbage Bridge – on the Sheffield to Hathersage road. Its a popular car park with people, and because of its close proximity to the Sheffield Road it gets clogged with rubbish. Today wasn’t an exception – rolling into a parking space I could see little piles of cans, paper and plastic bottles where people had come out for a lovely day and done their usual trick of trying to ruin it for those following.
RANT BEGINS [As I tutted a bit and pulled my boots on, a chap with an Eastern Moors Partnership wandered past with a little picker and a bin bag clearing away the weekends mess.
I wished the guy a Good Morning – knowing it was one of few greetings he would get and on a whim picked up a Sainsburys bag rolling across the Car Park and stuffed it in a spare pocket.
The sight of the mess in the Car Park and the guy who’d driven up to specifically litter pick felt slightly redeeming – A mediocre start to a day suddenly improved drastically by something else, so when I set off towards Stanage Edge I felt good and eager to see what was going to be below a cornflower blue sky and an already bright 9AM sun.
Bags of dog shit. Five of them on the path between Burbage Bridge and the start of the Edge. People are so gormless that they’re conditioned to fear the consequences of not picking the stuff up but also so fucking human that they’d dump their carefully bagged and knotted pieces of biohazard in such a beautiful place because theres no bin within the allotted 50 metres to place said non-biogradable bombs into.
This is the utter contempt a portion of people hold other humans in. The guy who drove out with his litter picker and bin bag is thought of as SO LOW in humanity that people would willingly dump rotting dog faeces and expect these workers to go pick it up and carry it for them?
I makes me realise that we can belong to as many interest groups as we want. We can oppose each others views and dislike what others want to do with our high places and forests as much as we like – We can growl and curse when others take differing views or act for what we see are different doctrines to ours when it comes to the beautiful places we visit. At least its these people who are at least trying – And its by each single selfish or considerate act that our countryside will be ruined or saved.] RANT FINISHES
..So. Stanage Edge. A popular little curve of rock. Frequented by a few folks who know where it is and buffered at both ends by Ice Cream Vans – its quite nice
This is the edge. It was sunny.
And breathe. That was quite a nice walk. As I said before, not too many people and despite the sun being fierce there was a lovely cooling breeze blasting in from the east. Its too early in the year for the moorland to take on any colours other than brown and brown, but the colours were nice
I went and had a look at the new Stanage Pole which sits on the old Causeway Road just back a bit from the Edge. The Park along with a few other organisations have funded a new pole to be put in place and it looks really good. Stick a gallows and a few gravestones there with maybe a gypsy caravan or two and it would fit quite nice in World of Warcraft or GoT – In fact, I might fetch out my old Live Action Roleplaying gear from when I was a spotty teenager and go terrorise some latenight ramblers up there sometime soon. I’m sure I have a latex Goblin mask somewhere still.
Right thats a couple of evenings sorted.
roypollard 