We had a new fall of snow last week and as luck would have it the next day was glorious....sun shining and not a cloud in the sky...so I thought I would take the afternoon off and do a little walk round my neighbourhood to see what was happening. Fresh snow is a great way to check out the tracks made by all your nearest animal neighbours....so with a couple of knives a long for the ride to test how they carried...I set off to the old quarry on the hill by my house.

My house nests among the foothills of the Pennine mountains on the Snake Pass which links Sheffield and Manchester...the last house you see before going up to the tops of Kinder Scout. Here is the house from half way up the Quarry Hill.



The house was an old Toll House built when the road belonged to the Duke of Devonshire who has his country seat at Chatsworth which is over the pass on the Sheffield side of the Peak District. Since it's original construction it has been enlarged with a number of extensions making it a bit more spacious. It adjoins a Farm Track which is the starting point of a Bridle Way called "The Doctor's Gate" which is a very popular way to get up onto the Fells and hence we often have cars parked infront of the house by walkers who are out for a days walking. The cars in the above picture though belong to people who have come up to take their children sledging on the Golf Course which is just infront of the house on the other side of the road.

You can see the Golf Course in the bottom half of this next picture and in the top half the Dam and Resevoir which goes into the next valley...



You can tell how cold it has been here as the Resevoir is frozen over and covered in snow. Those square plots up on the hill above are where the heather has been burnt off for new growth for the Grouse which live up on the Fells. The keepers keep small sections like this for feeding and to assist in doing a bird count to establish what the numbers are like each year and how many days shooting the various Moors can stand in terms of income and long term viability.

Further over the Fells they also harvest the young heather seeds to enable reclaimation projects to be undertaken where the heather has become strangled by Bracken and Wild Moor Grass to be cleared and then re-seeded to try to keep the ecology of the area in tact. Heather knits together the Peat much better than anything else and enables soil eroision to be kept to a minimum....very important here as this is right up in the watershed of England. Streams which start on this Western side of the Pennines run into Rivers which enter the Sea on our West Coast...over on the Eastern side they enter the sea on the Eastern Coast. To say it rains here a lot is an understatement....the prevailing South Westerly winds following the Gulf Stream bring the majority of clouds laiden with rain over our side of the Pennines where it then is dumped in long periods of incessant drizzle. Resevoirs abound over here like Lakes in the Lake District. Every valley more or less is used to harvest our drinking water. My house is served by a natural spring so I don't have to pay Water Rates but do have to pay for Pipe laying and maintenance...it works out about the same probably...although my Ice Cubes laced with a small mint leaf give more taste to a good Single Good Malt than anything I have ever had elsewhere...so it has it's perks! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />



Looking South West into the afternoon sun you can see the roof tops of the town of Glossop just starting in the distance and beyond that the first of the hills which seperate the Peak District from the Manchester conurbation. In olden times they would act much like a Castle Wall keeping many of the plains dwellers out because the terrain and climate made for the worst option for farming...now they act as a magnet for every walker and rambler under the sun.
There is nowhere truely remote here. Such is the frequency of walkers that our indigenous Deer species are only found in very small pockets scattered throughout the Peak District and this must be the most barren of National Parks as far as Deer are concerned.

Traversing East from the last picture and looking at the hills just above the Golf Course you can see the highest of the Farmers' fields in the district....covered with snow and empty of live stock...they are an ambitious undertaking and only see use in the Sring where they are used to Coral the Hill Sheep brought down from the hills for the Lambing Season.



Further East and you have the road which leads up from my house "snaking" up to the Fell Tops...



and after that we start to look upon the Pennines themselves...



You can still see the Snake Pass road meandering into the distance.

Coming further East still we start to see the small hidden Valley which has the Farm which is serviced by the track which runs past my house. The Farm is my nearest neighbour and the lady who owns this owns the land for as far as the eye can see....retired from full time farming having lost her husband she lets the land out to a young farmer whose lifestyle I constantly envy as I hear him drive past my house every morning early at first light for another day on the hills. As I get ready for my long commute into West Yorkshire as various jobs I have had working as a Lawyer have an office of stress and paperwork beckoning for attention.



When the weather is like this though the commute can be impossible...cars and lorries can become stuck and block the route...then I get the chance to work from home...and with the phone quiet I can do in an early morning start six hours which equate to 10 hours in the office. This then lets me take a bit of time out to go for walks like these. They act as nature's tranqualiser and charge the batteries for whatever lies ahead....

Cool pics! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Great stuff. Thanks so much for sharing.

Great pics. Thank you.

Those are awesome pics dude! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, cool pics.

Excellent pictures, thanks for sharing! My favorite shot is those high hilltop farmfields!

WOW, SF!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> You've got a great looking place, and some great surroundings too!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

We haven't a really good snow here in some time, all the fun snowy hikes are making me jealous... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Great pics too!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Very nice- I just came in from a walk myself- the snow is beautiful-Thanks

Thanks for the comments guys....they are a nice boost.

Steel Fan,

Those are fantastic pictures.
Very nice looking place to live.

Cheers