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Lewis Hunton: The Boy Who Read the Rocks
Stand on the site of the old Loftus Alum Works and you feel rather small. These 213-metre cliffs are not pretty. For centuries, workers burned shale and processed aluminium sulphate here, poisoning the ground so thoroughly that almost nothing grows. The place looks dead. It seems more of the remains of the seeping pits and…
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Elgar Was Here
Big numbers do heavy lifting. You have millions of experiences in a lifetime. You think thousands of thoughts a day. The odds of something lining up occasionally are not slim — they are enormous. The surprise is not that coincidences happen. It is that we are surprised. Or perhaps it is just Jung’s “synchronicity.” I…
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Warrendale Knotts and Attermire Scar
The scarps east of Settle rival any picture of the Dolomites. Vast columns of rock stand gaunt against the skyline, and in its shaded valleys, hill sheep regard the intruder with resentment and suspicion. The geology is almost absurb. Warrendale Knotts is a dramatic cliff of shattered limestone crags along the Mid Craven Fault —…
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Pen-y-Ghent: Where Giants Trod
What a splendid view to stumble upon. Pen-y-Ghent, that stubborn Yorkshire monolith, standing proud above the limestone pavements of Winskill Stones, looking as though it has absolutely no intention of going anywhere. A mountain with a name like that ought to come with legends attached, and Pen-y-Ghent does not disappoint. Stories of giants are ten…
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Langcliffe Quarry and its Hoffman Kiln
Langcliffe Quarry was once a place of serious industry, producing lime from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The remains of three types of kiln still stand here: the Triple Draw, the Hoffmann, and the Spencer. Together, they tell the story of how lime production lurched from the pre-industrial age into the modern world,…
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Burnsall Moor Chimney: Too Small to Be Famous, Too Stubborn to Disappear
High on the moor south of Burnsall, a chimney stands alone among the remains of what was probably a boiler house. Nobody seems entirely sure what it is. At least I have found no creditable source. Opinion is that it belonged to one of the many small collieries that scratched away on these Yorkshire moors…
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Bloworth Slack—Not as Lazy as It Sounds
Bloworth Slack, just moments before it meets Badger Gill to become Hodge Beck. Bransdale again — but today we’ve been beside this quietly lovely woodland stream, its amber rocks lit by a sky so clear it almost seems rude. I never took Geography at ‘O’ Level. I was a science boy, apparently, and Geography was…
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Easedale: Where William Paced and Dorothy Wrote
Another photo from Monday’s climb up Helm Crag. Looking down Easedale, you see more than a rugged Cumbrian landscape. You see a living library. To the left, Helm Crag rises as what Dorothy Wordsworth called “a Being by itself” in 1801. Its summit bristles with famous rock formations: the “Lion and the Lamb,” the “Astrologer,”…
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A Brief Moment of Sun, Raven Crag
Raven Crag catches a rare shaft of sunlight, and frankly it has earned it. This brooding giant overlooks the foot of Thirlmere Reservoir and has been stopping writers in their tracks for generations. They have called it everything from “vertical white walls” and a “chiselled face furred with conifer” to a “gigantic round tower” that…
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“A Natural Convulsion”
Helm Crag holds a unique distinction. It is the only Lake District fell that Wainwright openly admitted to never actually reaching the top of. He gave up on the final scramble needed to stand on the true summit — the northwestern pinnacle. For a man who climbed everything, that is quite an admission. The summit…
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