9 December 2014

Hill

There's a hill nearby with a telecommunications mast on top of it. That mast is a useful landmark. You can see it from miles around. It is like the centre of a massive compass. I drove up there today - just to get out of the house and to breathe in some fresh air, knowing that the early afternoon weather forecast  was more about sunshine than precipitation.

The mast overlooks both Eyam and The Hope Valley and it is by an ancient byway that takes its name from the hill it crosses - Sir William Hill Road. It is most likely that the hill was named after Sir William Saville, the 2nd Marquis of Halifax, a grandson of the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury who became Lord of the Manor of Eyam. During the English Civil War, Sir William Saville commanded Royalist forces, which occupied Leeds and Wakefield. After an attack on Bradford had been repulsed, the Parliamentarians under Fairfax forced him back to Leeds. Later, Sir William became Governor of Sheffield and was killed near York in 1644. But there are other theories for the name which I will not go into just now.

Thankfully, I had come well-prepared for a hike up to William Hill - long johns, a woolly hat, fingerless gloves and so on. There was a sprinkling of snow and hypothermic sheep were nosing about in the turf as a biting wind lashed across the landscape from a north westerly direction. Here are two more of the images I captured up there:-

20 comments:

  1. I don't understand fingerless gloves. It's my fingers that get so cold!

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    1. When you're taking photos, it is a pain to have to take off one's gloves for each shot. I only bought my fingerless gloves last week and they have been my best purchase of the year. When walking along you make a fist to protect your fingers.

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  2. It is a beautiful place and the last shot does it justice.

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  3. The hardiness of those sheep amazes me. Of course, they have all that wool to keep them warm, but their faces and legs are still rather exposed. And even with the best wool covering myself, I'd get cold if there was nothing but cold from underneath and above, and the wind lashing across the field.
    The second picture is one that makes me want to nick it, if I'll do another Yorkshire calendar again. I've made some calendars for friends and family with mostly my own pictures, but as I've never been to Yorkshire in the winter (yet), I don't have anything that matches December to February. Could I use this one, with your kind permission (and of course giving credit) ?

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    1. Of course you may use the picture Meike - I would be honoured....but I am sorry to say that Sir William Hill is over the border in Derbyshire. I know what you mean about the hardiness of sheep - the poor things.

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    2. Why not use one of my wintry Yorkshire angels from this post-
      http://beefgravy.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/angels.html

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    3. Librarian, sheep do feel the cold and huddle together in bad weather, usually under the lee of a wall. the snow drifts over them and they can take a day to dig out.....Feel sorry for the shepherd.

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    4. YP, if you would like to format links like this Embedded Comments
      This is HTML code and very easy to do, says I. When it all goes belly up then I e-mail Mark. He is a Yorkshireman so trustworthy. He works doing really complikated thingies at Shheffield Huniversity. The posh one not the old Poly where I went.

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    5. Thanks for the tip Adrian. I went there but I am too bloody thick to work out what to do. We're not all technophiles tha knows lad.

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    6. Thank you, YP! I went to the link, and the second picture is one I'd gladly use - but strangely enough, that one is not clickable to enlarge (the first one is).

      Adrian, maybe the sheep are warmer under an insulating cover of snow, like in an iglu, unless it gets too much and too heavy.

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  4. The only bit of 'civilization' I see from my house is a similar tower on top of Baw Faw Peak - approximately 3100 ft elevation. It is surrounded by timber, though we have driven within a mile and hiked to the top for extraordinary viewing. The stone wall pic is my favorite. I imagine strong men spending many hours constructing it, wonder who they were and suppose life was quite a bit different in those days.

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    1. Those stone walls are a feature of our landscape that many people take for granted but like you I think of the men who hewed that rock from the earth and then patiently, slowly built those walls. Walls that would last. I just saw Baw Faw Peak on Google mapping/images. It seems that some people prefer to call it Boistfort Peak.

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    2. Tradition has it that local Indians were unable to pronounce the French Boistfort and it slowly morphed into Baw Faw.
      We here on the west coast lack anything of real age, no doubt that is why mysterious places like England and Germany with your rich history intrigue some of us so.

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    3. The native Americans may not have left very much to look at in terms of buildings, churches, roadways etc but they were there all the time and the quietness of their moccasins and the echoes of their hunting cries still resound about your landscape. Sadly, not everyone listens.
      I guessed that that would be the explanation for the mountain with two names.

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  5. I do love that second photo...a track leading into the light. It's a great shot.

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    1. Just a moment before, this view was shaded but then the sunlight cascaded dramatically from a hole in the clouds. It is a simple picture Lee. I am glad you like it. I shall call it henceforth - Lee's Picture.

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    2. I feel honoured. :)

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  6. Wot??

    No walking poles, maps and compass?

    I'm surprised you found your way home to write this lovely post about crunching through the snow in the beautiful north country.


    Ms Soup

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    1. I did see a walking pole up there ABC. She was a long way from Warsaw.

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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